The presence of the CAE, the Club of the Autoimmune Eccentrics, as part of the Austrian social landscape, is seen as a social sculpture and a medium of quiet activism.
That means that its members intent “to revive confidence in the ability to transform reality” (Rendell, 2022, p. 2821) by changing the common view on autoimmunity and its related diseases.
We are not shouting, we are not acting out – but with our presence, our signs of existence, our confidence in what we are we establish that there is something like an autoimmune condition, as part of the spectrum of human existence.
It expresses a specific form of it, a positionality that, within Plessner’s philosophical anthropology, is defined as „eccentric“.
We do not surrender – neither to the pain, nor to the patient role we are being ascribed to by medical institutions and by the healthcare system.
By showing our wounds, we not only show our vulnerability but also our strength that we derive from our eccentricity, from our self distance and self reflexivity. But, most importantly, we show that we exist.