Self Fashioning
- Mar 8, 2022
- 3 min read
Is experience necessary to see?
"People with ADHD never get a rest due to their distractions. At least give them a break. Be kind and most importantly... Be patient."
Storytelling is a useful tool for sharing information and creating meaning within a community. We create stories to make sense of the world and tell them to encourage others to not only share in those same sentiments, but to also pass those sentiments on to future generations. You might think it odd to compare fantastics tales of witches and dragons to first person retellings of life during a global pandemic, but in reality, our capacity to relate to and understand stories, no matter their context, relies on the strength of our perception.
You see, we learn based on experience, and in our experiences we not only see, we discern. Perception is an ongoing, learned process of the human mind. Perceptual-cognitive processes are physiological, but also personal in that they help to shape our own understanding of the world and our perceptual self with a will, orientation, and style of its own. Taking the personal aspect into account, I'd like to visit the above video titled A Day in the Life with ADHD.
In this nearly six minute video, Charleston shares his daily routine through the perspective of a first person camera to both emphasize relatability and minimize distance between himself and the viewer. While seemingly uneventful, tiny details such as abrupt transitions and repetitive dialogue call to attention the impact ADHD imposes on someone’s life such as time perception, inattentiveness, difficulty focusing, forgetfulness, and insomnia. The video ends with a call for understanding and patience from the neurotypical community.
Being disabled is to be “visually conspicuous while politically and socially erased,” but because ADHD and the depression and anxiety which often accompany it are invisible disabilities, formulating the visual component is then often left in the hands of mass media. Digital storytelling like these "provides context and technical tools ‘to form adaptive responses’ regarding people’s lived experiences, ‘both in its immediate aftermath and over time, possibly preventing the trauma cycle from continuing’."
For the neurotypical viewer, certain aspects of Charleston’s video might go undetected, but for the neurodiverse viewer with ADHD, the scattered clutter, ringing in the ear, and success through hyperfocus are in fact very personal. Indeed, one can even call these details “normal,” and this is what the realistic rhetoric model seeks to convey. In this visualization, though certain effects are exaggerated for emphasis, Charleston establishes a personal connection with the viewer and in doing so urges them toward social action (in this case, to exercise kindness and patience toward him and, by extension, others with ADHD). From a compositional standpoint, placing the viewer within a first person perspective is “self fashioning”; that is to say, in controlling the narrative, Charleston challenges the audience’s own. Here, the viewer cannot stare at the subject. The viewer cannot “register the perception of difference” or “give meaning to impairment” to the person behind the camera, because, in theory, the person behind the camera is themself. Instead, the viewer can only take responsibility through a perceived form of social interchange.
Sources:
Hammond, S. P., Cooper, N., & Jordan, P. (2021). Mental health, identity and informal education opportunities for adolescents with experience of living in state care: a role for digital storytelling. Cambridge Journal of Education, 51(6), 713–732. https://doi.org/10.1080/0305764x.2021.1919057
Sacks, O. (1993, May 3). TO SEE AND NOT SEE. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1993/05/10/to-see-and-not-see
Snyder, S. L., Brueggemann, B. J., & Thomson, R. G. (2002). Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities (First Edition (US) First Printing ed.). Modern Language Association.
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