Comments on: Ian Hacking on How We Have Been Learning to Talk About Autism

By: Monday in Manhattan

Monday in Manhattan — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 19:58:20 +0000

[...] papers for more projects that are being attended to, plus the fact that last weekend while I was at a lecture on talking about autism, Charlie was having a fine dinner on Jim’s desk and Vietnamese spring rolls have a lot of [...]

By: About How We Talk About Autism « What Sorts of People

About How We Talk About Autism « What Sorts of People — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 16:48:11 +0000

[...] A Challenge to Moral Philosophy. Some reflections on Professor Hacking’s lecture are here—-the lecture has kind of “jump-started” my thinking for my book on language and [...]

By: Kristina Chew, PhD

Kristina Chew, PhD — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 15:45:37 +0000

Amanda was mentioned and a member of the audience mentioned AutCom. I found Hacking’s lecture very positve (even posautive) and affirming of, shall we say, subjectivity where it’s not assumed. The respondent, Victoria McGeer, noted that Hacking’s argument puts “all the disability” on the autistic person and I had a big nod for this. There’s a sense of what McGeer said here regarding the interpretation of first-person reports of autistics.

http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=8903

By: Phil Schwarz

Phil Schwarz — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 15:08:20 +0000

I too would have really liked to have heard Hacking’s lecture.

You probably know that I am a board member of the Autism National Committee (”AutCom”, http://www.autcom.org). Several of my colleagues on AutCom’s board, and many others in AutCom’s membership, have severe handicaps, including the lack of expressive speech; they use AAC (augmentive and alternative communication) devices, such as text-to-speech keyboards, to communicate. There is no question about the depth and richness of their emotional lives: they are at least as deep and rich as my own and those of my nonautistic family members’ and friends’.

Amanda Baggs’s In My Language is important to consider in this discourse as well. If we look only for responses to the events and entities that the nonautistic majority deems to have relevance as emotional stimuli, or as co-respondents in emotional exchange, we are missing whole categories of emotional interaction — categories that nonautistic minds filter out as meaningless, but which have definite and constructive meaning for those of us who engage in them. (For that reason and others, I consider In My Language to be a significant a milestone in our community’s literature, on a par with Jim Sinclair’s Don’t Mourn For Us.)

By: Karen

Karen — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 14:13:20 +0000

I would have loved to hear that lecture too.

I am not autistic but I am a quiet, introspective person and I support the concept that simply being with someone is an excellent way to know and understand them. One of the greatest compliments I ever received from my mother was how she appreciated that the two of us could be together in silence (like on a long car ride) and still enjoy each other’s company.

By: Storkdok

Storkdok — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 14:02:20 +0000

I would have LOVED to hear that lecture! I’m so jealous!

Seems to me a lot of our kids are communicating a lot of things without “linguistic ability” or even with “limited linguistic ability”. We just need to stop and listen. You and Jim do this very well.

I like your last line, it is also what my son does!