Talking Back to the Empire of Science in Postcolonialism: The Autistic Poet Tito Mukhopadhyay as a Model

Document Type : Original Article

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English Department, Faculty of Arts, Menofiya University, Egypt.

Abstract

This study explores the persistent, and eternal attempt of some of the neurotypicals who belong to the West or those who could be called as "the neurotypical occidentals" to stabilize the differences between them, and "the autistic Third World immigrants". In the era of colonialism, and even after it, there has been multiple paranoiac, and imperialist Western medical debates which have objectified the disabled Third World immigrants including the autistics. This study examines two selected poems by the autistic Third World immigrant, and Hindu poet Tito Mukhopadhyay (1988-  ). His poems, namely, "Misfit" (2010), and "Poem 1" (2013) talk back to the Western empire of science, and its paranoiac medical myths concerning autism. In these poems, Mukhopadhyay portrays his suffering from the elite Western medicine in the United States which has only spotted the autistic Third World immigrants, and pursued to cure, and normalize them. He has realized that such process of normalization is only an imperial strategy to exclude, and objectify him, and his likes because, basically, they do not belong to the West. That is why in these poems, Tito Mukhopadhyay attempts to resist the colonial medical hegemony of the West, and reconfigure some of its myths concerning autism.

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