NEW TOPIC: Discovering ander Durig and his writings on autism

[Guest guest]

Try this one out:

http://alexdurig.wordpress.com/2010/12/13/food-neophobia-%E2%80%93-textbook-psychology-in-action-or-the-emperor%E2%80%99s-neoclothes/

But then go further. Most of the way down his blog you'll come across a link to his other blogs, and there you have it. Incidentally, he spends a fair amount of time on the phenomenon of labeling, something that's timely what with the pending close of the comment period briefly re-opened, on the DSM 5 brouhaha on Autism.

I "met" through an obscure paper he wrote in 1993 which was published (very early) on the Internet. In it, he introduces himself to the academic reader as an autistic graduate student in the field of sociology in which he eventually got his Ph.D. at Indiana University, went on to a brief but colorful career as a university professor and adjunct this and that, and has since then branched off into management consulting, preparing business plans, and doing all kinds of sundry work. Kingsley published his second book, How to Understand Autism - The Easy Way, which, for intellectuals, is a step down from his very difficult to get ahold of first book, published by the State University of New York Press, Autism and the Crisis of Meaning. Since then has embarked on the co-authorship of a third book with a colleague which I haven't read or heard of before now. I'm pretty sure the hectic life of a professor wasn't a good match for him. He's much too wide-brush kind of a thinker for the relatively minor league of universities and colleges he found his early teaching positions in, and he burned out pretty fast.

kind of dropped off the map after a brief flurry of publicity about his second, most readible book, but the guy's a deep thinker. I didn't slosh through any more than a couple of his blogs, but he does go on and on, and is really rich mind food. He's close with Olga Bogdashina, a leading author in the field of sensory sensitivities and autistic behavior and thinking, and is "right up there" with the UK intellectuals, even though he's chosen to remain here in the US to ply a rather pedestrian trade as a lecturer, commentator, author, and generally good fellow.

I don't know whether has ever met Temple Grandin. By temperament, they're quite different, but in their own way, as intellectuals and as very heady thinkers whose observations have been tempered by years of reflection "on the condition," their respective written output is quite cogent.

Give him a whirl.

What got me going in re-contacting him after a long hiatus was the writing of a fellow named who is a communications theory scholar who just completed his Ph.D. in the Department of Communications at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, who's written a brilliant dissertation on the dissolution of broadcasting as a public medium into the morass of corporate capitalism and the psychology of market greed and control. Something about 's thesis, available for all at http://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/26240/_.pdf?sequence=1 brings back some fond memories of my years as an undergraduate with a shared minor in philosophy and the sociology of knowledge.

Incidentally, I "introduced" to Kingsley, my publisher, who promptly extended a publishing contract to for his second book. Good luck, that. After that, however, I kind of lost track, yet a simple Google search got me "re-united" with him, if only through his blog.

Do give his writings and observations some time. He's a pretty remarkable thinker. Big picture stuff. One of the things that connects Durig with an intellectual like is 's fascination with the phenomenon of a sociological observational and analytical tool first systematically developed by Irving Goffman called "dramaturgical analysis." This is "big picture" stuff that allows one to strip away the posturings and outer vestments of power and influence relationships, and go into the calculus of power and authority and social roles directly. If folks decide to download the dissertation, you'll find a fascinating description and discussion of this very significant analytical device introduced in his first chapter starting at page 18.

Food for thought, this.

N. Meyer