“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Saturday, September 14, 2013

Deleuzian Autism

I've had this beef with Deleuzian panegyrics to autism. Don't they reproduce the primitivism with which immediacy = who we really are = good versus bad, bad, reflexive loops = artifice = bad bad civilization?

What is avant-garde about this?

And what in this speaks to the immense suffering of autism?

Is autism chosen because it's even more hardwired than schizophrenia, D&G's favorite mode? More "primitive," therefore?

1 comment:

grayam m. said...

Hey, I wasn't aware that "Deleuzian Autism" was a thing, but from your very brief comments it sounds like an avenue that could be relevant to some things I'm working on. Were there any specific papers/articles/etc. that you were thinking of re. your comments?

Incidentally, I've started introducing your work to other artists I know - you may have started to become popular amongst emerging Australian creatives, because I keep seeing vague references to you all over the place.

(long time fan, first time commenter)