Regressive Language

Autism spectrum disorder has historically been characterized as a disability involving “language regression” ( DSM-5 43). This article purports to reclaim the derogatorily used epithet, “regressive,” to argue that autistic poetry marks a shift away from modes of fast and speedy textual consumption of texts to one that intentionally upholds a regressive mode of nar-reading (narration and reading). The article analyzes the use of radical technological interventions, structural techniques, and formal experimentation in the Canadian autistic poet Jane Shi’s volume of poems titled Echolalia Echolalia (2024) to argue that the textual performance of echolalia enacted by these poems offers an instance of regressive nar-reading. Autistic echolalic poetry, with its insistence on slowness, circularity, patience, and focused engagement, promotes not only a divergent modality of narration but also a version of slow reading (a term used by Ben Agger and John Miedema). The poetics of repetition introduced by such a style of nar-reading disables and crips the ableist and oppressive capitalist discourses of speed, progress, and temporal conformity, producing an alternative version of crip time and space.