On this World Autism Day, I am having my cake and eating it by contributing to a pattern where people:
a) stress that autism is not just about a day, and
b) write about autism on that day.
I have done it before. I will likely continue to do it.
I didn’t do it last year on this blog. But, while talking about ancient Greek dance and religion at a seminar paper in Athens on World Autism Day (April 2nd 2024), I found myself unexpectedly speaking about how deeply my research into this topic is autism-informed.
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| Stones and poppies on the Akropolis on the morning of April 2nd, 2024. |
I focused particularly on Dance Movement Therapy which, in the words of the Association For Dance Movement Psychotherapy UK:
is an empathic creative process practiced as individual and group therapy in clinical, community, and educational settings, as well as in private practice.
The clients in question are often autistic people.
I reflected on the potential for Dance Movement Therapy to offer new ways to understand how ancient people experienced living in their bodies and how they thought about their relationship with others. These others might include, I considered, their fellow dancers. They could have also included, I suggested, the god for whom they danced - and whom they may have impersonated or even become for the period of the dance.
That was last year. But it will also be something that I pick up later this year when I talk further on the topic in Coimbra, at the upcoming Celtic Conference in Classics, at a panel organised by Laurialan Reitzammer and by someone who I want to shout out about this World Autism Day: Ellie Mackin Roberts.
Ellie has reflected on discovering that she is autistic:
I am autistic, and I’m the same person I was before I knew that – but I feel like now I have the right version of the manual for my brain, and I get to figure out all the things that felt and seemed wrong over the years.
She has also reflected on how autism shapes her practice as an ancient Greek historian. Indeed, in her words:
frankly – I think my acceptance and exploration of my autistic brain makes me a better academic anyway.
A recent example bearing out these reflections is one of her recent publications, an article titled ‘The Cave of Laughlessness, sensory deprivation, and cognitive depletion at Eleusis’.
It is a publication that I knew about some time before it was published due to my role as the editor of the journal where it is published: The Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies (BICS). In this role, I oversaw the article’s publication, from initial discussions with its author to its appearance in the 70th anniversary issue.
[An aside: I should at some point reflect on how autism connects my practice as an editor.]
In the article, available here and here, Ellie opens up new ways to understand what it would have been like to experience the intense sensory and emotional states created by the initiation rituals of the Eleusinian Mysteries.
Here is the abstract:
This article explores the intersection of sensory perception, emotional experience, and ritual practice within the ancient Eleusinian Mysteries, specifically focusing on the ‘Cave of Laughlessness’. The author offers a unique perspective on sensory exaggeration, highlighting the heightened awareness of sensory input. The study delves into the experiential aspects of the Mysteries, considering the cognitive and emotional states induced by the rituals. By investigating the sensory manipulation, emotional engagement, and cognitive depletion experienced by initiands (those candidates for initiation), the article sheds light on the complex interplay of sensory experiences and religious significance. The discussion emphasizes the role of the Cave of Laughlessness as a liminal space crucial in the initiatory journey. It examines the sensory and emotional impact it had on ancient worshippers. Through a multidisciplinary approach encompassing archaeology, neurology, and history, this article contributes to a deeper understanding of the sensory dimensions of religious practices in antiquity, offering insights into the ancient mystical experience and its enduring emotional resonance.
In the article, Ellie discusses her experiences on entering a cave at the archaeological site of Eleusis in Attica in Greece in 2023. What she experienced there was, she shares, shaped by the state of 'exaggerated sensory awareness’ or even ‘sensory exhaustion’ she was experiencing (emphasis in original) on a burning July day after a ‘hot, erratic bus journey’.
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| The Parthenon: April 2nd, 2024 |
She felt, she explains, an instance of ‘sensory exaggeration’ (her term – a super one):
My embodied experience of what I am feeling and sensing is – as the term suggests – exaggerated and lingering’.
Here, as on other occasions, she continues to describe, 'sounds, smells, touches, tastes stay with me’. Indeed, ‘sensations remain even after a stimulus has been removed'.
This experience, she reflects, may have given her a perspective that others might have missed:
[M]y ‘atypical’ neurocognition let me experience an exaggerated sense […] that an Allistic visitor to the site may have missed or discounted as unimportant’.
Each time I read Ellie’s article, I experience an ‘aha moment’ – where the ancient world remains other and yet where ancient lived experiences can be glimpsed or imagined by autistic academics, even though they can never be known. As Ellie writes:
Shifts in the sensory landscape […] alter the experience of that landscape, manipulating our thoughts and emotional responses. In many ways, this mimics our ability to understand ancient people: we can theorise but can never accurately access their thoughts, feelings and sensory experiences.
I warmly recommend the article. I’ve quoted just some of its beautiful reflections here, and barely touched on its discussion of Eleusis, the cave and its place within the wider religious and cultural lives of ancient Greek people.
Reflecting on one’s research processes as an academic, for example in a blog, is often set in opposition to article-writing. It is usual for an article solely to reflect the end product of an author’s research, stripped of any sharing of the processes, and struggles even, that got it to the point of publication.
Ellie’s article, meanwhile, shows the potential of dissolving that binary between lived experiences and research dissemination. The experiences of the academic shape the final findings. The findings are part of a researcher’s lived experiences.
Scholarship, like autism, is a way of being.
Happy World Autism Day!
