Brain-based identities, especially around autism, have received much attention in recent literature on biopolitics through concepts such as brainhood, cerebral selfhood, and neurochemical selves. This article complicates conversations about self and brain by presenting ethnographic data about Italian autistic youth. It demonstrates the complexities of the ways in which youth draw on brain discourses and autism identity discourses. While youth and their parents did sometimes talk about autism as related to selfhood, and autism as related to brains, and even brainhood as related to selfhood, they rarely spoke of all three concepts together. Youth’s use of autism identity discourses proved sporadic, and instrumental. Italian youth did not mobilize biopolitical modes of engagement the same way as scholars have described in other settings, suggesting important cross-cultural variation in how people relate to notions of self and brain linked to broader differences in Western biomedicines. This study provides a rich description of identity discourses employed by autistic Italian youth, demonstrating how they can use autism as a tentative basis for seeking collective identity and social interaction while negotiating skepticism about its meaning for individual identity. Throughout, the brain plays a minimal role, resisting neuro-essentialist or neuro-hegemonic conceptualizations of autism.

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“阿斯伯格综合症不存在”：意大利围绕阿斯伯格综合症和自闭症的基于大脑的身份话语的局限性

基于大脑的身份，尤其是自闭症，在最近的生物政治文献中通过大脑、大脑自我和神经化学自我等概念受到了很多关注。本文通过展示有关意大利自闭症青年的民族志数据，使有关自我和大脑的对话变得复杂。它展示了青年利用大脑话语和自闭症身份话语的方式的复杂性。虽然年轻人和他们的父母有时会谈论自闭症与自我有关，自闭症与大脑有关，甚至大脑与自我有关，但他们很少同时谈到这三个概念。事实证明，年轻人对自闭症身份话语的使用是零星的，而且是有用的。意大利青年并没有像学者在其他环境中描述的那样动员生命政治参与模式，表明人们如何与与西方生物医学的更广泛差异相关的自我和大脑概念相关的重要跨文化差异。这项研究对意大利自闭症青年所采用的身份话语进行了丰富的描述，展示了他们如何将自闭症作为寻求集体身份和社会互动的试探性基础，同时就其对个人身份的意义的怀疑进行谈判。在整个过程中，大脑扮演的角色很小，它抵制自闭症的神经本质主义或神经霸权概念化。展示他们如何将自闭症用作寻求集体身份和社会互动的试探性基础，同时就其对个人身份的意义提出怀疑。在整个过程中，大脑扮演的角色很小，它抵制自闭症的神经本质主义或神经霸权概念化。展示他们如何将自闭症用作寻求集体身份和社会互动的试探性基础，同时就其对个人身份的意义提出怀疑。在整个过程中，大脑扮演的角色很小，它抵制自闭症的神经本质主义或神经霸权概念化。