 |
|
Dialogues@RU is published
annually
by the
Writing Program at
Rutgers, The State
University of New Jersey
Volume 4
Fall 2005
The Clockwork of Attention Deficit Disorder: Mechanisms in Illusion - Page 2
By Xiaolei Shi
Clearly, the cultural privileging of the "able-bodied" served the function, useful at the time, of separating people who were considered normal and those that were considered disabled through their incapacity to work in industry. However, such a conceptualization, as Lennard Davis observes, established "the idea that in an ableist society, the 'normal' people [construct] the world physically and cognitively to reward those with like abilities and handicap those with unlike abilities" (10). Ultimately, a societal standard of "normal" is established through this process, which serves to alienate those who are not categorized within the majority. Such conceptualization occurs on a societal scale, although Davis notes that "pre-industrial societies tended to treat people with impairment as a part of the social fabric, although admittedly not kindly, while societies instituting 'kindness,' ended up segregating and ostracizing such individuals" through discourses of disability (3). It is this socially-constructed ableist mindset of Bradley's time that allowed him to conclude that being "emotionally subdued is an improvement from a social viewpoint," and that hyperactivity is detrimental to society and needs to be addressed medically. This suggests that the roots of ADD lay not so much in a rigorous scientific discovery, but emerged from a coincidence involving the superficial effects of Benzedrine and an underlying cultur al climate that promulgated a mechanistic notion of human function. More importantly, this further suggests that the practice of medicine is highly vulnerable to popular ideology.
The process of social segmentation through the establishment of a " normal " is reinforced by numerous factors, as the example of ADD demonstrates. For Davis , it is the segregation through the notion of disability that becomes the primary focus of his argument: that "the 'problem' is not the person with disabilities; the problem is the way that normalcy is constructed to create the 'problem' of the disabled person" (24). For Davis , it is the society that establishes the notions of disability, which are enforced through culture, tradition, and even language. Similarly, Armstrong suggests that if one were to
look at the roots of American culture from colonial days . . . the Protestant work ethic has played an important role in defining standards for appropriate conduct [which] leads to a society that might well be expected to define deviance in terms of distractibility, impulsiveness and lack of motivation ¾ the same traits frequently used to describe children suffering from ADD. (26).
For Davis, cultural enforcement can also take place in language in which the words "lame," "deaf," and "dumb" are not only indicative of this separation between the able and disabled but also carry "with them moral and ethical implications" that reinforce such thinking (5). This aspect of language can also be attributed to ADD in the form of a labeling effect that, as Armstrong notes, would "not only give parents and teachers a relatively simple way of explaining troublesome behavior, but it [also serves as] a central point around which parents, teachers, and professions can rally for political and economic support" (22). Therefore, the labeling of ADD reinforces an idea that ADD is a determining factor in separating children into categories of "normal" and "disabled." Such a process of labeling is not an isolated event in culture but intrinsic to its longevity. John Swain, author of the article " Whose Model?" notes that any participatory action is a cultural affirmation.
By associating within family groups we put into practice and reinforce existing models of kinship; by going to school or university we put into practice and reinforce existing models of education; by presenting ourselves as sets of symptoms requiring medical attention we put into practice and reinforce existing models of health care. (117)