Autismlogy: imagining an education without development

Abstract (English)

Since the rise of modernity, it is hard to even consider an education disentangled from development. As historians and sociologists have demonstrated, they form an umbilical pair, as if they were naturally interdependent, at least since the 18th century. To this day, this alliance between education and development lay the ground of what is understood in western context as family, childhood, school, and autism.
I my presentation, I argue that, for education to be effectively inclusive, it is necessary to imagine a school education detached from the notion of development.
To do so, I talk about an autistic boy I met in my research. At four and a half years old at the time, he amazed me with his infinite memory combined with an unstoppable body. I describe this kid as a kind of pre-Descartes nomad: ignoring the detachment between mind and body that the philosopher articulated, his movement is a form of knowledge. If he is noticed from this perspective, one that recognizes movement as a way to know the world and understands that cognition depends on the body to generate representations, he may be an illustration of an atypical body/mind, but in no way disabled. However, at his school, he was a problem because he wouldn't sit still or be quiet. He became disabled in relation to school, an institution anxious to develop their students in a still and quiet way.
Through this boy’s story, I imagine a school that, instead of strive to make students bodily and cognitively sedentary, welcomes the nomadism of autistic and non-autistic children. An institution inspired by what I would like to call autismlogy: some kind of science that runs off from the premise that thought and attention becomes richer – and not uncoordinated or distracted – if observation points constantly move. I believe this school would do epistemic justice to the way autistics children know the world.