Abstract

The present paper analyses synesthesia in autism (ASD) and neurotypical experience. The way synesthesia has been interpreted within the history of phenomenology and psychopathology should prepare a philosophical access to autism and its subjective condition. The paper draws on the basic assumption that synesthesia reveals the presence of sensible networks and crossmodal connections beneath the framework of objective reality. Synesthesia, it is argued, confronts us with a specific dimension of the world beneath the essential structures of a material apriori, as it is elaborated within husserlian phenomenology. Experience in autism has close connections with such an alternative ontological setting. Asa matter of fact, autistic self-advocates often describe moments of a deep immersion into sensible experience, in which different sensorial events come to ‘resonate’ with one another. Resonance is thus interpreted as a fundamental ontological connector within an experiential framework that is not subjected to abstract concepts and causal thinking