Since our last conversation about Autism and Neurotipicality
I’ve been thinking on the privilege we attribute to verbal and spoken language,
in detriment of other kinds of language, such as body language or sign
language. We try so hard to run away from
this idea of neurotipicality, but it is so unconsciensly rooted in our own
speech. When we say that a autistic person came into language at a certain age,
we are automatically refering to verbal and spoken language. Even for the
autistics, enter verbal language (through typing) is a way to affirm their
cognitive capacities and their intelligence before neurotipical people. We are
born in a world of language which constrains us to follow its rules, to enter
its game. And once we are stuck in this world, it’s so hard to rescue other
kinds of expression, pre-verbal ou proto-subjective ones. There is a documentary
called “Assemblages: Felix Guattari and
Mechanic Animism”, produced by Mauricio Lazzarato and Angela Melitopoulos,
in which the anthropologist Barbara Glowczewski addresses this issue. She
explains that in all history of thought there was always a obssession to define
what is natural/normal and what is not, and spoken language always was in the
side of normality, while the lack of language was necessarily related to a more
primitive, non-human or animal state. A few centuries ago children who grew up
without speech were forbidden to continue to express themselves with signs,
including deaf people. For many years the Vatican forbade the use of sign
language. Having that in mind – this privilege we attribute (maybe unconsciensly)
to verbal language – we could think towards what Felix Guattari, in his critics
to the structuralism of psychoanalysis, calls an “asignifying semiotics”, that
can only be thought in machinic, non-human terms. Releasing ourselves from the
idea that language is what structures our inner self, our identity, we can
think subjectivity not as a synonymous of an structured and shaped interiority,
but, on the contrary, as being never centered, as something which exceeds or
overcomes us towards non-human
becomings. In a neurotipical world dominated by spoken and verbal language, in
which ways can we reconnect ourselves with these proto-subjective forms of expression?
Here is the link to access the documentary I mentioned:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4L_m5vPQoaY&t=213s
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ReplyDeleteThis was great to read, and I'm currently wathing the documentary!
ReplyDeleteSome of the things you brought up reminded me of a old memory from when I was in elementary school in the Montessori system. We were being taught to read and write with different coloured and shaped blocks, each with a letter from the alphabet printed on one side in sandpaper. The teacher was showing us to trace the letter with our hands and feel the shape through the coarseness of the sandpaper. Although still teathered to traditional linguistic structures, this experience was distinctly more interesting and activating than anything I experienced after making the move from Montessori to typical schooling, and I distinctly remember thinking of language in this moment as an exteriority - as something seperate from the role it played in my own becoming.
Maybe if there was more room in our schools and institutions for alternative approaches to feeling and knowing, and our exploring wasn't so restrained by canonical thought (as well as neurotypical notions of what should be felt/expressed and how), we could all be better equipped to enact an asignifying semiotics.
That's a beautiful film, as is the exquisite work of Fernand Deligny (should you want to venture further into this environment). Jesse, your comment reminded me of the drawings Deligny made with autistics to map their movements (he did these on tracing paper, which allowed the movements to become a palimpsest over time). He called these "lignes d'erres" or wander lines (Deleuze and Guattari take up the term in 1000 Plateaus). Instead of speaking for autistics (as is so common when people can't speak), Deligny gave them a means to speak for themselves. It seems to me that the Montessori experience is similar in its orientation - it moves the child to learn to feel speech and to find in speech the feeling of the letter. I wish we could create those conditions more often.
ReplyDeleteThank you for this comment and for the film - they both really help me move my thoughts.
ReplyDeleteThis is beautiful:
"Releasing ourselves from the idea that language is what structures our inner self, our identity, we can think subjectivity not as a synonymous of an structured and shaped interiority, but, on the contrary, as being never centered, as something which exceeds or overcomes us towards non-human becomings."
))))))))) ) ) ) ) ) ) )
ripples
And also thank you Jessie for introducing me to the Montessori system - I am fascinated.
"learn to feel speech"