Russell Greer, Ph.D.

rgreer@mail.twu.edu

Texas Woman’s University

February 24, 2006

The Federation of North Texas Area Universities

A Symposium in Rhetoric: “Rhetoric and Kairos”

Autism and Narrative: Toward an Architectonics of Comprehension

   In Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities, Brenda Jo Brueggemann urges us to see “disability as insight" (210). I want to thank her for articulating so clearly something I’ve only understood on an emotional level for a long time.  I first learned the truth of her statement fifteen years ago on a fund raising walk for special education.  My wife, who is an elementary school special education teacher, introduced me to one of her students, a young man labeled autistic whom she was serving with facilitated communication.  I had been warned that this young man would probably not respond to me, but I had also been told that he was extraordinarily talented in mathematics, and facilitated communication had opened new worlds to him, including creative writing.  We sat together, side-by-side, on the cafeteria benches waiting for the walk to begin, and I just started to tell him how proud we were of his accomplishments.  Suddenly, with alarm, I felt a strong pressure behind me, but when I turned I could see that he was just hugging me.  My wife calls this my "special ed moment," not because one child gave me a hug when I praised him, but because I had a moment of insight.  People labeled as autistic are experiencing the world differently from me, but they are experiencing it.  Understanding the difference between these two perspectives can shed light not only on their condition but also on mine. 

A first step to creating this awareness, I believe, is to listen to people like pediatrician Mel Levine.  In A Mind at a Time, he writes, “The brain of each human is unique…The growth of our society and the progress of the world are dependent on our commitment to fostering in our children, and among ourselves, the coexistence and mutual respect of these different kinds of minds” (13).  Dr. Levine points us to something essential in his statement: uniqueness. It’s one thing to mouth the platitude, however, and another to believe it on a deep, philosophical level.  Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin, whose amputated leg and lifelong pain deeply affected his understanding of embodiment, spent his life meditating on the unique nature of individual existence.  His concept of architectonics can provide a useful overarching philosophical framework, one that is primarily rhetorical in orientation, to support our study of disability as insight.

    The term “architectonics” itself is borrowed from architecture and functions as a metaphor in Bakhtin’s early work.  In architecture, it refers to the principles of design and construction associated with building; it takes into account the forces that keep a building standing or send it crashing down.  Bakhtin, however, uses it to describe the invisible social forces, primarily in language, that surround us, pushing and pulling us, forcing us to arrange them in our own minds and thereby in the process construct meaning in the world.  Using this metaphor allows Bakhtin to refute Immanuel Kant’s definition of truth as transcendental and independent of any particular experience. Instead, Bakhtin believes that truth, and our perception of all meaning, arises from our unique, individual, situated experience in language.  With “architectonics,” Bakhtin seeks to find a language that will articulate the “naked immediacy of experience” Holquist x).  Only a fragment of Toward a Philosophy of the Act, which Bakhtin wrote between 1919 and 1921, still exists, but in it we can see this link between uniqueness and architectonics:

The world in which an act or deed actually proceeds…is a unitary and unique world…This world is given to me, from my unique place in Being, as a world that is concrete and unique.  For my participative, act-performing consciousness, this world, as an architectonic whole, is arranged around me as around that sole center from which my deed issues or comes forth… “(qtd. in Holquist xiv).

From these architectonic “wholes” arise all meaning.  Without them, we would exist in a world without fully constructed perspective.  I believe narratives written by people labeled autistic often describe such a world. Hundreds of these agonizing cries of pain exist on the internet.  Consider, for example, this one called "nowhere TO GO" by a computer programmer in Arizona:

I am here, there, and everywhere;
But yet I am nowhere....
I do not exist with other people.
I do not exist with myself.
I wander from one "acted-out" imitation to another.
I have nowhere to go.

No place is my home.
I am out-of-place everywhere.
I walk down the street.
I visit the zoo.
I attend the state fair.
I go to concerts, plays, and movies.

But no matter where I go or where I am,
I am alone, far away from all others.
I have to act as if I am okay and normal,
So they don't put me in the "loony bin".
I go through the proper motions, I play my part;
But in reality, I am unreally elsewhere.

Hardly anyone understands what my autistic life
Is actually like, and I am not sure that I do.
I am: therefore I exist. But what does that mean?
I am constantly lost in a world that is not really there.
I am floating within a timeless fog of non-existence.
I have nowhere to go, and nowhere to be.

Technology is helping to shatter labels and open doors for people with autism by allowing them to express themselves in poems and personal narratives.  These documents provide subjective insight unavailable in any other way.  In fact, it has only been since 1938 that we even had a name for this kind of impairment in social interaction-- identified by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Fourth Edition) as eight or more characteristics from a list of fifteen.  Before then, these individuals were considered mentally retarded or insane.  Confusing the issue throughout the 1950s and 1960s was the unfair and incorrect belief that uncaring or detached “refrigerator” mothers created the condition.  But in 1966 the first paper was published that clearly identified the cause as biological, and since the mid 1990s, researchers have linked autism to people with abnormalities in certain key chromosomes.

Most recently, some cognitive scientists have coined the term “operational architectonics” to describe how the brain forms transient assembles of neurons that quickly associate or disassociate and represent different emotional states, objects, or environments.  These temporary groups “may underlie the cognitive precepts and mental states which have representational nature” (Fingelkurts and Fingelkurts 2).  They form, reform, merge, and split as necessary to allow us to interact successful with the social environment.  These architectonic “wholes” or transient assemblies of neurons can be parsed down to their smallest elements, but the whole has emergent properties not present in its parts.  In other words, the whole really is greater than the sum of its parts.  When we can form these “wholes,” we can understand the social world; without them, we cannot.  Of course this wholeness is an illusion, but it allows us to feel subjectively that “our visual, auditory, perceptual, bodily, emotional, cognitive and other experiences are unified,” a state that two researchers call “singularity behind the multiplicity” (Bayne and Chalmers).  Imagine how it must feel if these experiences could not be unified?  I don’t think we could imagine such an experience if we did not have individuals labeled “autistic." 

And the insights have led to important advances.  Let me just mention two important ones:

Mindblindness. 

Researcher Uta Frith first coined the term "mindblindness" to describe the inability of people with autism to understand what is happening in the minds of other people.  She proved this point in an experiment with two dolls named Sally and Ann.  Normal four-year-old children observed these dolls as researchers manipulated them in simulated play.  They watched the Sally doll put a marble into a basket and then leave the room.  Then the Ann doll moved the marble into a box, hiding it.  When researchers brought the Sally doll back into the room, they asked the children where the doll would look for the marble.  Four-year-old children with no known disabilities, children with delayed development, and even children with Down Syndrome, all said every time that of course the Sally doll would look for the marble where she left it, in the basket.  She didn't know Ann had moved it, and they allowed themselves to see view the situation from Sally's point of view. 

But autistic teenagers with normal to high intelligence almost always got the answer wrong (16 out of 20).  They could not distinguish between what Sally knew and what they knew themselves.  They felt that Sally would look for the marble where Ann hid it, in the box.  Uta Frith called this inability to see things from another's point of view "mindblindness." 

This concept, part of what psychologists call "theory of mind," provocatively suggests that fiction, for example contains a sense of "other" that has a powerful ability to shape the self.  The presence of people who cannot perceive this characteristic provides an insight into the essential dialogic nature of literature.  Rhetorical analyses of texts can be written extracting this quality and communicating its rhetorical ability to shape response.  In fact, one therapy developed for autistic children involves narrative.  Let me quote two actual story therapy exercises:

"(1) Ann's mother has spent a long time cooking Ann's favorite meal; fish and chips.  But when she brings it in to Ann, she is watching TV, and she doesn't even look up, or say thank you.  Ann's mother is cross and says, "Well, that's very nice, isn't it?  That's what I call politeness!"  Is it true, what Ann's mother says?  Why does Ann's mother say this?

(2) Emma has a cough.  All through lunch she coughs and coughs and coughs.  Father says, Poor Emma, you must have a frog in your thought!" Is it true, what Father says to Emma?  Why does he say that? (78)

We can take this insight and use it to understand another fascinating program called "Changing Lives Through Literature." 

Changing Lives Through Literature.

Since 1991, convicted criminals have been sentenced to probation instead of prison if they agreed to take college literature courses taught by professors in the program called "Changing Lives Through Literature." As a result, career criminals have reduced their run-ins with the law by more than thirty percent.  The success is documented in Massachusetts, Texas, Arizona, Kansas, Maine, New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and even England.  According to the website, California, Illinois, and Canada are close to beginning programs.  Three years ago the program received funding from the National Endowment of the Humanities to establish a website at http://cltl.umassd.edu/home-flash.cfm. If you go there, you can view examples of the classroom interactions and find out about specific programs. 

Unlike people with autism, these criminals do have the ability to understand the pain and suffering they cause in the minds of others, but that ability appears to be underdeveloped or damaged.  Literature, which Bakhtin describes as an artistic form that closely mimics the architectonic wholes we form to function socially, appears to shape consciousness rhetorically by developing a sense of other that (in turn) creates a perspective about the self.  This concept of self appears to be missing in some people labeled severely autistic.  We can use this knowledge insight to improve our understanding of both autism and literature.  This insight is made possible only by treasuring the uniqueness of every mind. 

Works Cited

Bakhtin, Mikhail.  Toward a Philosophy of the Act.  Austin, Texas: U of Texas P, 1993.

Bayne, Tim and David J. Chalmers.  "What is the Unity of Consciousness?"  Accessed February 23, 2006.  http://consc.net/papers/unity.html

Brueggemann, Brenda Jo.  “An Enabling Pedagogy.”  Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities.  Eds. Sharon L. Synder, Brenda Jo Brueggemann, and Rosemarie Garland Thomson. New York: MLA, 2002.

"Changing Lives Through Literature." http://cltl.umassd.edu/home-flash.cfm. Accessed Feburary 23, 2006.

Fingelkurts, Andrew A. and Alexander A. Fingelkurts.  “Operational Architectonics of Perception and Cognition (A Principle of Self-Organized Metastable Brain States).”  Unpublished paper. VI Parmenides Workshop of Institute of Medical Psychology, University of Munich.  April 2003.  http://www.bm-science.com/team/art24.pdf

Frith, Uta.  Autism: Explaining the Enigma.  London: Blackwell, 2003. 

George, Frank.  “nowhere TO GO.” Accessed February 23, 2006.

http://members.aol.com/autismfg/apfng.html#25.

Holquist, Michael.  "Forward."  Toward a Philosophy of the Act.  Austin, Texas: U of Texas P, 1993.

Levine, Mel.  A Mind at a Time.  New York: Simon & Shuster, 2002.