Trajectories of smooth: the multidimensionality of spatial relations and autism spectrum

ABSTRACT

This paper examines how two men with autism spectrum (AS) experience educational spaces having attended public school in Nova Scotia, Canada. Smooth and striated space is mobilised as the main conceptual framework to account for the men’s affectivities when experiencing the educational terrain. The central aim when applying smooth and striated space is thinking through variation with attentiveness to the men’s situated movements. A discourse focusing on the men’s affective relations to school spaces counters over-coded special education frameworks that have largely centred on students with AS functionality in remedial educational settings. The concern when only knowing students with AS through normative functionality discourses is that it produces a homogenous line of thinking with limited attendance to their everyday situated worlds. Here, by attuning to the men’s spatial experiences we can begin to think in more open ways rather than AS subjects preconfigured to given positions.

KEYWORDS:

• Autism spectrum
• education
• disability
• space
• affect
• smooth
• striated
• movement
• capabilities

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Sarah Reddington is an Assistant Professor in the Child and Youth Study Department at Mount Saint Vincent University. Sarah’s work in the field of critical disability studies is concerned with theorizing and challenging the conditions of disablism (the social, cultural and political exclusion of people with disabilities). Sarah is interested in engaging with poststructuralist and posthuman approaches as a means to find different ways to think about human experience. Key theorists include Gilles Deleuze, Felix Gutter.

Deborah Price is an experienced academic, whose career is characterised by a breadth and depth of academic and community contributions, ranging from extensive pre-service teacher education delivery, HDR supervision, to involvement in research grants. As Lecturer Inclusive Education and Wellbeing for the School of Education, University of South Australia, she focuses on her areas of specialisation including educational psychology, inclusive and special education, disability, cyberbullying, and learner and educator wellbeing.

Notes

1 The learning centre and resource room in Nova Scotia public schools are two remedial settings outside the regular classroom designed to support students with ‘special needs’.

2 Subway is a sandwich franchise in North America. Subway franchises often set up kiosks inside high schools where students can buy lunch items.

3 We borrow this phrase from Youdell (2011) in School Trouble and from Youdell and Armstrong (2011) who challenge educators to focus on what a body can do and increasingly notice the affective choreographies emerging in moments for bodies.