Description
Social interactions of autistic and non-autistic persons are intriguing. The fact that people with autism and those around them occasionally manage to share things in life represents a remarkable achievement such interactions exist despite the lack of familiar ways of attuning to one another. In Autistic Company, the anthropologist and philosopher Ruud Hendriks himself trained as a care worker for young people with autism investigates what alternative means are sometimes found by autistic and non-autistic people to establish a shared existence. Unprecedented in scholarly work on autism, the book also reflects on how to talk about these unusual ways of getting on together. Drawing on methods from both the arts and the social sciences, this study covers very diverse sources, ranging from literary works to factual writing on autism in science and advisory literature, and from autobiographical accounts to ethnographic observations in a home for autistic people. Putting familiar concepts to a test, Autistic Company wrenches and fiddles with the very distinctions that constitute our sense of self. By doing so, Hendriks succeeds in getting closer both to autistic and non-autistic extremes, showing how thin the division between us and them really is. -L.W. Nauta in Krisis
