Neurofeminism, Eco-Pharmacology, Genealogy
To understand "eco-pharmacology," Gill-Peterson directs us to "imagine a neurofeminism through an analysis of affective ecologies," as in Deleuze and Guattari's "pharmacoanalysis" (192). She observes that the latter's reference to "drugs" as hallucinogenic does bear relevance to prescription drugs in that "drug addicts continually fall back into what they wanted to escape: a segmentarity all the more rigid for being marginal, a territorialization all the more artificial for being based on chemical substances" following which she questions why are SSRIs not classified as addictive when Adderall is (Deleuze and Guattari qtd. in G-P, 193)? This, she asserts, is a tool of capitalism to "make use of this originary confusion to authorize a contract relation that makes an increase in the attentional capacity of a child's body through Adderall linked to the demand for increased quality and quantity of output at school and work" (194). The author justifies "eco-pharmacology" as a useful tool for neurofeminism because it comprises of "bodies, drugs and larger milieu like biopolitical and capitalist apparatus within a system whose variation emerges in discrete capacities like attention" (194). Gill-Peterson clarifies that this is not merely a feminist or materialist project, but "an analysis of how life's value is cultivated from birth as it opens onto the racialized imaginary of contemporary eugenics" (194). On the methodology of bringing a drug into the market, Gill-Peterson reflects that the "nervous system cannot be isolated" and that a drug molecule cannot reliably be attached to a neuron for a desired result. Gill Peterson bases this on Barad: "the body, on drugs, is the sum total phenomenon of the "intra-actions" of the mind, body and pharmacological compounds that in a metastable system modulate mood, feelings and other body and conscious states" (197).
To understand the phenomenon of ADHD, some understanding of the genealogy of ADHD is called for. Comstock agrees with and builds on earlier works by Nikolas Rose, professor of sociology at King’s College, London, and Andrew Lakoff, professor of sociology at University of Southern California and is in conversation with works of medicalization scholars, Conrad and Schneider, who as discussed earlier attempt to understand the “medicalization of deviance” through the history and evolution of child rearing and parenting practices, post enlightenment. Similarly, Comstock argues that deviance, that was hitherto “located relative to external institutional moral/judicial values” has been “replaced over the course of the century by a new intelligibility of rational self-management”(44). He explores how, “through new relations of knowledge, the body, and techniques and technologies such as drug test and brain scanning, ADHD emerged at the intersection of an ethical knowledge and practice that reflects an emerging psychiatric power, but that cannot be reduced to the terms of social control” (45). Cornstock contends that disorders like ADHD “reflect a governmentality of self-management and an embodied norm of economic rational self-interest (man as Homo economicus)” something that gets filtered through to children as well—“who are also actively involved in these processes of identity construction—the meanings and purposes of which are not exhausted in the terms of ideology and social control.” It follows then that the ties between medication and life sciences are rooted in beliefs that medical interventions will change things at a “molecular level”(Rose, 40). “In this regime,” Rose postulates, “each session of genetic counseling, each act of amniocentesis, each prescription of an antidepressant is predicated on the possibility, at least, of a judgment about the relative and comparative quality of life of differently composed human beings and of different ways of being human”(40).
While I agree with this sentiment, things become complicated in the diagnosis of ADHD. Rose’s belief was reflected strongly in a talk given by a pediatrician--who relied heavily on medication—and unlike neuropsychologists saw medication as the first line of defense. Soumya, a children’s psychiatrist corroborated this phenomenon when she said that 60%-70% of the diagnosis happen in pediatrician’s offices. Affordability and insurances no doubt play a huge role in diagnosis, given that pediatrician visits are covered by insurances and psychiatrist visits are normally not. The issue becomes more problematic when one considers Comstock’s claim, “the disorder (ADHD) is no longer even fundamentally about hyperactivity or attention—and it is widely accepted that ADHD-types pay perfect attention to some things and not enough other thing.” in addition, he notes, “ADHD is no longer construed through the ability to represent universal moral truth, but rather through an ability to create and regulate one’s self as a self-interested individual.”(67). Comstock’s claim was substantiated time and again in the stories of Kim, Ryan, Kathy, and Ananya as they endeavored to improve their lives to fulfill their potential, through an adoption of a “new relation” to themselves, wherein, “the self” became an “object of knowledge” and “autonomy is to be achieved through as continual enterprise of self-improvement through the application of rational knowledge and technique” (Rose qtd. in Comstock, 46). How then, do their subjectivities interact with the world of disability?
To understand the phenomenon of ADHD, some understanding of the genealogy of ADHD is called for. Comstock agrees with and builds on earlier works by Nikolas Rose, professor of sociology at King’s College, London, and Andrew Lakoff, professor of sociology at University of Southern California and is in conversation with works of medicalization scholars, Conrad and Schneider, who as discussed earlier attempt to understand the “medicalization of deviance” through the history and evolution of child rearing and parenting practices, post enlightenment. Similarly, Comstock argues that deviance, that was hitherto “located relative to external institutional moral/judicial values” has been “replaced over the course of the century by a new intelligibility of rational self-management”(44). He explores how, “through new relations of knowledge, the body, and techniques and technologies such as drug test and brain scanning, ADHD emerged at the intersection of an ethical knowledge and practice that reflects an emerging psychiatric power, but that cannot be reduced to the terms of social control” (45). Cornstock contends that disorders like ADHD “reflect a governmentality of self-management and an embodied norm of economic rational self-interest (man as Homo economicus)” something that gets filtered through to children as well—“who are also actively involved in these processes of identity construction—the meanings and purposes of which are not exhausted in the terms of ideology and social control.” It follows then that the ties between medication and life sciences are rooted in beliefs that medical interventions will change things at a “molecular level”(Rose, 40). “In this regime,” Rose postulates, “each session of genetic counseling, each act of amniocentesis, each prescription of an antidepressant is predicated on the possibility, at least, of a judgment about the relative and comparative quality of life of differently composed human beings and of different ways of being human”(40).
While I agree with this sentiment, things become complicated in the diagnosis of ADHD. Rose’s belief was reflected strongly in a talk given by a pediatrician--who relied heavily on medication—and unlike neuropsychologists saw medication as the first line of defense. Soumya, a children’s psychiatrist corroborated this phenomenon when she said that 60%-70% of the diagnosis happen in pediatrician’s offices. Affordability and insurances no doubt play a huge role in diagnosis, given that pediatrician visits are covered by insurances and psychiatrist visits are normally not. The issue becomes more problematic when one considers Comstock’s claim, “the disorder (ADHD) is no longer even fundamentally about hyperactivity or attention—and it is widely accepted that ADHD-types pay perfect attention to some things and not enough other thing.” in addition, he notes, “ADHD is no longer construed through the ability to represent universal moral truth, but rather through an ability to create and regulate one’s self as a self-interested individual.”(67). Comstock’s claim was substantiated time and again in the stories of Kim, Ryan, Kathy, and Ananya as they endeavored to improve their lives to fulfill their potential, through an adoption of a “new relation” to themselves, wherein, “the self” became an “object of knowledge” and “autonomy is to be achieved through as continual enterprise of self-improvement through the application of rational knowledge and technique” (Rose qtd. in Comstock, 46). How then, do their subjectivities interact with the world of disability?
