a small zine about autism & the uncanny
luca d. rocha
doppelgängers ghosts déjà vu alter egos self-alienations split personhoods phantoms living dolls
Stimuli with human and nonhuman traits undermine our sense of human identity by linking qualitatively different categories, human and nonhuman, by a quantitative metric: degree of human likeness.
What interests us most in this long extract is to find that among its different shades of meaning the word heimlich exhibits one which is identical with its opposite, unheimlich. What is heimlich thus comes to be unheimlich. [...] In general we are reminded that the word heimlich is not unambiguous, but belongs to two sets of ideas, which, without being contradictory, are yet very different: on the one hand it means what is familiar and agreeable, and on the other, what is concealed and kept out of sight. Unheimlich is customarily used, we are told, as the contrary only of the first signification of heimlich, and not of the second.
Humans are naturally expected to attribute mind to other humans around them; but do these same principals apply but in fact isn’t?
Threat to humans’ distinctiveness and identity:
PUSHING FOR A REDEFINITION OF HUMANNESS.
The existence of artificial but humanlike entities is viewed by some as a threat to the concept of human identity.
Abjection can be uncanny in that the observer can recognize something within the abject, possibly of what it was before it was ‘cast out’, yet be repulsed by what it is that caused it to be cast out to begin with.
Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are characterized by impairments in social interaction that contribute to broad social disabilities and poor functional outcomes. Across the lifespan, these impairments are associated with smaller social networks and fewer friendships, difficulty securing and retaining employment, high rates of loneliness, and an overall reduced quality of life.
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BECOMING CAST OFF AND SEPARATED FROM NORMS AND RULES,
Are individuals with ASD perceived differently than their neurotypical peers, and if so, do these judgments contribute to the social disability they experience?
What aspects of their social presentation influence the formation of judgments made about them and the social behaviors directed towards them?
Julia Kristeva describes subjective horror as the feeling when an individual experiences or is confronted by the sheer experience of one’s typically repressed corporeal reality.
BECOMING CAST OFF AND SEPARATED FROM NORMS AND RULES,
Are individuals with ASD perceived differently than their neurotypical peers, and if so, do these judgments contribute to the social disability they experience?
What aspects of their social presentation influence the formation of judgments made about them and the social behaviors directed towards them?
Julia Kristeva describes subjective horror as the feeling when an individual experiences or is confronted by the sheer experience of one’s typically repressed corporeal reality.
The nonhuman characteristics are noticeable, giving the human viewer a sense of strangeness.
If an entity looks nonhuman, characteristics are noticeable, generating empathy. looks our model of a human other and its expectations.
or am I just a two-headed calf?
