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Autism in a Decentered World
Alice Wexler is Professor Emeritus of Art Education at SUNY New Paltz, USA.
Routledge Advances in Disability Studies
Alice Wexler
First published 2016
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2016 Taylor & Francis
The right of Alice Wexler to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Wexler, Alice, 1942- author.
Title: Autism in a decentered world / by Alice Wexler.
Description: New York : Routledge, 2016. | Series: Routledge
advances in disability studies ; 8
Identifiers: LCCN 2015034061 | ISBN 9781138818576 (hbk) |
ISBN 9781315745152 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Autism.
Classification: LCC RC553.A88 W456 2016 | DDC 616.85/882—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015034061
ISBN: 978-1-138-81857-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-74515-2 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
To the Creative Growth Art Center and all the artists
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Contents
List of Illustrations xi
Foreword by Ralph James Savarese xiii
Acknowledgments xvii
Introduction 1
PART I
Theories of Selfhood
PART II
The Artist’s Identity
Index 259
Plate
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Illustrations
The last fifteen years have witnessed a flowering of autistic writing and
art. From published books and blog posts to gallery exhibitions and vir-
tual displays, this flowering has put pressure on conventional understand-
ings of the disorder. No longer is it appropriate to suggest, as Oliver
Sacks once did in a profile of Stephen Wiltshire, that autistic drawing is
unworthy of the appellation “art” because the consciousness that pro-
duced it is “defective.” While the normal/abnormal binary continues to
hold sway, particularly in medical and scientific arenas, the strict distinc-
tion between cultural “insiders” and “outsiders” has started to crumble.
Part of a wider neurodiversity movement, this renaissance has elicited
attention from both autistic and nonautistic critics, but we don’t yet fully
know what the concept of neurodiversity might mean or, as important,
what it might still achieve.
Along comes Alice Wexler, the author of a number of important books
about disability. She brings to the task of investigating neurodiversity
both knowledge of autistic autobiography and art and a commitment
to ethnographical research. In her book we learn about, among other
autistics, Dan Miller, whose work is part of the permanent collection at
the Museum of Modern Art in New York. As a result of perseverative
behavior and a difficulty communicating, he carries the label of “low-
functioning autism,” even though in the context of art he “functions”
perfectly well, if not in a manner superior to the nondisabled artists who
support him at Oakland’s Creative Growth Art Center, to say nothing of
the doctors who label him and who probably couldn’t make compelling
art if their lives depended on it.
“In his drawings,” writes one critic,
Wexler herself suggests that Miller’s art is “the outcome of an intense inves-
tigation into the graphic form and the visual representation of language.”
If neuroscience has taught us anything over the last decade, it is that
autism is primarily, although by no means exclusively, a visual intelligence.
Temple Grandin has famously called this proclivity “thinking in pictures,”
and research has shown that autistics do indeed rely to a much greater
degree on posterior sensory regions of the brain, especially the visual
cortex, to think. A study from 2005 found that autistics possess a “non-
verbal, visually oriented processing style” and, even after becoming literate,
remember printed letters as if they were shapes and not just the instrumen-
tal signifiers that neurotypicals take them to be. Put simply, autistics engage
with printed language—and, it turns out, with spoken language, too—as if
it were akin to art: something to behold as much as to unpack or decode.
Here, an appreciation for the materiality of language may have a conspicu-
ously neurological origin. If so, autism would offer Miller a significant aes-
thetic advantage. The distinction between the verbal and the visual breaks
down, and the context of art, which for autistics is often much more hospi-
table than the context of everyday life, allows language to be any number
of things at once.
It may be that Miller’s art also reflects the difficulty that some other-
wise literate autistics report when looking at printed text: they simply see
too much; the medium refuses to disappear and, as a result, it often moves
and swirls and jumps and, in general, drives them crazy. For this reason
they prefer to listen to text being read aloud. How tempting, from a neu-
rotypical point of view, to reduce Miller’s art to a struggle with literacy
rather than a complex unfolding of “a gift with a shadow side,” as the
writer Suzanne Antonetta calls her bipolar disorder. None of this is to sug-
gest that Miller simply projects a different neurology onto the canvas; nor
is it to assert that his art lacks intention or refinement. Rather, he works
with a different set of neurological predispositions, just as neurotypical
artists do.
While proposing a number of theories about autistic cognition, Wexler
never forgets that she is hypothesizing. As she listens to autistic people, as
she takes their writing and art seriously, she tries to account for neurological
difference without presuming pathology and without allowing it to devolve
into something static or immune to influence. The autistic renaissance we
are currently witnessing is the product of neurocultural intermingling. There
Foreword xv
are no fixed forms of cognition: autistics aren’t simply one thing and neuro-
typicals another. We are all hybrid creatures whose very plasticity can stretch
the limits of our own biological organization. By stretching these limits we
can stretch our capacity for empathetic understanding.
There is much to be found in this book. May it be one of many that seek
to realize a neurodiverse future.
Ralph James Savarese
Professor of English
Grinnell College
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Acknowledgments
Many people have generously offered their time and expertise during the
writing of this book. I especially want to express my gratitude to the staff,
artists, and the families of the artists at Creative Growth Art Center. Stu-
dio Manager Matt Dostal read the short biographies of the four artists in
Part II, and gave me invaluable advice that helped me align my own goals
with the wishes of the staff who so carefully make sure that the artists are
represented respectfully and truthfully. He also read each chapter to the art-
ists, or in some instances to a family member, for their input. As a result, I
was able to challenge my own assumptions about what was most important
to communicate. Gallery Manager Catherine Nguyen also offered wise sug-
gestions based on her knowledge of the artists’ lives and her sensitivity to
their privacy. Projects Manager Jennifer State O’Neal afforded her anecdotal
and insightful knowledge of the artistic development of the artists. Kathleen
Henderson, Anna Marta Dostourian, and Veronica Rojas, staff artists who
worked closely with the studio artists, generously and patiently answered
my many questions. Maria Hartikainen, who at the time was Dan Miller’s
ceramics mentor, allowed me to film their interactions during a studio proj-
ect, which illuminated the Center’s difficult to describe non-teaching ethos,
which as Director Tom di Maria believes, can only be understood through
prolonged observation. di Maria’s presence and intelligence were felt in the
intention and thoughtfulness of the daily activities of the studio.
I would like to recognize three scholars who afforded me their expertise
in email correspondences and personal interviews. Matthew Higgs, Direc-
tor and Chief Curator of the White Columns gallery in New York City, is
an eloquent art historian who has exhibited the works of the artists I write
about in Part II. His knowledge of the art world as a gallerist and cura-
tor, his personal relationship with the Creative Growth Art Center, and his
appreciation for its historic place in the art world were essential in bridging
these worlds. Roger Ricco, co-founder and owner of the Ricco/Maresca
gallery, one of the earliest galleries to feature Outsider Art, has supported
me in researching and negotiating the often contested labels of this art form.
Douglas Biklen, the former Dean of the School of Education at Syracuse
xviii Acknowledgments
University, and author of many articles and books about his advances in and
advocacy for facilitated communication, guided me through this difficult
and complex terrain.
Finally, thank you to James Brent, Director of The Museum of Every-
thing, Joe Coleman, Leon Borensztein, and the White Columns Gallery, for
their permission to use their works of art.
Introduction
Alluded to earlier, the eighteenth century Cartesian mind/body dualism set the
stage for the construction of hierarchal values, such as independence, mas-
tery, and competence, that persist today in an essentialist selfhood. A few
value-laden descriptors that arise from this concept of selfhood are autonomy,
stability, continuity, and unity. In “What is the Western Concept of the Self?
On Forgetting David Hume,” D. W. Murray (1993) argues that the discrete
yet continuous notion of self is ubiquitous, and can be traced back to Plato,
Descartes, Kant, and Christianity. But philosophers such as Hume, Sarte, and
Merleau-Ponty present conflicting notions of the self as contingent, embodied,
fragmented, relational, pluralistic, and inconsistent. Western culture, however,
inherited the predominant Greek and Christian selfhood, and we measure and
6 Introduction
are measured by these standards. These measurements led to our subjective
definition of normalcy, and its inevitable opposite, abnormality.7
According to David Hume (1978), we empirically sense that our lives are
continuous, a sum total of our experience and memory. The multifarious
appearances of objects are confabulated in our brain so that their identi-
ties remain secure and solid. Our sensations, although volatile, maintain a
coherency as they are connected to causal relations with the environment
and attached to the constant of the self. As a result of the brain’s confabula-
tions, we are conscious of a consistent and enduring self from our earliest
memories. Hume, however, found no evidence of a continuous self whose
reality existed in our own perceptions and sensations. The instability of per-
ceptions and sensations, and the lack of scientific proof that they provide,
might just as easily be isolated phenomena with no connection to the self.
Hume’s argument that the continuity and wholeness of the self is fiction
and, therefore, so are our perception of the universe, is the thesis of this book.
The theory that I examine began with Hume’s rumination about the efficacy
and plausibility of autobiography as self-representation, as it is the nature
of humans to re-narrate themselves at every moment to cohere a fragile self-
hood. In order to avoid contradictions of self, Hume considered all forms
of his writing autobiographical and narratological practices. Hume wrote
his autobiographical story just before his first philosophical text in 1734 in
the form of a letter, or epistle, and his final autobiography, My Own Life,
along with his will and testament in 1776 (Valenza, 2002). So inseparable
is Hume’s philosophy from the story of his life that Robin Valenza suggests
in her essay, “Editing the Self: David Hume’s Narrative Theory,” “instead
of considering autobiography as a context for Hume’s philosophy, how do
we read Hume’s philosophical texts as a theoretical context for his autobio-
graphical writings?” (p. 139).
Unlike the more enduring concept of “unity of action” as it has applied
to literary narrative since Aristotle’s coining of the phrase, Hume saw only
inconsistencies that disrupted the continuity of identity. In other words, a
notion of identity depends on a narrative succession. The unconscious habit
of narrating a sequence of perceptions into a single identity is exposed only
in cases when the narrative process breaks down, such as in memory loss,
brain trauma, or in the autist identity. What written narrative can and does
Introduction 7
do, then, is enable the writer to put lost connections back in place, or simply
to recognize their absence.
Before making the comparison between Hume’s notion of self and the
autist identity in Chapter Two, I introduce a subgroup of thinkers in Chap-
ter One who have maintained Hume’s position. Many of these thinkers are
anthropologists, philosophers, neuroscientists, and neuropsychologists. The
theory of a fictitious self has gained currency since the latter part of the
twentieth century. Our fairly recent ability to see the brain puts us in the self-
conscious position of searching for the narrating “I” and coming up with lit-
tle evidence to support it. Evidence supporting a discontinuous, fragmented,
pluralist, relational, inconsistent self, however, has been found not only in
diagnostic images of the brain in which no self-aware center can be found,
but also through the personal experience of not only their injured subjects,
but also the scientists themselves. Other evidence comes from Michael Gaz-
zaniga’s split-brain surgery,8 in which the corpos-allosum is severed, produc-
ing two separate hemispheres. Because post-operation patients seem not to
be affected, Gazzaniga’s view is that “this does not so much show that the
patients have preserved their pre-surgical unity as that the unity of normal
life is an illusion” (as cited in Dennett, 1986, p. 6). As a result, several of
these scientists have abandoned traditional clinical reports in favor of sto-
ries, fiction, narratives, and autobiography.
Anthropologist Katherine Ewing (1990) suggests that a pluralistic iden-
tity and inconsistencies in self and self-representation are experienced not
only in non-western cultures in which self is contextual and relational, but
also in the western identity, even though it is typically described as autono-
mous and independent, which
Mind/Body Duality
At the same time as Descartes famously located evidence for his existence in
his thoughts, he rejected his body as not the “I” that he knew. “I am not this
assemblage of limbs” (as cited in Broks, 2003, p. 106). The effects of Des-
cartes continue to hold sway in the collective unconscious even though the
inseparability between mind and body is well established in bio-neurology.
The Cartesian “I,” which most of us still hold consciously or unconsciously
to be true, is irreducible to both body and experience, and ubiquitous
because of its similarity to the belief in the soul. In other words, I own my
mind, body, and experience, but they are not me (Glover, 1989). The Carte-
sian ego is a disembodied mental state that is conscious of, and gives unity
to, all experience.
It was clear to scientists such as Paul Broks (2003) that the brain could
not be understood without the body, since the tightly connected functions
between them are embedded in it, as well as embodied in the physical
and cultural landscape. As sensory and perceptual observers, however,
we instinctively conceive the essence of identity as located somewhere in
the brain. We have a long history of identifying our face—as somewhat
Introduction 9
separate from our body—to be the self’s representative. And as observers
we intuit the minds behind other faces. “Irresistibly, we still see the vision
of minds in the light of other people’s eyes . . . if this illusion begins to
fade then so does the observer” (p. 21). The face is the entry point into the
selfhood of the other and, therefore, by extension, our mutual knowing.
I could argue that this assumption is emblematic of the theory of mind,
our ability to perceive the thoughts of others at some point behind the
eyes and “to place oneself within the context of a developing social story”
(Belmonte, 2008, p. 171). This illusion is an essential piece in our story of
the self and, therefore, our belief that we understand other selves, conceiv-
ing them not only through the spoken word but also through the signals
of facial expressions. Broks’s objection that nothing is “there” in the mind/
brain but organic matter is the post-postmodernist dilemma of reconciling
the numinous qualities of subjective experience with the physical matter
of the brain.
Title: Majatalo
Language: Finnish
Kirj.
I. S. Turgenjeff
Suomentanut
Alexander Halonen
Majatalo.
Kaikin puolin hyvä olisi ollut Akim, tahi kuten häntä kutsuttiin
herrastalossa, jossa hän usein käväsi ja varsinkin sunnuntaisin
puolipäivämessun jälkeen, Akim Semenovitsh, — kaikinpuolin olisi
hän ollut hyvä, ellei häntä olisi seurannut eräs heikkous, joka jo
monen ihmisen on maailmassa perikatoon saattanut ja loppujen
lopuksi tuhosi hänenkin elämänsä — nimittäin, heikkous
naissukupuoleen nähden. Akimin rakkaus meni äärimmäisyyksiin,
hänen sydämensä ei mitenkään voinut vastustaa naisen katsetta;
hän suli siitä, niinkuin ensimäinen syksylumi auringonpaisteesta… ja
tavallisesti hän joutui maksamaan ylimääräisen tunteellisuutensa
tähden.