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The end of drugging children: Toward the genealogy of the ADHD subject
Author(s) -
Comstock Edward J.
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
journal of the history of the behavioral sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.216
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1520-6696
pISSN - 0022-5061
DOI - 10.1002/jhbs.20471
Subject(s) - subject (documents) , medicalization , power (physics) , perspective (graphical) , epistemology , psychology , identity (music) , sociology , aesthetics , psychiatry , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics , artificial intelligence , library science , computer science
This genealogy of the ADHD subject will demonstrate that over the course of the twentieth century a new relation between power, knowledge, the body, and ethical practices of self‐formation emerged around the ADHD‐type in ways that are not captured by the received critical perspective. By examining the history of knowledge and practices surrounding the ADHD‐type, this work will argue that the deviant subject that was located relative to external institutional moral/juridical values or standards is replaced over the course of the century by a new intelligibility of rational self‐management. A further analysis of this emergent intelligibility attempts to advance the critical understanding of the increasingly prevalent ADHD phenomenon by showing how novel drug and brain imaging technologies work to link behaviors to identity, establishing new relations of power to the subject not captured by the received medicalization perspective. This work will be of interest to anybody interested in the relations among knowledge, drugs, power, and the ADHD subject. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.