Two weeks ago, I went to hear a talk at the library by Roger Scruton called "Scientism and the Humanities." It was one of the most provocative talks I have heard in quite some time. Scruton defined Scientism as "pretending to apply the scientific method to non-scientific questions." This struck me because I have been thinking a lot lately about autism and the humanities and what light artistic representations of autism might shed on not just that condition, but the human condition.
Specifically I've been thinking about Manuel Rivas's beautiful short story "La triste historia de Eva" in which he tells the devastating true story of a little girl named Eva who was lost in the mountains of Galicia and died of exposure. I've read the story several times and I want to write about it, but I keep coming up against a stone wall. For some reason, however, Scruton's talk got me thinking. For example, he described Interpretation as "the art of finding the subject in the object." The thought is simple, but has everything to do with Rivas's story, which engages that very issue. One of the biggest challenges for people with autism is theory of the mind, or "the ability to attribute mental states—beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge, etc.—to oneself and others and to understand that others have beliefs, desires, and intentions that are different from one's own ." I watched Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close this week, and was struck by something Oskar Schell states in a monologue in that film. He says: "People aren't like numbers. They're more like letters... and those letters want to become stories... and dad said that stories need to be shared". This YouTube video really highlights the tension between Oskar's desire to see the people as numbers and the way that the world constantly pushes back at him with story.
Rivas plays with the same ideas in his story, only he talks about mirrors. The person with autism only sees the exterior of the people around them -- as if they were merely reflections in a mirror. The interior remains a black box. But isn't this exactly the case of the neurotypical person when they look at a person with autism as well? Isn't it the case, as Levinas points out, with the human condition in general? I might assume that I know how someone feels by the look on their face, but I must also always remember that the people around me are infinite beings, full of mystery and ultimately unknowable.
The beauty of artistic representations of autism -- like Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close or La triste historia de Eva is that they give us a glimpse beyond the exterior, they push us beyond explanation and analysis and into the realm of understanding.