Critical autism studies: methodological incursions into qualitative inquiry in education

This article introduces a special issue curating a collection of Critical Autism Studies (CAS)-informed manuscripts, each of which explores the relationships among autism, CAS, education, and qualitative inquiry and methodology. This manuscript is situated within the affective turn, specifically, in relation to Massumi’s concept of ontopower. We briefly sketch the emergence of CAS as a field, and the range of ongoing moves to define its contours. In addition to the extant consensus elements of CAS, we propose an additional foundational feature that contributing authors engage with in this collection: the ontopolitical exploration of qualitative methodologies, informed by uniquely autistic paradigmatic frameworks. We position these CAS-informed methodological moves as incursions, with significant affective power to move and be moved through research creation and encounter.