Spectralities of ADHD: hauntological diagnosis amidst agency, politics and pedagogies

ABSTRACT

Hauntology has become an increasingly alluring concept in social sciences to reflect upon everyday life and how subjects dwell upon scenarios pervaded not only by the potency of the actual but also the haunting of the past and the virtual. Drawing on the concept of ‘hauntology’, we inquire about recurring temporalities and spectrality themes concerning the ‘controversial’ diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in Chile. Using participant observation and in-depth interviews with health practitioners, teachers, school staff, diagnosed children, and their peers from 3-year-long research, we examine how the performance of the diagnosis by clinicians at times can produce a modification of the temporality of the diagnosed children from that moment forth. Amidst tension created by educational policies, ideas of well-being, pedagogical practices, and everyday living, the diagnosis keeps repeating its agentic capacity while resisting its decay, becoming ever-present and actual. Once cast, the diagnosis acts as a repeating force that can shape every experience, cancelling the possibility for the child to become different by unfolding out of the diagnosis.

KEYWORDS:

• Hauntology
• care
• ADHD
• diagnoses
• mental health

Acknowledgements

We thank the interview participants for their generous contributions to this research. This article was written with support of the Millennium Institute for Care Research (MICARE), Santiago, Chile, supported by the ANID Millennium Science Initiative Program (ICS2019_024).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo (ANID), under the grant 11190285, and by ANID Millennium Science Initiative Program, grant: ICS2019_024.