Imagining Otherwise: Autism, Neuroaesthetics and Contemporary Performance

✍ Scribed by Shaughnessy, Nicola

• Book ID: 125457307
• Publisher: Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining
• Year: 2013
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 195 KB
• Volume: 38
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0308-0188
• DOI: 10.1179/0308018813z.00000000062

✦ Synopsis

Perspectives on the phenomenology of the autistic experience are presented with particular reference to the imagination in autism and what may be conceptualized as 'neurodivergent aesthetics'. Drawing upon a research project that explored the potential of drama as an 'intervention' in autism, an attempt is made to de-mythologize the condition by challenging stereotypes and by suggesting that the multimodalities of performance offer an appropriate space for 'encounters' with autistic states of being while also questioning the dualisms which distinguish between the aesthetic and non-aesthetic.

keywords drama, autism, neuroaesthetics, performance

The blind spot in the cognition sciences of the 20th century is that we do not have a method of properly accessing experience. (Varela 2000) If a Martian spoke, would we understand it? Only if we shared or came to share some 'forms of life [. . .] That is precisely a problem for a person with severe autism. But the evocative phrase, form of life, is never more than a pointer; we shall need to be more specific about what is missing. (Hacking 2010, 196)