’Clumps’: an autistic reterritorialisation of the rhizome

This paper follows on from a paper delivered at the Theorising Normalcy conference 2012 which explored autism from the view of an eclectic philosophy created over a number of years by its author (Milton, 2012). The focus of the particular enquiry detailed in this paper is to reconsider the philosophy of ‘dispositional diversity’ espoused in the previous presentation utilising Deleuzian concepts, inspired by a number of other presentations delivered at the same conference. The paper engages with notions of difference, the differences between philosophy, science and art, autistic assemblages and blockages to desiring production, and considers the nomadic agencency of an autistic ‘rhizomatic’ mode of thought. This paper also shows how the concept of the rhizome was influenced by a rebellious psychotherapist working in collaboration with a group of autistic people, and includes an example of autistic assemblage with reference to the game of table tennis. Despite the exotic ‘othering’ tendencies displayed in the work of Deleuze and Guttari (1972, 1980), one can say they were the productions of their historically and socially situated existence, and yet their concepts are useful in building a rhizomatic model of autistic becoming.