Oral Presentation by Tove Gersitz¹
¹ Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Internationale Psychoanalytische Universität Berlin, Germany
TIME: Wednesday, 15 July, 10:30 – 12:00
Location: Room 2
Session: 10
Abstract
The concept of neurodiversity has gained momentum in popular culture and is increasingly referenced in psychological scientific literature. While it is often depicted as a subversive, critical and potentially even deconstructive paradigm, in my presentation I’m asking why the concept could achieve its current popularity and whether it can hold up to the expectations of subversion and inclusion. Initially, I’ll outline the changing understanding of the materiality of the psyche in popular neurodiversity and mental health discourses: Based on the assumption that the brain and its processes are increasingly reified (Ortega, 2009), I argue that the brain is constructed as an external, almost mechanical counterpart to the subject. However, in line with Gruber (2017) I assume that essentializing interpretations of neuroscientific research in popular science and culture are not simply a consequence of faulty science communication but instead fulfill specific societal functions. Contemporary concepts of the brain serve as a basis for new forms of subjectivity and corresponding subaltern identities (Rose & Abi-Rached, 2014). I will introduce the concept of neurodiversity and the neurodivergent subject position to explain how shifting understandings of the brain are used to justify dysfunctionality while still claiming a neurobiological aptitude for meeting capitalist demands. Additionally, this neurobiological selfhood lays a foundation for psychopolitical governmentality (Rau, 2010) by encouraging specific technologies of the self (Foucault, 2005) in the shape of individualized and neuroessentialist strategies to overcome the experience of alienation by finding and realizing one’s authentic self. Neurodivergent identities and the processes of their (trans)formation thus are entangled with self-monitoring and self-management within emotional capitalism (Illouz, 2023). The contribution concludes with a summary of how neurobiological subjectivities in neoliberal societies oscillate between internalizing and externalizing: While experiences of failure and dysfunction in the domains of work or relationships are largely internalized as a result of individual difference, this difference is in turn externalized by attributing it to an abstract yet tangible neurobiological third, which should be illuminated and controlled by implementing neurotype-specific technologies of the self.