Autism Creates Culture

Autism Creates Culture
Hitoshi Takenaka

186 mm x 130 mm
270 pages
JPY 2,300
ISBN 9784790717751
Pub date: March 2023

The cultures created by Jakuchu Ito and Arcimboldo, Andy Warhol and Erik Satie, Lewis Carroll and Conan Doyle have something strange in common that transcends time and place. What is the kind of culture that fits together, created by people who do not fit together? This book digs up a vein of “autistic culture” from the strata of cultural history and reexamines the “healthy” and “formulaic” modernity that relies on realism and rationality.

Table of Contents
Preface

Part I. Culture created by autism

Chapter 1 From Jakuchu to Turing
Chapter 2 Mannerism and Autism as Ordinary Numbers
Chapter 3 What is autism?
Chapter 4 Characteristics of “autistic culture”

Part 2 The world is a puzzle to begin with

Chapter 5 Labyrinths and collecting: Rudolf II and Arcimboldo
Chapter 6 “Wonderland” is a “room of wonders”: Lewis Carroll and Alice
Chapter 7 Detective, fairy, and ghost: Conan Doyle and Holmes
Chapter 8 Dots and lines: The music of Erik Satie’s fantasy
Chapter 9 Canned foods in a row: Andy Warhol’s frozen universe
Chapter 10 Puzzles and counterpoint: Glenn Gould’s Recording Studio
Chapter 11 Machines and dreams: Haruki Murakami’s jigsaw puzzle
Chapter 12 Convenience store space: Sayaka Murata and “parts of the world”
Chapter 13 The Possibility of “one person”: Chizuko Ueno’s “strategy of leaving”
Chapter 14 Games and machines: Haruhi Suzumiya’s light novel another world

Part 3: Living better in a displaced world

Chapter 15 The paradox of “Alice”: Living literally with self-reference
Chapter 16 The wonderland of laughter: Two worlds
Chapter 17 From autism to dementia: Process and collapse

Conclusion

Preface (excerpt)
I would like to consider that being autistic is not a simple lack of something (e.g., lack of social skills), but that it is more appropriate to see it as a form of something different from “normalcy”. ...Such a view does not eliminate the “difficulty of living” as a person with disabilities, but it does seem possible to sublimate the difficulty of living as a culture. The difficulty of living itself is not easily sympathized with by others. However, a culture created in conjunction with the difficulty of living may have the potential to evoke a certain kind of empathy.