Autotheory emerged around 2003 and was popularized by Preciado in 2008

Evidence

A newer neologism than “autofiction,” “autotheory” appears as a term in English starting around 2003, connoting self-legitimating premises in law, and is then widely popularized in 2008 by Paul Preciado’s Testo Junkie, which calls itself in Spanish “una autoteoria,” rendered in English in 2013 as “a theory of the self, or self-theory.” … (A data point: Ahmed’s book was Duke University Press’s best-selling book of the entire 2010s.) — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 259

Categorization

• QUESTION: The etymology — autotheory first connoting ‘self-legitimating premises in law’ — is surprising and worth chasing; does the legal meaning inform how she reads the contemporary academic use?