Relationär pedagogik - för ett sannare liv: En essäistisk sammanläggning om dys/funktionell uppfostran: exemplet ADHD

Abstract

The present dissertation is a complitation thesis composed of four published articles and a substantial introduction. The writing style of the introduction is essayistic. The overarching leitmotif is to propose a pedagogical argument for the idea that we need to live otherwise than we live today, if the aim is to live a good, as in a more true, life; i.e. so as to reach eudaimonia through the practice of padeia. The method used is threefold but still unified: it includes the digging mole, the philosophical owl, and the pedagogical eagle. Based on a critical examination of the diagnosis of ADHD (and closely related diagnoses), it is argued that the well-known diagnosis of ADHD is not as clearcut as the dominant “neuropsychiatric” paradigm would have it. This dominant paradigm generally assumes that an increased group of citizens suffers from a neurogenetic “deficit” and “disorder”, and that this group is best managed by medical and behaviorist models of “care” – in the thesis referred to as neuro-behaviorism. In the thesis it is argued that the diagnosis of ADHD (and similar diagnoses) is based on modern sophistry, which forms a negative identity-logic and a bio-pedagogic that results in the constitution, and instrumental treatment, of the (negative category) dysfunctional Other(s). The analysis shows that the dominant neuropsychiatric paradigm is irrational from a pedagogical point of view. Yet, this dominant paradigm is often referred to as rational. The analysis also shows that the diagnosis of ADHD belongs to a paradigm which is not only irrational, but also injust, inpure, evil, and violent. This result is primarly based on theoretical arguments developed in dialogue with thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Karen Barad, Michel Serres, Baruch Spinoza, and not least the philosopher Alain Badiou. An important argument driving the thesis, which is based on Badiou’s mathematical ontology, is that the diagnosis of ADHD stems from a paradigm that presupposes finite ways of thinking about what it means to be(come) human in an “in-human” world. Accordingly, the thesis makes for a pedagogical-philosophical critique of the diagnosis of ADHD, but at the same time it formulates a pedagogical alternative beyond the individual diagnosis. Against the dominant techno-positivist (therefore relativist) and pragmatic (therefore non-ontological) paradigm, a differently conceived pedagogical rationality is suggested. This pedagogical rationality is fundamentally relational; the relational alternative suggested is rational and indeeed materialistic. A main ontological axiom that the pedagogical alternative suggested draws from, is that if “the One” is not, then nothing is. This also means that Badiou’s mathemathically based ontology makes it possible to deconstruct every effect of oneness; the ontologically based axiom that there is no a priori “Other”. Yet, what there is (on the level of ontology) is a being that is equivalent with pure multiplicity or infinite alterity named void and symbolized with Ø. The thesis argues that in the void/Ø lies a potential to live a (more) true life. Further it is argued that void/Ø holds a pedagogical potential, via the unique encounter, to make the world exist from the perspective of Two rather than from the perspective of One (the dominant order). It is argued that the place where this unique encounter can take place is the so-called Two-scene of love, and that it is the pedagogue’s “slave-duty” in the world to make room for the Two-scene of love. The thesis closes with the rethorical question if the pedagogue, through a decisive decision, should act militant – as in go many miles – following the universal idea that it is possible for everyone to live a more true life, or if we, as pedagogical subjects, should continue to re/produce a society that through quasi-diagnostics renders equality an in-existent reality.