Autism Offers a Significantly Validating Reading of Apophatic and A-Theological Texts
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Dunster, Ruth M. (2017) Mindfulness of separation: an autistic a- theological hermeneutic. PhD thesis. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/8205/ Copyright and moral rights for this work are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This work cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Enlighten:Theses http://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] Mindfulness of separation: an autistic a-theological hermeneutic Ruth M Dunster MA MTh Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD Department of Theology and Religious Studies School of Critical Studies College of Arts University of Glasgow November 2016 ©Ruth M Dunster November 2016 1 Abstract This thesis argues that a literary hermeneutic based on a mythology of autism offers a significantly validating reading of apophatic and a-theological texts. Instead of a disability, this mythologised autism is read as a valid and valuable poetic theological thinking. The thesis argues that a mythological autism could be envisioned as a trinity, analogous to the three-in-one Godhead of Christianity. This means that each facet of the mythological autistic trinity is indissoluble from the others, are all are equally autism. The first element is termed Mindfulness of Separation, and this entails absence and unknowing as has been conceptualised in Baron Cohen’s theory of Mindblindness. Thought theologically, Mindfulness of Separation is a privileged entry into the (non)spaces indicated by apophatic and a-theological discourse. The second element is termed autistic fascination, and is drawn from the clinical conceptualisation of Restricted and Repetitive Behaviours and Interests (RRBI’s) as described in the American DSM-5. The thesis argues that Uta Frith’s explanation of repetitive, stereotyped behaviours as those of a ‘sensory connoisseur’ can be thought theologically as a capacity for reverence and wonder. Coupled with Frith’s thinking of the sensory, the thesis argues that autistic special interests are equally part of autistic fascination in their sense of revelling in praise of their special objects. Theologically, this autistic fascination can be seen as a haecceic and poetic presence-in-absence made possible only within autism’s particular separation, and this is a paradoxical coincidentia oppositorum which sheds a new light on the similar absent/present paradox of apophatic theology. The third element is termed literal metaphor, and it can ultimately only exist when it is thought theologically, as what is termed incarnational metaphor. This draws on the autistic phenomenon of taking figurative language ‘literally.’ Theologically, this is a strength inasmuch as its stance towards language is not to decode it pragmatically, but to stay within the paradoxes of a poetic language expressing theological thinking. The thesis develops the term ‘apophatic fiction’ to express the way in which incarnational metaphor reads poetic, mystical texts by honouring them as simultaneously both poetic and theological thinking. The ‘literal’ meaning is the incarnational meaning of poetic sacrament, both absent (from pragmatic appropriation) and present (in the power of the word). At the heart of this trinity, making it possible, is kenotic autistic affective empathy. This is drawn from Baron Cohen’s thinking of autism as a ‘zero degree positive’ of unimpaired affective empathy within impaired cognitive empathy. It is kenotic because it pours itself out in affection which has no cognitive safeguards or conditions. It is the wisdom of the holy fool. These are theological, not clinical concepts, although they are a mythologization of clinical constructs. They can be thought theologically in terms of what the thesis terms universal, conscious and absolute autism. Universal autism draws on Baron Cohen’s model of the autistic spectrum as a continuum across human variations, and it is an autistic streak permeating existence. Conscious autism is the knowing adoption of autism as a theological strategy. Absolute autism is the theological thinking which imagines what a total autism would be, in absolute Mindfulness of Separation, absolute autistic fascination, absolute incarnational metaphor and absolute affective empathy. As such, the autistic trinity is the autism of God, offering a powerful way to understand apophatic and a-theological texts. In conclusion, readings of Hopkins’ poetry and Pirandello’s novels are ‘case studies’ for an autistic a-theological hermeneutic. 2 Table of Contents Mindfulness of separation: an autistic a-theological hermeneutic .......... 0 Abstract ........................................................................ 1 Acknowledgements ........................................................... 5 Introduction ........................................................................ 6 Aims and methodology ......................................................... 6 1. Hear my voice: a theological approach to the margins ............ 24 2. Stories of separation ................................................... 29 3. A trinity of mythological autism ...................................... 30 5. Mythical autistic metaphor as theological hermeneutic ........... 33 6. Conscious autism ....................................................... 36 7. Terms from the clinical literature.................................... 38 8. Glossary of original terms ............................................. 45 9. Chapters as journey - summary ....................................... 49 10. Literature Review .................................................... 52 Chapter One: The Autistic hermeneutic - pathology or privilege? ........ 58 Introduction .................................................................... 58 1.1 Who’s missing the point? Holy Fools and Autism .................... 59 1.2. The ‘privilege of pathology’ ........................................... 75 1.3 Metaphor as normal and abnormal – autistic divergence ........... 82 1.4. Theological language as bafflement, oddness and excess ......... 87 1.5. Incarnational metaphor and Wittgenstein ........................... 91 1.6. Towards Incarnational metaphor as deconstructive a-theology .. 102 Chapter two: Apophatic Fiction as Incarnational metaphor .............. 111 Introduction ................................................................... 111 2.1 The Mystical Theology as apophatic fiction ......................... 114 2.2 The Interior Castle as apophatic fiction ............................. 117 3 2.3 Rhetorical strategies in ‘The Ascent of Mount Carmel’ ............ 132 2.4. Mystical theologies in Blanchot’s “Space of Literature” .......... 138 Chapter Three: Incarnational Metaphor as the Autism of God ........... 153 Introduction: Incarnational metaphor, Autism and Altizer ............. 153 3.1 Modernism and myth: the death of God movement ............ 154 3.2 Altizer, metaphor and autism ......................................... 162 3.3. The self-exile of God: Altizer, Hegel and autism .................. 175 3.4. The autism of God. ..................................................... 182 3.5 Full Incarnational metaphor ........................................... 190 Chapter Four: Hopkins’ ecceitas and an autistic hermeneutic ........... 193 Introduction ................................................................... 193 4.1. ‘Untying the theological knot’ ....................................... 194 4.2. Ecce – instress and inscape ........................................... 197 4.3. Scotus and haecceitas ................................................. 203 4.4. Ecceitas ................................................................. 208 4.5 Hopkins, ecceitas and autism .......................................... 210 4.6 The autism of the poet? ................................................ 213 Chapter Five: Luigi Pirandello’s novels and an autistic hermeneutic.... 217 Introduction ................................................................... 217 5.1. Pirandello’s thought ................................................... 223 5.2. Anti-metaphysics as art, and its sympathy to an autistic hermeneutic .......................................................................... 228 5.3. One, No-one and a genuine autistic integrity ...................... 230 5.4. The Late Mattia Pascal: the unsuccessful autist ................... 243 5.5 The “artist of failure” .............................................. 252 Conclusion ....................................................................... 256 Post-script – an anonymous, anecdotal, (non) conclusion ................. 258 Bibliography ..................................................................... 265 4 Literature and Theology .................................................... 265 Autism ......................................................................... 277 5 Acknowledgements Thanks to all at the Centre for Literature, Theology and the Arts, University of Glasgow, for providing a creative and supportive environment; for help with autism sources: Dr David Simmonds, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Glasgow;