I recently read an interesting article on ADHD which suggested that the genes that cause it are a legacy of nomadic ancestors:
One genetic variation that causes ADHD-like traits is more common in the world’s nomadic peoples. Researchers think that traits such as impulsive behavior, novelty-seeking, and unpredictability might help nomads track down food and other resources. So the same qualities that make it challenging to excel at a desk job may have been an advantage to nomadic ancestors.
I am skeptical about this, given the long history of empires attempting to dominate nomadic peoples, and the roles of education and medicine in this domination. Will this research be used to further stigmatize and pathologize the descendants of nomads who have migrated to the US because their peoples and cultures were destroyed by U.S.-backed wars?
US Empire claims to be orderly, organized, and efficient. It encodes these characteristics as normal, able-bodied, white, sane, male, straight, professional, and healthy. People of color, queer people, gender non-conforming people, indigenous people, and people with disabilities are coded as the opposite of these traits. The system deems them a problem that must be contained like an Ebola epidemic so that they don’t contaminate the body politic.
When schools suggest students with ADHD should be medicated and taught to conform, are they helping students navigate daily life in the empire, or are they playing into this system of control, cutting off potential creativity and rebellion?
I’m wondering what the philosophers Deleuze and Guattari would say about ADHD. They are strong advocates of nomadic ways of thinking and living, and argue that nomadic practices are part of contemporary struggles for freedom. They claim nomadic tendencies exist not only among indigenous peoples but also in the heart of empires, destabilizing them. They say that all human beings have a tendency to deterritorialize, to roam outside of the settled concepts, routines, traditions, and institutions that shape us; they argue this is a crucial part of creative cultural production. Their work has been extended by decolonial, Marxist, queer, and anarchist theorists who aim to destabilize borders, empires, and fixed / frozen social identities. It has also been extended by people who see migration and the creation of diasporas as potential ways to break down and move beyond the constraints of capitalist nation states.
To be clear, I’m not trying to romanticize nomadic life, ADHD, or migration. All of these involve real struggles and real human longings for consistency, commitment, community, and self-organization. Deleuze and Guattari also recognized this when they said that every deterritorialization is also potential reterritorialization. I also don’t mean to deny the practical strategies people with ADHD use to survive day to day life in our society, or the importance of giving youth chances to learn these strategies.
I’m just saying that those genes that express traits labeled ADHD are not vestiges of savagery that must be remolded in the name of progress. They are important expressions of human biodiversity and neurodiversity that could help create new futures. Saying they are not adaptive to modern desk jobs implies that cubicles represent the end of history, humanity’s final resting place. What if nomadic impulses might help us all collectively wander and fight our way to something better? What if they are remnants of courage and curiosity that enable a future exodus from our overstressed, boring society?
The postmodern liberal arts education I received at a particularly progressive Ivy League university gave me the privilege to explore, to roam through concepts, genres, and discourses at will. There were a lot of things about this school that also tried to force me into alienation, despair, careerism, and anxiety. But I did get to spend four years reading what I wanted to and staying up late in the dorms discussing it. If I said something off topic or showed up late it was seen as a mark of an eccentric intellectual, not a problem to be controlled.
Most working class students of color have none of these privileges. They are expected to learn what the system tells them to learn and if they get bored or restless they are punished and stigmatized as defective.
Given that, I wonder: is there a connection between schools’ attempts to keep students on task and the state’s attempts to police and limit the movement of human bodies, especially bodies it encodes as black and brown? Should we be teaching students with ADHD to adapt to the routines of the capitalist empire, or should we be adapting the ways we learn so that youth can unleash their positive forces of deterritorialization? Maybe they’ll end up creating social movements that transform reality and free all of us from cubicles.
——————>>>
I explored some ways to embrace cognitive nomadism in a previous blog post, Freestyle Learning in the Rhizomatic Cypher. This includes suggestions for how to organize learning activities that build on the power of curious tangents, rather than attempting to herd students into fenced-off fields of study.
Tags: ADHD, Deleuze, Guttari, Nomadism
What if we renamed ADHD “cognitive nomadism”?
20 OctI recently read an interesting article on ADHD which suggested that the genes that cause it are a legacy of nomadic ancestors:
I am skeptical about this, given the long history of empires attempting to dominate nomadic peoples, and the roles of education and medicine in this domination. Will this research be used to further stigmatize and pathologize the descendants of nomads who have migrated to the US because their peoples and cultures were destroyed by U.S.-backed wars?
US Empire claims to be orderly, organized, and efficient. It encodes these characteristics as normal, able-bodied, white, sane, male, straight, professional, and healthy. People of color, queer people, gender non-conforming people, indigenous people, and people with disabilities are coded as the opposite of these traits. The system deems them a problem that must be contained like an Ebola epidemic so that they don’t contaminate the body politic.
When schools suggest students with ADHD should be medicated and taught to conform, are they helping students navigate daily life in the empire, or are they playing into this system of control, cutting off potential creativity and rebellion?
I’m wondering what the philosophers Deleuze and Guattari would say about ADHD. They are strong advocates of nomadic ways of thinking and living, and argue that nomadic practices are part of contemporary struggles for freedom. They claim nomadic tendencies exist not only among indigenous peoples but also in the heart of empires, destabilizing them. They say that all human beings have a tendency to deterritorialize, to roam outside of the settled concepts, routines, traditions, and institutions that shape us; they argue this is a crucial part of creative cultural production. Their work has been extended by decolonial, Marxist, queer, and anarchist theorists who aim to destabilize borders, empires, and fixed / frozen social identities. It has also been extended by people who see migration and the creation of diasporas as potential ways to break down and move beyond the constraints of capitalist nation states.
To be clear, I’m not trying to romanticize nomadic life, ADHD, or migration. All of these involve real struggles and real human longings for consistency, commitment, community, and self-organization. Deleuze and Guattari also recognized this when they said that every deterritorialization is also potential reterritorialization. I also don’t mean to deny the practical strategies people with ADHD use to survive day to day life in our society, or the importance of giving youth chances to learn these strategies.
I’m just saying that those genes that express traits labeled ADHD are not vestiges of savagery that must be remolded in the name of progress. They are important expressions of human biodiversity and neurodiversity that could help create new futures. Saying they are not adaptive to modern desk jobs implies that cubicles represent the end of history, humanity’s final resting place. What if nomadic impulses might help us all collectively wander and fight our way to something better? What if they are remnants of courage and curiosity that enable a future exodus from our overstressed, boring society?
The postmodern liberal arts education I received at a particularly progressive Ivy League university gave me the privilege to explore, to roam through concepts, genres, and discourses at will. There were a lot of things about this school that also tried to force me into alienation, despair, careerism, and anxiety. But I did get to spend four years reading what I wanted to and staying up late in the dorms discussing it. If I said something off topic or showed up late it was seen as a mark of an eccentric intellectual, not a problem to be controlled.
Most working class students of color have none of these privileges. They are expected to learn what the system tells them to learn and if they get bored or restless they are punished and stigmatized as defective.
Given that, I wonder: is there a connection between schools’ attempts to keep students on task and the state’s attempts to police and limit the movement of human bodies, especially bodies it encodes as black and brown? Should we be teaching students with ADHD to adapt to the routines of the capitalist empire, or should we be adapting the ways we learn so that youth can unleash their positive forces of deterritorialization? Maybe they’ll end up creating social movements that transform reality and free all of us from cubicles.
——————>>>
I explored some ways to embrace cognitive nomadism in a previous blog post, Freestyle Learning in the Rhizomatic Cypher. This includes suggestions for how to organize learning activities that build on the power of curious tangents, rather than attempting to herd students into fenced-off fields of study.
Tags: ADHD, Deleuze, Guttari, Nomadism