Because of the various differences – neurological, behavioural, cultural – which it embodies, autism offers a particular vantage point on the questions that surround the idea of what constitutes ‘the human’. This can take the form of prejudicial discrimination when judged in terms of a disability ‘deficit’, but can also potentially offer a productive revision of ideas of self, agency and ‘the human subject’. This paper will look at ideas of autism in relation to writing, critical/radical humanism, and particularly the emergence of the category of the posthuman; and will consider questions surrounding media, technology, clinical diagnosis and autism advocacy. Katherine Hayles has claimed that the posthuman condition is one marked by what she terms ‘distributed cognition’, which might seem to offer the possibility of a connection to an idea of autistic normality. The paper will weigh the competing claims of the categories of the posthuman, using the work of Hayles, Carey Wolfe, Rosa Braidotti and others, in order to further complicate our understanding of the condition.