ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I follow the argument made by autistic activist Jorn Bettin that ‘commoning’ is what happens when you break with the assumption that the only possible form of human collaboration is one that deploys abstract symbolic roles, and which is aimed toward the accumulation of capital. This is underpinned by a notion of intersubjectivity based on the supposedly ubiquitous access to a shared symbolic realm which entails the exclusion of not only the neurologically atypical but also cultural minorities and those who are otherwise denied access to the institutions that confer symbolic subjectivity. The dominant construction of human collaboration as an innate capacity of individual brains to access a shared symbolic real also enforces an anthropocentric distinction between human thought and mere animal ‘sentience’ (Wolf-Meyer 45). Drawing on ideas from AutCollab, Stimpunks, the Autistic Task Force, and Wolf-Meyer's writing on modular institutionsI explore how the idea of ‘conviviality’ as autonomy within interaction supports autistic people's distinctive ways of responding to the world and also provides a more effective way to share knowledge and emotion in mutually sustaining ways across neurotypes and cultures.
