Description

Every single western traveler to a non-western place is first and foremost unsettled by the slow pace at which time flows. Regularity and smoothness seem to be the main features of what Eliade used to call the cosmic time, etymologically the time of an ordered and harmonious whole, in which things slither and revert, time after time. Our postmodern world offers a strikingly antagonistic veneer: its random jolts induce a well-known yet blurry feeling of seasickness or timesickness. Fortuitously or not, unlike any other major form of disability, autism was unknown as such, regardless of the vocabulary, in the days of yore: whereas any ancient culture had words for blindness, deafness, and even epilepsy and schizophrenia, no clear translation for what is nowadays called autism looms up.

After a brief investigation into what lives of autistic people might have looked like many centuries ago, we will question the idea that, indeed, our postmodern time may be, as a whole, a major cause of inadequacy and therefore of disability for specific parts of the human spectrum. As a conclusion, we will explore options and promising tracks which could offer a glimmer of hope for humans, be they called normal or not, of a new-old period of unconcern, as well as a new horizon for what being human means.

Brought to you by KAUST Health and the Enrichment Office.

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