Autistic Aesthetics Versus Art Pedagogy

Authors

• Albert Stabler Illinois State University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.54916/rae.163440

Keywords:

Neurodivergence, autism, aesthetics, critical disability art education, psychoanalysis

Abstract

In video works that externalize embodied experiences of interaction and reflection, the autistic creators Sonia Boué and Mel Baggs separately balance words and imagery to articulate intimacy with the physical world, in the service of affirming a political consciousness of neurodivergent personhood. In this essay I elucidate the compelling communicative strategies of artworks and texts by Baggs and Boué, to highlight sympathetic pedagogical and psychiatric projects which have helped to create space for autistic artistic experiences, and to point to the gaps all of these figures illuminate in Western aesthetic philosophy and art education.