Why Aspies ARE disabled, and we should embrace that.

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Interesting. I remember when, a number of years ago, I moved from critical realism (Roy Bhaskar, etc.) to poststructuralism, Foucault in particular, I quickly became an expert on it. Online, people who had studied the perspective much longer than I had were asking me questions. It did seem to come "naturally" to me.

Where did I argue that reason is invalid? I said that reason depends on presuppositions. (Actually, to be specific, I made no arguments at all. I simply presented a couple of general ideas.)

However, my students would be very surprised to discover that I believe "reason is invalid," since a substantial portion of their grade is based on my evaluation of their critical thinking skills.



Hmm. My impression is that you already made up your mind on what I believed before we ever began. Perhaps you are trolling?

Interesting.

Whereas I see words (and symbols in general) as these annoying unwieldy things that have to be used in certain circumstances because there is nothing better to use, but that don't really capture anything properly. But because they're the dominant way to communicate certain things, I've gotten used to using them. Sort of. I told a friend I thought it was strange that I was a writer who hates words, and she said maybe that just means I'm a writer.

Really, though, basically I've always had receptive language lagging quite a bit behind expressive (to the extent that I can recall speaking at the exact same time as having no clue what words were even for, let alone understanding them), and while some aspects of language seem to work quite well, the idea of being trapped in language and symbol sounds incredibly empty to me. Which is one reason postmodernism has always seemed so empty, because it's seemed some how more embodying everything wrong with language in the first place, than most everyday language does.

I've sometimes, when working very hard at language, found myself propelled temporarily into a situation where I in some way can't find my way out of it. I find this painful (on a physical level, it actually hurts by the time I get to that point, besides just "making my brain hurt"), disorienting, and depressing. I have met a lot of people who don't seem to find language that difficult to get their head around, but I'm definitely not like them. The concept of making language the base to draw all my conclusions from is foreign to me, and the heights of language required to make postmodernism make sense are even more foreign to me.

Maybe for some people though it works like those weird things... you always hear trendy people talking about them. Where people of a certain religion are supposed to concentrate on nonsensical phrases until they break out of language. I could see postmodernism working that way for some people. But it's never seemed to contain truth in the way some other nonsensical-sounding things do. There really is a point at which language breaks down so far that the same words mean a particular thing and its exact opposite at the same time (and too often, people choose the least substantial of the two to believe in). I just haven't seen postmodernism really heading in that direction. (But nor have I ever been able to withstand the amount of ridiculous word-based curlicues needed to read it.) It's always seemed fundamentally hollow to me. Maybe somehow it shows some people how hollow most language is. I don't know.

I've just seriously always seen words as something almost external to the world, that require force just to get near them in a productive manner (I discovered quite an enormous amount of unproductive or counterproductive manners to get near them before I got a solid and lasting hold on the productive ones). It seems like to some people words are the whole world. Maybe this is why my brother and I mutually think each other's view of the world is rather out of touch with reality at times.

What is all this about post-structuralism and post-modernism? Again, terminology for general views ignoring the subtle differences of independant ideas. I don't understand using such words for distinction between factions. Why apply yourself to preconceived ideals instead of simply voicing your own opinion and the reasons behind such without falling back on atypical communacative form? I find it odd that a common general diagnosis for Aspergers and Autism is to view the affected as being anti-social - and yet, here, we see some people using words descriptive of distinctly social groups and the mentalities applicable to such groups. Fascinating, to be sure.

In my case, it is because I am a sociology professor, and social theory is one of my areas of specialization. However, I always make an effort to explain terms which may not be familiar to most people. For anyone who does not understand them, I believe I provided some explanations earlier in the thread. If not, I would be happy to clarify.

YOu mean, disability pay? For AS? What country do you live in? What did you have to go through to get this?

Hey, I've had a job almost constantly for the last 27 years, except for a year and a half I took off. Nothing has got any better, and I don't know how I'm going to do this for another 20 or so years. EVery job I have I have so much stress just to be at the level everyone else is socially, or else I'm afraid they're going to fire me because they don't like me. In my current job they keep having social gatherings for the cmpany that I have to attend, where I always feel like I'm going to mess up. (And I don't even know WHY the owners are doing this--they don't even like us really, judging by the way they act towards some of us sometime. I mean, they don't even like the NT's. I think they think these things are good for morale.)

If there was a way I could go on disability or partial disability of some kind I would. If there was a way I could work at home and never have to deal with people at all for my job, including online. I've had enough.

What about those of us Aspies who don't have scientific or technical ability? Those abilities are not a given with AS. Some of us have no special abilities other than just normal things that we've developed, plus we have no social ability (can't read facial expresisions really, take everything at face value, etc., etc.

I think that possibly the reason many people don't seem to have much difficulty getting their head round language is that they are NOT getting their heads round it; language is round their heads. And they let themselves be carried, corsetted, framed, supported, transported, contained, constructed, within language. But to those whom the dominant/common language does not come near enough describing, whose experience is not included in the dominant languages use of words, ( which is how it works to maintain/create power imbalances), language may be constricting, crippling, disabling. For them using the language will be like a left handed person trying to use right-handed scissors. Very painful, aswell as numbing, awkward, etc.

I don't think post-structuralist analysis requires as much complex language use as can sometimes seem. Definitely a lot less than structuralism, which reached heights of jargon unfathomable to most, ( including me). Post-structuralism, correct me if i'm wrong, seems to consist far more in an "attitude" to words, a trick of seeing, rather than the long list of "describers" which structuralism seemed to be.
Perhaps a bit like the difference in laboriousness between the old sign language, ( signing each letter individually to spell each word,) and the new, far more fluent, word and phrase-based version.

"To some people words are the whole world". Yes. I think it's like in Peter Weirs film with Jim Carrey, "The Truman Show". After you get out you know that "reality" can be/often is manmade/artificial/constructed. Poststructuralism helped me get out. It helped me see the artificial constructions. And escape them, just a little bit.
( I am less disabled; my brain works so much better, since getting the poststructuralist key. The awful thing is how until then i didn't even realise i had been disabled; i had been so suffocated by the language that i thought that was all i was capable of).

Incidentally, I'm beginning to find Jim Carreys choices of films very interesting; "The Mask", "Liar, Liar", "The Truman Show","The Cable Guy", "23", "Dumb and Dumber"....

I am carrying on thinking about this on this thread because it seems particularly relevant to many people on the AS in view of their often particularly fraught relationship with language, especially "NT"s use of it.

Language is a system. Yet society, in fact language as it stands at the moment, tries to hide how it works, or in fact that it is even a system. Which is what poststructuralism is about.

Until I understood how this system worked ( certain key elements at least), in fact that it is a system at all, i was as disempowered and disabled as i am in front of the computer.
But worse, far worse, because huge areas of my self and life are regulated and organised and findable/only recognisable with language. It was as if "myself" was largely on the computer in my current state of inability around computers.

For as long as I can remember my body has been a confusing , unreliable, scary, constantly changing, hazy/uncertain medium for a sense of self, of the world. I think my dependence on words is somehow connected to that. Words as a "better" way to paint the picture of the world and me in it. Words as the fundamental reference structure. But they are not just a brilliant palette of colours, or a huge box of lego bits, they are functioning cogs in a system which acts on our thoughts, as powerfully as our state of digestion, or brain chemistry, acts on our state of mind.

I wonder what difference it might have made if i had been taught from the beginning that language was a system manipulated by forces in society, and that need to learn it as would a computer, understanding the underlying processes, in order to use it well. Not just vocabulary, syntax, etc.

If people around me had used it explicitly as such, I might have been less tempted to "give up" on my body for instance. But my Dad particularly used words as if each one was inevitable/good/pure , ( Although he was aware that words shaped experience of life, he just meant that people must be taught wider vocabularies! ), had never been "made" by anyone, ( except possibly god) and had to be respected, were not to be messed with, in fact thou shalt not take the name of god in vain applied to all words, all words were god.

Perhaps the reason why so many people on AS are so sensitive to use of language is because so many of them are so dependent on it, to make their way round life.

On that note, not so much about poststructuralism anymore; could say language use is like use of pavements ; not respecting pavements makes life more difficult, confusing and dangerous for a lot of people. Display stands, poster boards, tables and chairs, dogshit, parked cars etc on pavements affects the mobility and safety of mothers with prams, toddlers, people in wheelchairs,etc, etc, etc.

Not using language carefully ( honestly, accurately,) is even more discriminatory, and therefore disabling, to some/many than pavement misuse is. Wow, ..goes off thinking.. The longest running "wheelchair" exposed. Very soon everybody wanted to talk, but mostly just to impress, make friends and influence people, not because they needed language. It's like money; being dependent on money is alright only so long as enough people agree on what it means and the value of yours.

Last edited by ouinon on 11 Jan 2008, 2:33 am, edited 1 time in total.

I didn't claim that ASers aren't disabled. I claimed that we are, so I guess we agree, although I now regret having made this claim because I am starting to realize that I don't have a good way of deciding at what level of impairment one becomes "disabled." At the very least, we are impaired. This I can safely say.

As to the second point, you are absolutely right. Very many things are socially determined to some degree. But to claim that there is no difference in ability between the disabled and the non-disabled outside of social context is just silly nonsense, hardly worth thinking about.



The example you give indicates that disability is a fuzzy set. I would agree with that. Different societies at different times decide where to draw the "line" placing someone in the role of a "disabled person," so for instance 40 years ago the DSMIV categorized homosexuality as a mental disease. So we agree here, but this is not the same thing as saying that impairment doesn't exist or is caused by the failure of a social support network to coalesce around particular sets of abilities.

By the way, I will read the article you posted and get back to you later.

Thanks

Wait, Norah_W, I didn't say all people with Aspergers have extra abilities - I stated that I did, and that I prefer it.

Nom, when I mention "reason" in passing and ask you to clarify your position, and your first response is to call reason itself into doubt, I am less than optimistic about the course this conversation will take. Let me ask you this: If I were to show that SMD involves a logical contradiction or was contradicted by evidence, would you admit that SMD is not true?

Anbuend, the abstract you showed me was extremely interesting. If true, the theory described would disprove my assertion that AS is an impairment. Would you like to discuss this further? Also, are you able to get the entire article for me to read? Sorry it took so long to get back to you, by the way.

That is your prerogative. However, my point was just as I said: to assert that reason is not a foundationalism. The fact that you reacted so strongly to my statement give me some information about you, too. Most people I know in my own field would respond with, "Of course." Your choice was to attack me.



Nope. I am not into dares, speculative or otherwise. If you have information, you can, if you wish, present it, and I will respond.

There are in fact very severe impairments that "normal" people have. For instance just non-autistic people alone appear to have some pretty spectacular cognitive impairments that prevent direct perception of many things. (This is not meant to be an insult to them, just what appear to be the findings in current research.) Like autistic people, they also have advantages to the way they work. But there are also extreme disadvantages to their ways of thinking. However, they really do have societies organized around their difficulty with direct perception, including a lot of double-checking mechanisms and so forth, as well as the presence of some people who are far less impaired in that area. So they are not disabled despite often having what from certain standpoints could be easily said to be severe perceptual impairments. I'm not trying to be insulting or funny here by the way. It's just an example of how, yes, society organizes around certain impairments in such a way that the people who have them are not disabled.