Can Pariahs Change the World?
A personal-political essay about autism.
Preface to preface
[A much-summarized version of the original of this essay was published in Clarín, a very well known newspaper in Argentina, and currently consists of my main claim to fame (for better or worse). The essay here presented is a sort of “Director´s Cut” of the Clarín article.
This is my most personal piece of writing published, representing me coming to terms with around 21 years of my life. I hope the ideas passed around here can be of use to people and help explain my ideas.]
Preface
I’m quite clumsy when I speak. Not only do I have a slight stutter (I’ve had problems with modulation and enunciation most of my life), but I also often struggle to realize when I should be speaking, or when I say the wrong thing, etc. It’s easier for me if I prepare.
I was diagnosed at a very young age, at 3 years old, because I hadn’t started talking yet. My diagnosis was “Pervasive Developmental Disorder,” which is a diagnosis that no longer exists and was used to group autism with a couple of other conditions.
I was left orphaned of a diagnosis, which shows that a psychiatric document cannot summarize a person’s life, and that psychological science is far less accurate than it would like to appear.
I’m quite clumsy when I speak, so as compensation I had to learn to write well1. I developed a verbose style to show off my intellectual gifts.
Since I don’t believe in the distinction between the personal and the political, in this text, alongside my personal arguments, I will share my personal experience with autism and otherness. I don’t intend to represent all autistic people, people with disabilities, or anyone else; I simply want to offer a small glimpse into what it’s like to live with the autistic position.
Intro
This text assumes the reader has at least a basic understanding of the medical facts about Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Autism is not an illness, cannot be “caught” or caused, and can take a variety of forms.2 It is primarily characterized by communication difficulties and repetitive behaviors. Studying the neurobiological functioning of autism is complex, as it depends on how the brain interacts with the outside world, which is very difficult to analyze. Rather than a single experience of autism, a single autistic position, there is a plurality of autisms (I will return to this later).
Autism is a completely natural variation in human beings. Yes, it constitutes a disability, but there are two points to consider:
Just because autism is a disability doesn’t make it inherently negative or unnatural. Much of what arises in nature can be negative in certain contexts. For example, people with white skin have less resistance to sunlight than those with dark skin. Would we say that having white skin is a flaw?
To a large extent, autism is a disability due to our social context. The social model of disability3 is essentially correct when it comes to autism. This is not to diminish the real problems an autistic individual has due to their symptoms, but to emphasize that the social context of autism is due to the unfavorable biological situation being framed within a social situation of oppression. This is an oppressive situation because this alienation is socially amplified.
In short, we could describe autism (the autistic condition itself) as an information processing disorder. Hence the more stereotypical symptoms (sensitivity to certain sensory stimuli, etc.) but also the most difficult to understand: the difficulty with social interactions.
Let me explain it this way to the non-autistic reader: Imagine that all of culture is a massive play. Most people receive some kind of script, tailored to their specific role, but which may contain errors or gaps. However, all these scripts are based on a single, overarching script, of which a certain level of familiarity is generally expected.
Autistic people do not receive a script.
Now, it’s important to emphasize that everyone occasionally experiences setbacks in their relationships with others. If this weren’t the case, 80% of neurotypical people wouldn’t suffer because of love. It’s just that those without autism can experience these issues more spontaneously and are socialized to better adapt. Autistic individuals are forced to try to rationalize the most irrational phenomenon of existence: human relationships.
Having explained that, what mainly matters to me is autism as a political identity.
In 1949, Simone de Beauvoir wrote The Second Sex,4 trying to put her personal experience into context with the situation of oppression of women, she reflected on the identity of women as follows:
“She is determined and differentiated in relation to man, while he is not in relation to her; she is the inessential in front of the essential. He is the Subject; he is the Absolute. She is the Other.”
And Madame de Beauvoir elaborates:
“It is that they lack the concrete means to organize themselves into a unit that could posit itself in opposition. They have no past, no history, no religion of their own; and unlike the proletariat, they have no solidarity of labor or interests; they even lack their own space that makes communities of American blacks, the Jews in ghettos, or the workers in Saint-Denis or Renault factories. They live dispersed among men, tied by homes, work, economic interests, and social conditions to certain men—fathers or husbands—more closely than to other women. As bourgeois women, they are in solidarity with bourgeois men and not with women proletarians; as white women, they are in solidarity with white men and not with black women. [...] The division of the sexes is a biological given, not a moment in human history. Their opposition took shape within an original Mitsein, and she has not broken it. The couple is a fundamental unit with the two halves riveted to each other: cleavage of society by sex is not possible. This is the fundamental characteristic of woman: she is the Other at the heart of a whole whose two components are necessary to each other.”
If women suffer due to a biological condition, autistic individuals suffer doubly5, depending on how disabling a particular autistic experience is. Several factors come into play in the interaction between two or more autistic individuals: their ability to mask their symptoms, their experiences with autism, and the categories they belong to beyond autism. In any case, we cannot say that there is a single “unity” among autistic people. Even Uta Firth, one of the pioneering researchers in the contemporary study of autism, who doubts the existence of a “spectrum,” acknowledges the great variability within autism.6
Regarding the concept of autism as a whole, one might consider Asperger’s, the subtype of autism that once had its own diagnosis. This became entrenched in the popular imagination as the type of autism that produced antisocial geniuses and the likes of Sheldon Cooper. The fact that this is no longer a recognized diagnosis and that Hans Asperger was a “questionable” individual (if not a Nazi sympathizer) is irrelevant. The point is that I don’t believe it’s productive for the debate about autism to divide it in a Manichean way into “good” autism and “bad” autism. And this expectation of an “autistic genius with Asperger’s” serves to erase the large number of autistic individuals who have low or moderate support needs but are not “geniuses.”
Beauvoir refuses to accept that oppression is a biological destiny for women, and we can too. If humanity were truly governed by Nature, we would still be living in caves today.
Autism is becoming increasingly recognized, and this leads us to consider the social context of autism. If we want to change the social standing of autistic people, we must be able to accurately identify their social context.
Personal interlude I
For many years I have found it difficult to talk about autism in depth.
First, being diagnosed autistic in 2007 in a godforsaken city in the Republic of Argentina was like being diagnosed as a Martian, so I have always been out of place.
Second, I always rejected the idea of having to define myself by things that were imposed on me instead of defining myself by my own choices.
When I was younger, I hated the idea of being considered “abnormal.” I took a narcissistic pride in my intellectual abilities. But oppressors have always treated reason as their monopoly, and this has been used for some of humanity’s worst atrocities (the Holocaust, slavery, etc.), in the name of bringing reason to the reasonless, of “bringing civilization to barbarism.”
Seeing that autism continues to be a part of how I am perceived, given that autism is part of a deeper social problem, I wish to be able to analyze it. Furthermore, I wish to present the autistic individual as a viable political actor, to give autism the gift of theory.
To combat the fear of autism, we must be able to discuss it freely, abandoning the conditioning that makes autism something humiliating. “Shame must change sides.”
Social context of autism
Our culture is built around a dualism, the contradiction between the Subject and the Object. When a human being embodies the Object, in this essay they will be called “the Other.”7
What interests me is a Foucauldian concept of the Subject, where it is relational and defined by the power it wields within a modern capitalist society. This Subject is formed through a vast network of institutions that need to control the population and knowledge, classifying them into binaries (this is how the power of psychiatry over mental illness, medicine over bodies, etc., is maintained).8
The Subject is the protagonist of reality, the model with which the individual must identify. The Other is something strange and unknown, but the Subject can only exist insofar as this Other exists. The Subject needs the Other to constitute itself, and, moreover, it needs to be able to dominate this Other.
The existence of the Subject is proven by its capacity to think and to form society through thought; therefore, the Other is irrationality, the lack of thought, Nature.
From each individual’s perspective, everyone is a Subject. But not all Subjects are equal: certain categories of individuals receive greater subjectivity, one might say, they are more recognized as Subjects by society.
Certain categories of individuals embody the Other in particular: women, Black people, homosexuals, etc. This division begins with the division of labor and expands throughout history, crystallizing within the framework of a class society. That is to say, depending on one’s position in the social division of labor, one can more fully embody the position of Subject.
In truth, the Other-Subject is the internalization of the oppressors and the oppressed.9 The Other does not have the benefit of thinking about their own reality; they are a subaltern, their consciousness is that of a failed version of the main Subject: women think through the man (and spectator) they have introjected, proletarians vote like bourgeois, etc. These ingrained habitus10 cause people to act based on this pattern, mostly remaining within their categories.
In other words, the Subject-Other is the conceptualization of the two sides of a social relation. These social relations are governed by the commodity fetishism which subordinates every aspect of society to a fixation on things, to the objectification of the human being. And for this reason, the Other is assimilated to the Object.
In today’s world, it is not possible to literally possess another human being, but the flip side of this is that it is possible to possess a human being in all other aspects of life by conceptualizing them as mere commodities to be possessed, which is what allows the status of the Other.
This means that when the Subject relates to the Other, it is based on wanting to obtain something, to acquire possession. In their interactions, the Subject seeks to mold the Other into a commodity.
What does this have to do with autism?
The autistic individual is particularly compelled to assume the position of the Other, literally failing to interact socially in a normal way. The Species decrees that certain individuals cannot easily assimilate into the social fabric. There are two layers to autistic alienation: original alienation and social alienation.
Mexican author Berenice Vargas García refers to the cultural artifacting that serves to place autistic individuals in a position of being seen as “pseudo-human mentally ill” as the “autistic reason”.11 The author points out that we should be critical of stereotypes that autistic people are inherently unempathetic and isolated, noting that this construct is part of a certain conceptualization not only of the subject itself, but of the idea of humanity.
But for the moment, autistic people cannot even form a group to create their own subject parallel to the hegemonic one of society: autistic people have no shared history, class, or culture. They barely share a common experience, since each person sees autism differently. It would be impossible to create an Autistic Party.
Under these circumstances, How can autistic people free themselves, break free from the mold of the Other, without being able to constitute themselves as a group?
Personal interlude II
I am an incredibly privileged person: I was born into the comfortable petit bourgeoisie, I have little need for support regarding autism, and I do not have an intellectual disability.
However, autism affects me in these ways: My mannerisms seem strange to others, I don’t empathize spontaneously, I have trouble identifying my own emotions, I have trouble remembering faces, I am extremely obsessive as a result of rigid thought patterns, I am very particular about a variety of things including my schedules, possibly more things that I find difficult to identify because for me this is normal life.
Even so, I see my mission as helping because of my privilege, which I initially tried to do through NGO activism supported by my father (which I later criticize), later as a party militant (which had its ups and downs).
Why do I try to help if I’m so privileged? Maybe I am an ethical egoist and I believe the most beneficial thing for me in the long term is improving the social context.
Even from this privileged position, I have had the opportunity to experience firsthand the ways in which the Subject usually relates to the Other, which I would summarize in the following modalities:
Open contempt and hatred, doing everything possible to destroy the Other. The Subject is offended that the Other dares to exist in his world, and they show it.
The first time I was called “mentally ill” I was under 10 years old. I’ve been lucky enough not to experience this often.
Opportunistic contempt: Sacrificing the Other to gain a better position in relation to the rest of the community. Discrimination plays a significant role in uniting the privileged, emphasizing that they are not like those others.
The only time I was actively discriminated against in my adult life (passive discrimination is another matter entirely) was when a classmate told one of our professors a passionate and fabricated story about “my problems” and how she was helping me. All to make herself look good.
The contempt of ignorance: In certain contexts, this can be the cruelest of all, as it consists of denying the existence of the Other. The Other is seen as uncomfortable in the social environment, so they are ignored; their attempts to communicate and attract attention are met with silence. Thus, even if oppressed individuals try to change their situation, they may gain nothing.
And what emotion do these experiences inspire in one?
It inspires a deep rage and anger, total and absolute rage, against the oppressors, against oneself, against the world. But this rage, used correctly, can be a driving force for changing reality.
And how can the oppressed free themselves?
When a sufficient number of those who have been molded into the Other decide to free themselves, by constituting themselves as coherent actors (archetypally under the leadership of a party) and thus reversing the Subject-Other relationship, it can generally be said that there are two options for what can happen:
The new group defeats the old one, reversing the dynamic or creating a new group that takes the place of the Other. This can be relatively progressive historically, as in the case of the defeat of the feudal lords by the bourgeoisie in the French Revolution, but it does not eliminate the basis of the original situation.
This can be seen in the situation of the Jews after the establishment of the State of Israel: Holocaust survivors became the colonial masters of the new pariahs, the Palestinians. The Jew’s position of otherness was not abolished, it was merely filled by another group.
The new group destroys the basis of distinction, and the distinction between Subject and Other is abolished. In this case, individuals can now relate to each other on the basis of being persons.
For autistic individuals, liberation of the first kind is impossible, as there is no foundation for a coherent group structure. Individuals may achieve liberation in this way, but only among the most privileged members of the autistic category, and even then, it would truly be by becoming part of the already existing hegemony of the Subject.
To see a form of autism domesticated by the hegemony of the Subject, we can look at common representations of autism in popular culture, such as Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory or Shaun Murphy from The Good Doctor. The stereotypical autistic character in mass culture is a traditionally privileged man of genius, but with zero social skills. This is because the Subject’s narcissism is so profound that even when he displays an instance of the Other, it must be in a form vaguely similar to the Subject and that is useful or satisfying to him.12
Beyond the cultural sphere, the inability of autistic individuals to self-constitute led to the preponderance of activism groups focused on autism issues, made up entirely of parents of autistic people, such as that of my father, German Augusto Guglieri, who founded the group “TEA Red Interior.”13
At best, these activists are naive and ineffective, but well-intentioned (like my progenitor), and at worst they are the work of people resentful because their relatives are not the merchandise they wanted, perpetuating even more objectification.
The problem with these groups is that they are forms of middle-class activism. They cannot challenge the deeper dynamics, they cannot link the autistic struggle with others, and therefore they are limited to media stunts and legislative reforms that sometimes do more harm than good. They are uncoordinated actions by small property owners.
Occasionally, a specific autistic individual emerges from these circles, as was the case with Greta Thunberg or even the author of this essay, but this does not necessarily indicate any organization within the broader autistic community. In other words, these individuals cannot be agents of social change because they lack an organic connection to a wider community.
These forms of activism do not constitute true politicization because they fail to connect autism to broader social change and to other groups within society. Any change achieved is minor or superficial.
In truth, the solution to the problems of autism is politicizing the autistic struggle, politicization in the Frantz Fanon sense:14
“To educate the masses politically does not mean, cannot mean, making a political speech. What it means is to try, relentlessly and passionately, to teach the masses that everything depends on them; that if we stagnate it is their responsibility, and that if we go forward it is due to them too, that there is no such thing as a demiurge, that there is no famous man who will take the responsibility for everything, but that the demiurge is the people themselves and the magic hands are finally only the hands of the people.”
Personal interlude III
I spent many years living an alienated life, unable to connect with my peers. They didn’t understand me, and therefore avoided contact with me. But I don’t hold a grudge against them, because “it’s hard to hate someone if you know they’re going to die someday.” We were all acting in accordance with deeper habitus.
But I wasn’t a complete saint either. A wall of narcissism prevented me from connecting with the others; in my opinion, they were barely human beings, given how little we had in common. Being a pariah can be an extremely narcissistic experience: those who primarily understand objectification will see others in the same way.
The tragedy of objectification is that when a person is valued only for one aspect of their being, there is only one difference between that and not valuing them at all: That single aspect is the difference between being an object and being nothing at all.
Conclusion: A place in social-political life for autism
In reality, the existence of the Subject and the Other is merely illusory.
It is true that the oppressed subaltern thinks with the oppressor within, but it is also true that the oppressor depends on whom he oppresses; he carries his greatest enemy within. The white man fears the black man within.15 Man despises the woman within himself. The oppressed are the negative space surrounding the oppressor, and if the oppressor were to get too close to that space, he risks dissipating.
The petty bourgeois and bourgeois seek at all costs to avoid close contact with the poor, with the proletariat. The status of the oppressor is, at least unconsciously, constantly threatened. It is the master-slave dialectic. Therefore, the Subject and the Other are truly two sides of the same coin.
Besides, what oppressor isn’t also a victim in some specific life context? The middle-class woman is herself oppressed by her husband, who is in turn oppressed by his boss. We are all half victims, half perpetrators.
Let’s apply this to autism: Autism, like all mental diagnoses, does not possess the same epistemological status as physical illnesses or viruses. We cannot “grab” autism and display it. In other words, autism is primarily a series of symptoms, a description of data and behaviors.
One of the great discoveries of psychoanalysis is that “mental illness” is a matter of degree. There are no “entirely healthy” people, because we all carry out a certain level of repression; rather, there are people who suffer repression to varying degrees.
Being neurotypical is not a fixed state either; there is no such thing as a “normal brain.”16 The psychological and biological functioning of human beings is far too complex to be confined to a single mold. The neurotypical being is an ideal, an illusion around which culture is built. And the same is true of every oppressive category.
Autism only became a category in contemporary times because previously there was no social context where the list of symptoms that constitute autism needed to be labeled as such; there was no need to create autism17 (because if a category is imposed instead of decided by a group that constitutes itself as such, it is invented in the most direct sense of the word).
I’m not saying that before the contemporary era the world was wonderful for those who would be diagnosed with autism today; what I mean is that in a social context with stronger community ties (as opposed to our current atomized lives), a single person shouldn’t depend so much on their own abilities (social or otherwise), that a simpler and more isolated world would be less stimulating, that a cognitive disability might not be so noticeable in an area where there is a generalized almost nonexistent cultural level, etc.
Yes, objectively there is a series of symptoms that constitute autism, but the category of “autism” itself, like all concepts in the social sciences, consists of the combination of a fact with a certain level of ideology.
And how can autistic individuals respond to the current social context, where they are autistic? The default option is to live an alienated, lonely, passive life.
But an alienated life is not a life: It is death.
The other option is to seek assimilation and belonging at all costs, with varying degrees of success. As I mentioned before, isolated individuals may assimilate, but others try desperately and fail, or end up in even worse situations of alienation. They subscribe to extremist ideologies, join cults, or enter into abusive relationships. Sadly, they remain objects.
As I wrote before, just like all the other groups that have tried to break free, the autistic person can liberate themself by becoming a political actor. This means making a deep commitment to the world (which is what politics means: living in society and seeking to change the world), uniting with the deepest layers of otherness. As I have tried to demonstrate throughout this text, we cannot separate the situation of autistic people from the way society is constituted and all the other groups that comprise it.
First of all, if there are individuals who cannot assimilate to society, those people are cultural heroes. To assimilate to an oppressive and decadent society is, to an extent, to accept such oppression and decadence. This “inadaptation” must be cultivated and refined for social change.
But how specifically can autistic people do this, given their inability to form a group? By becoming avatars of the Other.
Since autistic individuals cannot form their own isolated group, they must be part of and join in the struggles of others. Lacking the same instinctive sense of belonging, autistic individuals may be ideally suited to question the established order, to ask the questions that others don’t dare to ask.
What I mean is that autistic people should take on a role in society similar to that of critical philosophers, remembering that the Subject-Other division is illusory and false. Their original alienation can be a blessing.
This role can be of great help in our political organizations, social movements, parties, unions, etc. If they interpret their role well, they can help combat the sectarianism, factionalism, and bureaucratization that arise when a political organization becomes the driving force behind the ideas of individual leaders (that is, when the Subject-Other division is recreated within them). Autistic people have a position to take in socio-political life.
If these organizations are flexible enough and well-run, if they truly represent broad layers of reality rather than isolated sects, they will be able to accept an autistic member and give them the tools to develop and participate in the struggle.
Ultimately, why couldn’t an autistic person participate in political organization? José Carlos Mariátegui, founder of the Peruvian Socialist Party, couldn’t walk (and died from complications related to his disability). Helen Keller, who was blind and deaf, was a member of the Socialist Party of America and the Industrial Workers of the World.
Of course, this role as representatives of the Other cannot be (and shouldn’t be) solely carried out by autistic individuals; if we want to reject the dualistic distinction, we cannot fall into essentialism. But autistic people can use their alienation as a key to this role.
I might be asked what role autistic people who truly suffer from the condition more than I do, to the point where it is genuinely difficult or impossible for them to fully participate in society, can play. It’s a good question, to which I only have a partial answer: Since this potential role of autistic people isn’t exclusive to them, others could indirectly represent them by taking on this role.
What we need is an eroticism of social change (in the sense that we need policies that can incorporate eros). We need individuals to be able to confront one another beyond the categories that society has imposed upon them. We need to erase the division between the individual and the community (since a community is simply the sum of many people), by reminding the individual that they are always part of a community: the community of people, since true freedom consists of relating to one another as people and not as things.
As I have tried to prove by showing that the autistic person’s position derives from deep structures in our society, total social change cannot occur without a transformation of all aspects of life. The situation of autism will only fundamentally change if we change the situation of everyone.
However, what we can do is plant the seeds that will one day grow into trees, even though we don’t know if we’ll ever see those trees grow. We can live less alienated lives, confront each other as fellow human beings instead of as the Other, and in that way, gradually build social change for the whole.
Or at least that is what I'd like to believe.
Ruggieri, Victor. (2024). Autismo y camuflaje. Medicina (Buenos Aires), 84(Supl. 1), 37-42.
Victoria Maldonado, Jorge A.. (2013). El modelo social de la discapacidad: una cuestión de derechos humanos. Boletín mexicano de derecho comparado, 46(138), 1093-1109.
Simone de Beauvoir, El Segundo Sexo, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires: Debolsillo, 2019.
Which is not to say autistic people suffer more than women. Being autistic is being autistic and being a woman is being a woman.
Uta Frith interview: “Autism is not a spectrum” by Amass.
Just to point out how complicated autism classifications can be: Frith suggests a division between 2 main subtypes, those diagnosed at an early age and those diagnosed later, who would primarily demonstrate a “hypersensitivity” regarding social relationships. The author of this note could easily fall into both subtypes.
I could be criticized that my implied approach conflicts with what Frith says, when she is an expert on the subject. To that I respond that she is interested in autism as a clinical conception and I am interested in explaining its situation as a political-philosophical phenomenon. Ideally there should be a dialogue between scientists and activists-militants.
I apologize to philosophers if my lack of familiarity with philosophy leads me to make mistakes in how I use terminology, but it seemed to me that the philosophical discursive register was the most appropriate for my intention in this text. I just hope they can refrain from trying to dismember me in case I have any particularly egregious mistakes.
Fernández, Rosalía. (2018). Hacia una construcción del sujeto en Michel Foucault. Wimb Lu. 13. 9-26.
Paulo Freire, Pedagogía del oprimido
Gutiérrez, Alicia (2012) Cap. 2 Las estructuras sociales externas o lo social hecho cosas. En Las prácticas sociales: una introducción a Pierre Bourdieu. Villa María, Eduvim.
Vargas García, B. (2024). Hacia una crí(p)tica de la razón autista: especismo-capacitismo (y resistencia animalista). Tabula Rasa, 51, 239-256.https://doi.org/10.25058/20112742.n51.10
The word “autism” itself comes from the Greek αὐτός, “self.” This terminology, created by the psychiatric establishment, is similar to the arrogance of the artist who paints a naked woman for his own enjoyment and titles this painting “Vanity.”
Of this critique Mr Guglieri says he “accepts it”.
Frantz Fanon, Los condenados de la tierra, Fondo de cultura económica, Mexico D.F.
I have been told not to use certain idioms or dialect phrases so as not to “sound black.”
Why there is no such thing as a “normal” brain by Howard Timberlake.
“A [Black man] is a [Black man]. Only under certain conditions does he become a slave. A cottonspinning machine is a machine for spinning cotton. Only under certain conditions does it become capital. Torn away from these conditions, it is as little capital as gold is itself money, or sugar is the price of sugar.”- Karl Marx, Wage Labour and Capital.
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