‘Flash of Boy’ [astrapse apo agori] Linguistic Metaphor and Social Trauma in Autistic Experience

Abstract

This article reflects on the fraught relationship between a non-autistic ethnographer and an autistic interlocutor with the goal of suggesting that the hiatus between them stems from the existing social hierarchy between neurotypical and autistic modes of communica-tion. Drawing on anthropology of autism and critical disability studies, the article attempts to shed light on the formation of non-autistic subjectivities with the goal of suggesting that the privilege of the usage of conventional language mystifies power relations that exclude autistics from social interactions. The creation of a socially unexpected linguistic metaphor by the autistic interlocutor reveals a conflict between the use of language as an authoritative apparatus for intelligible belonging as opposed to its use as it has been rooted in experience, with all of the pain and excitement such a conflict implies.