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Embodied sociality and the conditioned relativism of dispositional diversity

Damian E.M. Milton MA, PGCert , BA ( Hons ), Dip ( conv ), PGCE, Mifl , MBPsS Doctoral researcher – University of Birmingham. Embodied sociality and the conditioned relativism of dispositional diversity.

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Embodied sociality and the conditioned relativism of dispositional diversity

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  1. Damian E.M. Milton MA, PGCert, BA (Hons), Dip (conv), PGCE, Mifl, MBPsS Doctoral researcher – University of Birmingham Embodied sociality and the conditioned relativism of dispositional diversity

  2. Socrates: ...there are two types of madness, one arising from human disease, the other when heaven sets us free from established convention. • Phaedrus: Agreed. (Plato, 1973: 80-81).

  3. A former me... • ‘The box most applicable to my perceptions of selfhood in Kramer's (1994) analysis, is that of the 'socially isolative schizoid', which to me underlies a belittling of 'abnormal' dispositions.’ (Milton, 1999). • Conditioned relativism and dispositional diversity

  4. A bit about me... • I’m autistic (diagnosed 2009) – as is my son (diagnosed 2005) • A very poor experience of school, but somewhat better as an adult • A background in Social Science • Studying for a PhD in the education of people on the autism spectrum • On the steering group at ACER • On the programme board of the AET • On the team for the AET ‘National Competencies’ and ‘training materials’ projects

  5. Conditioned are we... • ‘Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please…The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living’ (Marx, 1852/1970:15). • Materially and discursively conditioned within an ‘his’torical and cultural context.

  6. ...but uniquely and relativisticaly • Insider and outsider perspectives • Positionality • Situated knowledge • Neurodiversity

  7. The bell curve and normalcy • ‘Extremes of any combination come to be seen as 'psychiatric deviance'. In the argument presented here, where disorder begins is entirely down to social convention, and where one decides to draw the line across the spectrum.’ (Milton, 1999 - spectrum referring to the 'human spectrum of dispositional diversity').

  8. Hippocrates and the theory of personality

  9. Durkheim and anomie • Durkheim (1897) suggested a personal need for ‘equilibrium’ regarding the regulation of one’s moral values and integration into society. Too little or too much could lead to dysfunction and suicide. Thus people were seen to need a level of social control and sanction – ‘for their own good’ and for the ‘good of society’.

  10. Parsons and malingering deviancy • Parsons (1951) – theory of the ‘sick role’ • Illness and disability seen as a deviancy from functional norms in need of professional monitoring and surveillance (hence the ‘sick note’). • Power seen as vested in the professional ‘expert’ and not the ‘patient’. • Safilios-Rothschild (1970) – the ‘rehabilitation role’ • The ‘normalisation agenda’ and autism.

  11. ‘Problems in living’ as an ‘autie’ • Invasion of the autistic lifeworld by the autism industry • Psycho-emotional disablement (Reeve, 2011) and internalised oppression • Medicalisation of ‘problems in living’ • Psychopharmacology • ‘I cannot foresee Prozac gaining much more popularity, perhaps because of the stubbornness and perseverance of people like myself, who despite living through a 'culture of depression', refuse to be swept along by the rise of psychopharmacology. At least that is, until the next 'miracle drug' arrives, to enable us to live a more 'normal' and 'productive' life.’ (Milton, 1999).

  12. Subjective constructions of social reality • Schutz (1967) – four aspects of the ‘lifeworld’: Umwelt (directly experienced social reality), Mitwelt (contemporaries), Vorwelt (predecessors), and Folgwelt (successors). • Transition from direct to indirect experience – increasing anonymity of the lifeworld • Creating and re-creating the umwelt by acting upon it through agency • Uexkull (1957) – the ‘collective umwelt’ (integration of central coherence?). Disruption to organism will mean that umwelt integration will not operate efficiently.

  13. Autism and fragmenting social reality • Monotropism (Murray et al. 2005). • Cognitive domains working in partial isolation (Dawson, 2012). • Pieper (1989) – ‘reason’ allows humans to live in ‘welt’ whilst it is plants and animals that live in the untamed ‘umwelt’. • Pirsig (1991) – dynamic and static quality • Merleau-Ponty (1945) – suggested that all consciousness was perceptual, with a sense of the world and oneself as an emergent phenomena – an ongoing ‘becoming’. • Embodied sociality – dissolving the mind/body distinction.

  14. Relationality • ‘Natures answer to over-conformity’ (Milton, 2011a). • The autistic lifeworld and ‘breaching’ as a daily ritual - the ‘double empathy problem’ (Milton, 2011a, 2011b). • The growth of autistic narratives, subversive discourses, communities, and culture (e.g. Autreat, Autscape, Autreach...). • Tensions between ‘stakeholders’, tokenistic gestures, and the infantilising of the autistic voice.

  15. More lessons from philosophy • ‘He who knows, does not speak. He who speaks, does not know’ – Lao Tzu • ‘When you realise there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you’ – Lao Tzu • ‘Nothing endures but change’ – Heraclitus • ‘Metaphysics is a restaurant where they give you a thirty thousand page menu, and no food.’ – Pirsig • ‘I’m gonna wave my freak flag high’ – Jimi Hendrix

  16. Increasing complexity... • ‘Of course the word chaos is used in rather a vague sense by a lot of writers, but in physics it means a particular phenomenon, namely that in a nonlinear system the outcome is often indefinitely, arbitrarily sensitive to tiny changes in the initial condition.’ – Murray Gell-Mann (2002)

  17. Solidarity... • In resisting the dominant disablist hegemony and the normalisation agenda • Deconstructing deficit • All policy and no action • Claiming ownership of the means of ‘autistic’ production...

  18. Subverting the hegemony... • Using one’s voice and being proud of one’s diversity... • ‘I wish no harm to any human being, but I, as one man, am going to exercise my freedom of speech. No human being on the face of the earth, no government is going to take from me my right to speak, my right to protest against wrong, my right to do everything that is for the benefit of mankind. I am not here, then, as the accused; I am here as the accuser of capitalism dripping with blood from head to foot.’ (Maclean, 1919)

  19. References • Dawson, M. (2012) In conversation with...CRAE Seminar. Institute of Education. • Durkheim, E. (1897/1972) Suicide. London: Sage. • Eysenck, H. and Eysenck, M. (1958) Personality and Individual Differences. London: Plenum. • Hendrix, J. (1967) If Six Was Nine.Polydor Records. • Heraclitus – quote accessed from: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/h/heraclitus.html, 09/06/12. • Gell-Mann, M. (2002) The Quark and the Jaguar: Adventures in the Simple and the Complex. London: Owl Books.

  20. References (2) • Lao-Tzu – quote accessed from: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/l/lao_tzu.html, 09/06/12. • Maclean, J. (1919) Speech from the Dock, accessed from: http://www.marxists.org/archive/maclean/works/1918-dock.htm, 09/06/12. • Marx, K. (1852/1970) The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. In R. Tucker (ed), The Marx-Engels Reader. New York: Norton, pp. 436-525. • Merleau-Ponty (1945) Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge. • Milton, D. (1999) The Rise of Psychopharmacology [Masters Essay – unpublished]. University of London.

  21. References (3) • Milton, D. (2011a) 'Who am I meant to be': in search of a psychological model of autism from the viewpoint of an 'insider'. Critical Autism Seminar 18/01/11. Sheffield Hallam University. • Milton, D. (2011b) ‘”Filling in the gaps”, a micro-sociological analysis of autism’. Theorising Normalcy and the Mundane, 2nd International Conference. Manchester Metropolitan University. • Murray, D., Lesser, M. and Lawson, W. (2005) ‘Attention, monotropism and the diagnostic criteria for autism.’ Autism. Vol. 9(2), pp. 136-156. • Parsons, T. (1951) The Social System. New York: The Free Press. • Pieper, J. (1989) An Anthology. San-Francisco: Ignatius Press. • Pirsig, R. (1991) Lila: An Inquiry into Morals. London: Black Swan. • Plato, trans. Hamilton, W. (1973) Phaedrus and Letters VII and VIII. London: Penguin. • Reeve, D. (2011) ‘Ableism within disability studies: The myth of the reliable and contained body.’ Theorising Normalcy and the Mundane, 2nd International Conference. Manchester Metropolitan University. • Safilios-Rothschild, C. (1970) ‘The Study of Family Power Structure: A Review 1960-1969’ Journal of Marriage and Family. Vol. 32(4), Decade Review. Part 1 (Nov., 1970), pp. 539-552. • Schutz, A. (1967) The Phenomenology of the Social World. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. • Uexkull, J. (1957), accessed from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umwelt, 09/06/12.

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