So what are autistic people, then?

From this, it would appear that autistic people are homo sapiens but not human beings. In the previous point, it appeared that we might not have selves; this statement pushes up farther out the door.

Where do we fit into the scheme of things? What are we? Potential human beings with potential selves? Real ones with real selves who have been afflicted into possibly-permanent “socially vegetative” states?

Maybe the operative question should be, “Take the role of the other and do what with it?” Both the style and substance of my social interaction with others is a pastiche of larger-scale gestures, a short-order restaurant of on-the-fly emulation. Put musically, I “sample” others’ role performances. I suspect this isn’t the kind of “taking” the author intended, but it’s what works for me.

And here, too, the “flip side” of a statement or concept can be examined: what is the ability to not take the role of the other? The first example which comes to mind is the child in “The Emperor’s New Clothes”; listing others would make an interesting exercise.

Last revised: June 22, 2007
(c)2007 Dave Spicer
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