Mechanical Metaphors of Autism: from the Automata to Affective Technologies

FORNACCIARI, Ilaria. Mechanical Metaphors of Autism: from the Automata to Affective Technologies. 2024.

Basic information

• Original name: Mechanical Metaphors of Autism: from the Automata to Affective Technologies
• Authors: FORNACCIARI, Ilaria.
• Edition: 2024.

Other information

• Type of outcome: Requested lectures
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• WWW: URL
• Keywords in English: Autism genealogy affective technologies

Abstract

The lecture moves from an historical differentiation of the mechanical metaphors of psychiatric discourse referring to autism at the time when it became an object of knowledge (1940') and following the cognitive turn (from late 1970'). The argument of the presentation is that underlying the metaphor of the automata - notoriously occurring in Asperger's case study collection - it is possible to trace the function of the scientific/political discourse of body politics as critically defined by Donna Haraway. The figure of the geek is indicated in literature and popular media as the parallel of the metaphor of the mind as a computer and the brain as a cybernetic system, which is traced in the psychiatric research language ensuing the cognitive turn. Following the epistemological dynamics involved in the ontologizing of this metaphors and the role as a model and tastemaker that a certain problematic formulation of autism plays in the development of affective computing, the presentation emphasizes the mutations of the biopolitical power inherent in the emerging affective technologies.

Links

• GX23-05692X, research and development project: Name: Roboti, programování člověka a autismus/Kulturní imaginace autismu a emoční umělé inteligence

Investor: Czech Science Foundation, Robots, Computing Human, and Autism/Cultural Imagination of Autism Diagnosis and Emotion AI