ADHD and dyslexia are pathologies of late capitalist control circuits
Evidence
If the figure of discipline was the worker-prisoner, the figure of control is the debtor-addict. Cyberspatial capital operates by addicting its users; William Gibson recognized that in Neuromancer when he had Case and the other cyberspace cowboys feeling insects-under-the-skin strung out when they unplugged from the matrix (Case’s amphetamine habit is plainly the substitute for an addiction to a far more abstract speed). If, then, something like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is a pathology, it is a pathology of late capitalism – a consequence of being wired into the entertainment-control circuits of hyperme-diated consumer culture. Similarly, what is called dyslexia may in many cases amount to a post-lexia. Teenagers process capital’s image-dense data very effectively without any need to read –slogan-recognition is sufficient to navigate the net-mobile-magazine informational plane. ‘Writing has never been capitalism’s thing. Capitalism is profoundly illiterate’, Deleuze and Guattari argued in Anti-Oedipus. ‘Electric language does not go by way of the voice or writing: data processing does without them both’. — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 54
Categorization
- XREF: The claim that dyslexia is really ‘post-lexia’ — literate culture superseded by slogan-recognition — pairs with Fisher’s point that many successful business people are dyslexic, and connects to the reader’s media/communication corpus. — connects to: Capitalism’s boom-bust cycles mirror and produce bipolar disorder in populations; Capitalist restructuring and neuroscience rethinks evolved in parallel. — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 142; Industrial capitalism both produces inattention and pathologizes it — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 61 (+7 more)
- QUESTION: Fisher asks whether businesspeople’s post-lexical efficiency is cause or effect of success — an unresolved empirical question worth chasing.
Related
Broader Connections
- Industrial capitalism both produces inattention and pathologizes it
#expands(0.85) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 61 - Capitalism’s boom-bust cycles mirror and produce bipolar disorder in populations
#responds-to(0.82) - Bipolar disorder is the mental illness proper to capitalism’s interior
#responds-to(0.82) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 75 - Just-in-time capitalism rewires workers’ nervous systems for perpetual instability
#expands(0.80) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 73 - Sociopolitical changes reorganize society, not the biological brain itself
#contradicts(0.80) — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 21 - Brain plasticity descriptions may either serve or resist neoliberal command.
#responds-to(0.80) — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 181 - Capitalist restructuring and neuroscience rethinks evolved in parallel.
#responds-to(0.75) — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 142 - Contemporary labor demands mirror neuronal functioning, bodying forth capitalism’s current form.
#exemplifies(0.75) — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 52 - The economic paradigm distorts our understanding of how attention actually functions
#responds-to(0.74) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 75 - Psychiatric disorder rose with industrial capitalism’s onset around 1750
#corroborates(0.72)