“Know thy work and do it”: The Rhetorical-Pedagogical Work of Employment and Workplace Guides for Adults with “High-Functioning” Autism

This article examines the rhetoric and pedagogies of employment and workplace guidebooks for adults with high-functioning autism (HFA) to demonstrate how the texts reflect and reinvent cultural desires or fantasies about contemporary employees and also work to norm real autistic employees to be closer to a neurotypical ideal. This norming is achieved in large part through the guidebooks’ surprising appropriations of and appeals to rhetorical training.