This dissertation challenges the form of “knowledge production” that has effectively excluded autistic/neurodiverse people from participation. Typically, autistic contribution has been relegated to the sidelines where the non-autistic scholar interprets the material. As a non-positivist process, Adam and I are immersed in the relational as the intrasubjective process/share. We challenge the way not only “ways of knowing” are shared in academic language and form, but also the way in which we envision relation. Relation is also the “intra” - the elision of subject/object; the way of perception and relation itself. We cannot engage in the scientific paradigm of reduction. We have difficulty around separating authorship in a collaborative, collective process. We avoid identity-thinking. (More on this in the essays - which we tend to avoid). We posit that we need new forms of sharing our lives, relation, experience (as shared).

We seem to be getting closer to having this art process, work, archive, film, chapbook of poetry, be the dissertation form itself as it has been years of conversation, movement, expression and a way of learning/study itself at The A Collective. An upcoming exhibition, this website is a part of that share. It is our mode of survival within a field that asks us to stay still to prove our competence; to write and prove and prove and prove.

We hope we can find support for the way we actually live, relate, share, contribute. For this is the form; a “forming” in which we become in relation and which art/life is a process.