“Demi-Autistic, Genetically Speaking”

This article presents a reading of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian speculative fiction series, the MaddAddam trilogy, as a vehicle that forwards a critique of the exploitation and commodification of so-called Aspergian characteristics in science and technology sectors. Engaging with Ian Hacking’s concept of the looping effect, the argument is that Oryx and Crake , the first novel in the MaddAddam trilogy, demonstrates that the technoscientific competence associated with Asperger’s syndrome (a diagnostically defunct but culturally common designation) may be cultivated to produce a population of ideal laborers. In presenting this reading, the article connects the novel’s references to Asperger’s syndrome to the increasingly pervasive commodification of neurodiversity in the real world.