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Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the relations developed between autistics and horses during equine therapy. It seeks to investigate the knowledge and practices produced in these human – non-human sensory and affective interactions and embodiments.

Paper long abstract:

Critical disability studies have stressed the interconnection of species in the context of the autonomous, able-bodied subject’s displacement. Disabled embodiments and differences in touching, sensing and communicating create new understandings in unmapped areas of knowledge production. Interdependence with animal guides and companion animals create vital bonds and alter existing human and non-human power relations. Many autistics have verbally noted, or shown through their acts and embodiments, their familiarity with animals and the intimate relations they form with each other. During equine therapy, autistics’ affective and sensory experiences are shaped in relation with the horse’s movements and sensory state. These human and non-human interrelations and becoming together decenter anthropocentric concepts and social organization of language, senses, affects and normative modes of living together. The paper seeks to explore the practices involved in these human-animal relations. It asks whether equine therapy values autistics’ non-normative sensory processes as well as horses’ interactions and deconstructs the dominant human-animal divide or whether the concept of ‘cure’ and ‘therapy’ normalize autistics’ modes of communication. The discussion in question regards the tensions between normative concepts of cure and realities of unexpected care. How is knowledge shaped in these human-animal contexts? How are these experiences of relating to animals bridged with existing social understandings of human superiority?