Stephen O'Sullivan

As a way of perceiving the world, a way of apprehending and attempting to explain the world, as a way of engaging with the world, postmodernism is criticised for a perceived failure to take a position. In this view, postmodernism is perceived as a free-for-all, without "standards", where everything goes. Bloom's reimagining of the canon can be seen as a response to a world where The Simpsons is perceived as no less important than Shakespeare.

So, to a truly fascinating article in Wired, "The Truth About Autism: Scientists Reconsider What They Think They Know" (link to article) by David Wolman, which begins with an amazing insight into autism presented by Amanda Baggs in a video posted to YouTube. To quote the opening paragraphs of the article:

"The YouTube clip opens with a woman facing away from the camera, rocking back and forth, flapping her hands awkwardly, and emitting an eerie hum. She then performs strange repetitive behaviors: slapping a piece of paper against a window, running a hand lengthwise over a computer keyboard, twisting the knob of a drawer. She bats a necklace with her hand and nuzzles her face against the pages of a book. And you find yourself thinking: Who's shooting this footage of the handicapped lady, and why do I always get sucked into watching the latest viral video?

"But then the words "A Translation" appear on a black screen, and for the next five minutes, 27-year-old Amanda Baggs — who is autistic and doesn't speak — describes in vivid and articulate terms what's going on inside her head as she carries out these seemingly bizarre actions. In a synthesized voice generated by a software application, she explains that touching, tasting, and smelling allow her to have a "constant conversation" with her surroundings. These forms of nonverbal stimuli constitute her "native language," Baggs explains, and are no better or worse than spoken language. Yet her failure to speak is seen as a deficit, she says, while other people's failure to learn her language is seen as natural and acceptable."

Postmodernism asks us to reconsider what Foucault called "terminal truths", and this seems to me to be the perfect illustration of all that's wrong with classical or modern thought, and what we have gained with postcolonialism and ultimately postmodernism.

To quote from the article:

"Autistics like Baggs are now leading a nascent civil rights movement. "I remember in '99," she says, "seeing a number of gay pride Web sites. I envied how many there were and wished there was something like that for autism. Now there is." The message: We're here. We're weird. Get used to it.

"This movement is being fueled by a small but growing cadre of neuropsychological researchers who are taking a fresh look at the nature of autism itself. The condition, they say, shouldn't be thought of as a disease to be eradicated. It may be that the autistic brain is not defective but simply different — an example of the variety of human development. These researchers assert that the focus on finding a cure for autism — the disease model — has kept science from asking fundamental questions about how autistic brains function.

"A cornerstone of this new approach — call it the difference model — is that past research about autistic intelligence is flawed, perhaps catastrophically so, because the instruments used to measure intelligence are bogus."
Different. The judgement of difference in classical thought has always been within the context of a taxonomy, a hierarchy. Too different, as in the case of autism, and the judgement is disease. How refreshing to wonder at what is gained with a startlingly different way of perceiving and interacting with the world, rather than what is lost.