Abstract What does it mean to diagnose a literary work with attention deficit disorder (ADD)? This article traces how US literary minimalism came, in the late twentieth century, to be understood as a literary counterpart to the new diagnostic category of ADD. Pursuing some links between literary criticism and the third volume of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the article shows how minimalism was seen to resemble the ADD patient because both were defined in terms of a descriptive surface that yielded no depths for expert excavation. Engaging with recent debates on the relative function and value of description and interpretation in literary studies, the article asks whether the notion of an ADD literary aesthetics, grounded in critical disability studies, might provide a route out of the dichotomy of suspicious analysis and reparative description. To pursue this question, the article performs a close reading of Mary Robison’s Why Did I Ever (2001), a novel narrated by Money Breton, a woman with an ADD diagnosis. Drawing on the critical disability studies concept of cripistemology, the article shows how Robison’s novel both dismantles the trope of minimalism’s attention deficit and demands a reformulation of the relationship between writing and diagnosis.

中文翻译：

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极简主义的注意力缺陷：分心、描述和玛丽·罗宾逊的《我为什么会这样》

摘要 诊断一部文学作品患有注意力缺陷障碍 (ADD) 意味着什么？本文追溯了美国文学极简主义如何在 20 世纪后期被理解为新诊断类别 ADD 的文学对应物。追求文学批评与《精神疾病诊断和统计手册》第三卷之间的一些联系，文章展示了极简主义如何被视为与 ADD 患者相似，因为两者都是根据描述性表面定义的，没有产生专家挖掘的深度。结合最近关于文学研究中描述和解释的相对功能和价值的辩论，文章询问基于批判性残疾研究的 ADD 文学美学的概念是否，可能会提供一条摆脱可疑分析和修复性描述二分法的途径。为了追问这个问题，本文仔细阅读了玛丽·罗宾逊的《我为什么会这样》（2001 年），这是一部由患有 ADD 诊断的女性 Money Breton 讲述的小说。文章借鉴了批判学的批判性残疾研究概念，展示了罗宾逊的小说如何消除极简主义注意力缺陷的比喻，并要求重新阐述写作与诊断之间的关系。