The Political Economy of Attention in the Age of Technocapitalism: Reconsidering Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) through Bernard Stiegler's Philosophy
Subject Areas :
Ali Vahdati Daneshmand
1
,
Mohammad َAmiri
2
1 -
2 - Department of Education, Faculty of Governance, Shahed university, Tehran, Iran
Keywords: Bernard Stiegler, attention, pharmakon, digital capitalism, cognitive proletarianization, education,
Abstract :
The proliferation of digital technologies and the emergence of the political economy of attention have transformed attention from a psychological phenomenon into a philosophical, educational, and political concern. This article seeks to explain the contemporary crisis of attention in the age of digital capitalism—a condition that is often interpreted within psychological and biological frameworks as Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD/ADHD)—through the theoretical perspective of Bernard Stiegler. It examines Stiegler's philosophy as a framework for understanding the relationship between technology, education, and technologically mediated processes of individuation. Employing conceptual analysis and documentary research, the study reconstructs and analyzes the central concepts of Stiegler's thought, including pharmakon, attention, care, grammatisation, transindividuation, and proletarianization, and explores their educational implications. The findings suggest that, for Stiegler, technology functions as a pharmakon, simultaneously possessing both therapeutic and destructive potentials. Under the dominance of platform capitalism and the political economy of attention, however, its destructive dimension has prevailed through the industrial capture of attention, the erosion of intergenerational transmission, the degradation of reflective and critical capacities, and ultimately the emergence of cognitive proletarianization. Consequently, educational institutions have increasingly lost their fundamental role in cultivating deep attention, transmitting cultural heritage, and fostering processes of individuation. In response, the article argues that activating the therapeutic potential of the pharmakon requires reconstructing institutions of care, strengthening nootechnics, redesigning educational policies, and redirecting digital technologies toward the cultivation of knowledge, deep attention, and collective responsibility.
American Psychiatric Association. (2022). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders. American Psychiatric Association Publishing.
Beller, J. (2006). The Cinematic Mode of Production: Attention Economy and the Society of the Spectacle. Dartmouth College Press.
Benjamin, W. (1968). Illuminations: Essays and Reflections (H. Zohn, Trans.; H. Arendt, Ed.). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Broudy, H. S. (1955). How Philosophical can Philosophy of Education be? The journal of Philosophy, 52(22), 612–622. https://doi.org/10.2307/2022169
Burbules, N. C., & Warnick, B. R. (2006). Philosophical Inquiry. In J. L. Green, G. Camilli, & P. Elmore (Eds.), Handbook of Complementary Methods in Education Research (pp. 489–499). Routledge.
Carr, N. (2020). The shallows: What the Internet is doing to our brains. WW Norton & Company.
Castellanos, F. X., & Tannock, R. (2002). Neuroscience of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: the search for endophenotypes. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 3(8), 617–628. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn896
Cohen, E. F., & Morley, C. P. (2009). Children, ADHD, and citizenship. J Med Philos, 34(2), 155–180. https://doi.org/10.1093/jmp/jhp013
Crogan, P., & Kinsley, S. (2012). Paying Attention: Towards a Critique of the Attention Economy. CULTURE MACHINE, 13.
Davenport, T. H., & Beck, J. C. (2001). The Attention Economy: Understanding the New Currency of Business. Harvard Business School Press.
Derrida, J. (1998). Of Grammatology (G. C. Spivak, Trans.). Johns Hopkins University Press.
Dillet, B. (2017). Proletarianization, Deproletarianization, and the Rise of the Amateur. boundary 2, 44(1), 79–105. https://doi.org/10.1215/01903659-3725881
Fitzpatrick, N. (2020). Questions concerning attention and Stiegler’s therapeutics. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 52(4), 348–360. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2019.1625330
Forrest, K. (2020). The problem of now: Bernard Stiegler and the student as consumer. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 52(4), 337–347. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2019.1654856
Foucault, M. (2001). Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (R. Howard, Trans.). Routledge.
Franck, G. (1999). The Economy of Attention. Telepolis.
Goldhaber, M. H. (1997). The Attention Economy and the Net. First Monday, 2. https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v2i4.519
Hayles, N. K. (2007). Hyper and Deep Attention: The Generational Divide in Cognitive Modes. Profession, 187–199.
Honkasilta, J., & Koutsoklenis, A. (2022). The (Un)real Existence of ADHD—Criteria, Functions, and Forms of the Diagnostic Entity [Original Research]. Frontiers in Sociology, Volume 7 - 2022. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2022.814763
Husserl, E. (2012). On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893–1917) (J. B. Brough, Trans.). Springer Netherlands.
James, W. (1891). The Principles of Psychology (Vol. 1). Henry Holt and Company.
Lemmens, P. (2011). ‘This System Does not Produce Pleasure Anymore’. An Interview with Bernard Stiegler. Krisis| Journal for Contemporary Philosophy, 31(1), 33–41.
Lemmens, P. (2014). Bernard Stiegler on agriculture as a technical system. Sustainable Agriculture Research, 3(3), 76–81. https://doi.org/10.5539/sar.v3n3p76
Mills, S. (2022). The scientific integrity of ADHD: A critical examination of the underpinning theoretical constructs [Review]. Frontiers in Psychiatry, Volume 13 - 2022. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.1062484
Natsiopoulou, E. (2025). Poisoned schools and automated students: The crisis of social reproduction. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 57(5), 410–423. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2024.2406016
Neisser, U. (1976). Cognition and Reality: Principles and Implications of Cognitive Psychology. W. H. Freeman.
Nilsson Sjöberg, M. (2018). Toward a Militant Pedagogy in the Name of Love: On Psychiatrization of Indifference, Neurobehaviorism and the Diagnosis of ADHD—A Philosophical Intervention. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 37(4), 329–346. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-018-9597-4
Simon, H. A. (1971). Designing Organizations for an Information Rich World. In M. Greenberger (Ed.), Computers, Communication, and the Public Interest (pp. 37–72). Johns Hopkins Press.
Simondon, G. (1989). L'individuation psychique et collective: à la lumière des notions de forme, information, potentiel et métastabilité. Aubier.
Sjöberg, M. N., & Dahlbeck, J. (2018). The inadequacy of ADHD: a philosophical contribution. Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties, 23(1), 97–108. https://doi.org/10.1080/13632752.2017.1361709
Stiegler, B. (1998a). Technics and Time: Disorientation (Vol. 2). Stanford University Press.
Stiegler, B. (1998b). Technics and Time: The Fault of Epimetheus (Vol. 1). Stanford University Press.
Stiegler, B. (2010a). For a New Critique of Political Economy. Wiley.
Stiegler, B. (2010b). Taking Care of Youth and the Generations. Stanford University Press.
Stiegler, B. (2011). Pharmacology of Desire: Drive-based Capitalism and Libidinal Dis-economy. New Formations, 72, 150–161. https://doi.org/10.3898/NEWF.72.12.2011
Stiegler, B. (2012). Relational Ecology And The Digital Pharmakon. CULTURE MACHINE, 13.
Stiegler, B. (2015). States of Shock: Stupidity and Knowledge in the 21st Century. Polity Press.
Stiegler, B., & Rogoff, I. (2010). Transindividuation. e-flux journal, 14.
Szasz, T. (1970). The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement. Harper & Row.
UK Government. (2026). New rules to protect children online. Retrieved from https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/fact-sheet-new-rules-to-protect-children-online/fact-sheet-new-rules-to-protect-children-online
Winnicott, D. W. (1982). Playing and Reality. Tavistock Publications.
Wu, T. (2017). The Attention Merchants: The Epic Struggle to Get Inside Our Heads. Atlantic Books.
Zimmerman, F. J., Christakis, D. A., & Meltzoff, A. N. (2007). Television and DVD/video viewing in children younger than 2 years. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med, 161(5), 473–479. https://doi.org/10.1001/archpedi.161.5.473
Zuboff, S. (2019). The age of surveillance capitalism: The fight for a human future at the new frontier of power, edn. PublicAffairs, New York.