ABSTRACT

Autism is a fluid category with a sensory difference recently emerging as a key aspect of the lived experience of the condition. In concert with the “fight or flight response”, sensory sensitivities are used to articulate chronic stress caused by “sensory overload” from living in sensorially “toxic” environments. Based on long-term participant observation in the UK and USA with practitioners and participants of an autism-specific horse therapy method I offer an ethnographic window onto this ecological model of autism that entangles material flows, embodiments, and environments. I detail a novel hormonal understanding of autism, in which oxytocin and cortisol act as material-semiotic messengers of sociality. I ask what is at stake and show how notions of hormonal “balance” and proportionality provide a means of comprehending simultaneities of behavioral, diagnostic, and material fixity and flow in autism.

摘要

自闭症是一种流体类别，最近出现的感觉差异是这种情况的生活体验的一个关键方面。与“战斗或逃跑反应”相一致，感官敏感性被用来表达由生活在感官“有毒”环境中的“感官超负荷”引起的慢性压力。基于在英国和美国与自闭症特定马治疗方法的从业者和参与者的长期参与观察，我提供了一个人种学窗口，了解这种纠缠物质流、体现和环境的自闭症生态模型。我详细介绍了对自闭症的一种新颖的荷尔蒙理解，其中催产素和皮质醇充当了社会性的物质符号信使。