Touch and the permeability of self and world: A phenomenology of tactile experience in autism.

This article examines how touch shapes the experience of self-world boundaries in autism. Analyzing eight autobiographical works by autistic authors, the author argues that tactile experience in autism often involves porous, permeable, and shifting boundaries between self and world. Touch can enable both pleasurable merging with surroundings and terrifying undifferentiation, and tactile practices may help modulate felt connectedness to a sensorially overwhelming world. Countering the trope of autistic withdrawal, the author repositions autism as an intensified mode of being in touch with the world, offering both attunement and vulnerability, and contributing to the phenomenology of touch.

Study at a glance

Abstract

In this article, I investigate the relationship between touch and self-world boundaries in the phenomenology of autism.While tactile differences are increasingly recognized as fundamental to autistic experience, they are predominantly conceptualized within a quantitative framework that measures autistic sensing up against a putative norm of sensory processing.By contrast, first-person reports from autistic authors detail the lived significance of touch and present a largely untapped resource for understanding its impact on autistic experience.Through a phenomenological analysis of eight autobiographical works published by autistic authors, this study targets the felt connectedness between self and world that nourishes autistic experiences of touch.I argue that tactile experience in autism frequently involves porous, permeable, and shifting boundaries between self and world.As touch enables both pleasurable experiences of merging with one's surroundings and terrifying experiences of undifferentiation, how touch feels for autistic persons refers directly to the degree to which the boundary between self and world is at stake.Here, tactile practices may help modulate and negotiate the felt connectedness and belonging to a sensorially overwhelming world.Countering the familiar trope of autistic withdrawal and disconnection, I reposition autism as an intensified mode of being in touch with the world, giving rise to both profound experiences of attunement and wonder but also a striking vulnerability.Here, autistic experiences lend important insight into the dynamics of self-world boundaries, adding to the phenomenology of touch by speaking to the diversity of ways that touch may implicate and negotiate self-world relationality.