[SydPhil] MMII Public Lecture: Signifying the Autistic Sense of Self

[Hoda Mostafavi]

Dear all,

We’d like to invite you to our next Macquarie Minds and Intelligences Public Lecture.
When: Tuesday 16th of  September at 4pm.
Where: 17WW 224 Moot Court (Michael Kirby Building) - Macquarie University. Please note this is an in-person event only.

We are delighted to have Dr Emily Hughes from Macquarie University present the following:
Signifying the Autistic Sense of Self
In this talk, I consider the ways in which the literature on ‘impaired narrative ability’ in Autism reinforces the pervasive idea that Autistic people have an impoverished sense of self. In positioning Autistic people as unreliable narrators with partial senses of self that are, in effect, unnarratable, this literature others Autistic people from the outset through the paradoxical claim that Autistic people are both too Autistic and not Autistic enough to author their own lived experiences. Turning to research on epistemic injustice, I then suggest that, whilst predominantly neurotypical worlds clearly lack the collective hermeneutical resources to interpret the significance of an Autistic sense of self, the literature on epistemic injustice nevertheless continues to privilege symbolic forms of signification as the means through which Autistic people might construct these resources and thereby signify a coherent sense of self. Challenging the privileging of the symbolic, I argue in closing that non-symbolic, non-durational, and non-intentional forms of ‘Autistic perceptual signification’ – and the ‘ecological’ senses of self to which they give rise – are a more meaningful way to approach the complexity and heterogeneity of Autistic (and non-Autistic) ways of being in the world.


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