The Rhetorical Construction of the AD/HD Subject: Managing the Self

As the diagnosis of AD/HD becomes more frequent in our schools, and as many individuals across ages embrace an AD/HD identity, scholars need to account for the lived experience of the disorder to understand the meanings individuals give to it. This paper analyses the relationship between ethical practices of self-formation, power, and knowledge (subjectification) in the case of the North American AD/HD subject. Specifically, it builds on recent medicalization scholarship to analyze how individuals make meaning of their disorder and its corresponding drug regimen in light of the “cultural meanings” made available by an increasingly prevalent neuropsychological discourse and ontology. By examining the first-person online accounts of AD/HD subjects from popular Internet message boards, this essay demonstrates how these individuals position themselves on the side of knowledge (the officially sanctioned AD/HD discourse) in creating self-interested and productive identities within newly emergent discursive configurations that diverge from earlier constructions that focused on the eradication of undesirable behaviors. It finds that the AD/HD drug regimen can no longer be understood solely in the terms of deviancy and the “social control” of behavior and both confirms and complicates the argument that these regimens reflect “cosmetic” self-improvement or coping.