The Arachnean and Other Texts: Univocal

The Arachnean and Other Textsby Fernand Deligny (1913–1996) is a collection of writings from the second half of the 1970s. In 1968 Deligny established a “network” for informally taking care of children with autism that was more than a mere site of living: it was amilieucreated out of a reflection on themode of beingautistic. What is a space perceived outside of language? What is the form of a movement without perspective or goal? How do we engage with a world that is not our own, a world turned upside down yet truly common, whereactingcohabitates with our actions and theunknownwith our forms of knowledge? Such is the mythical web of the “Arachnean,” made of lines, holes, traces, enigmas, and questions without answers that demand to see that which cannot be seen. Long before the digital age of social networks, meshworks, and digital webs, Fernand Deligny speaks to us in his own autobiographical and aphoristic manner. For Deligny, his life was always experienced in the form of “the network as a mode of being.”