Abstract

The cultures created by Jakuchu Ito and Arcimboldo, Andy Warhol and Erik Satie, Lewis Carroll and Conan Doyle have something strange in common that transcends time and place. What is the kind of culture that fits together, created by people who do not fit together? This book digs up a vein of “autistic culture” from the strata of cultural history and reexamines the “healthy” and “formulaic” modernity that relies on realism and rationality.

Preface (excerpt)
I would like to consider that being autistic is not a simple lack of something (e.g., lack of social skills), but that it is more appropriate to see it as a form of something different from “normalcy”. ...Such a view does not eliminate the “difficulty of living” as a person with disabilities, but it does seem possible to sublimate the difficulty of living as a culture. The difficulty of living itself is not easily sympathized with by others. However, a culture created in conjunction with the difficulty of living may have the potential to evoke a certain kind of empathy.

Author’s Information

Born in 1958.
Graduated from Waseda University, School of Letters, Arts and Sciences, Department of Sociology.
Graduated from the Doctoral Program in Sociology at the Graduate School of Human Sciences, Osaka University, completing the required coursework.
Ph.D. (Human Sciences).
He is currently a professor at the Faculty of Letters, Arts and Sciences, Waseda University.
His major is theoretical sociology and comparative sociology.
His publications include:
"Muneyoshi Yanagi, Mingei, and Social Theory: An Attempt at Cultural Studies" Akashi Shoten, 1999.
Psychoanalysis and Sociology: Theory of Binary Opposition and Infinity, Akashi Shoten, 2004.
Sociology of Autism: Another Theory of Communication, Sekai Shisosha, 2008.
Psychoanalysis and Autism: From Freud to Wittgenstein, Kodansha, 2012.
"Sociology of Autism and Light Novels", Koyoshobo, 2016,
"The Age of Autism" Kodansha, 2020.