AutisTime: Imagined Friends and Borrowed Clocks

This experimental essay combines critical research with life writing and poetic forms to explore and begin defining ‘AutisTime’. As a choice, a state and a necessity, ‘AutisTiming’ is immersion within imagination. It involves daydreaming, is emphasised here as a root of creativity itself. The naming AutisTime is, in part, an answer to a question the author was frequently asked as a child, often with mild concern: What are you DOING all that time on your own in empty rooms? Against preconceptions that time alone for autistic people actually means loneliness, the essay positions autistic time alongside Anderson’s (1983) notion of simultaneity: the awareness and appreciation of shared co-existence beyond immediate living space. After discussing ‘imagined friendships’ with neurodivergent others in past, local settings, the focus grows global, to platform autistic voices (in particular from Black authors) alongside contemporary concerns in autism studies.

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/critical-neurodivers...