Neoliberalism, external evaluation and the invention of ADHD: a foucauldian analysis

Abstract

This work aims to articulate the practices of external endorsement, neoliberalism and the propagation of new non-learning disorders. Let us initially trace Foucault’s analyzes of neoliberalism to indicate
how this form of economic and political rationality consists in the production of a surveillance State with a view to establishing and regulating two mechanisms that coincide in the most diverse social contexts. Next, we address the practices of external, long-scale and census-based assessment, in their brief history, in their functioning and in their partnerships, as one arm of the year of neoliberalism. Finally, we indicate how the new
non-learning disorders, especially Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), consist of the formation of a psychiatric device capable of producing enormous mechanisms of exclusion in concurrent dynamics fueled by the rationalization of two validation processes external.