---

The diagnosis of ´Dyslexia´ and the medical problematisation of reading difficulties were almost unknown one hundred years ago, yet today the British Dyslexia Association estimates that up to ten per cent of the UK population may have some form of dyslexia, with numbers in the United States estimated to be as high as twenty per cent. The Government of Reading investigates how this problematisation developed and how a diagnostic category was shaped in response to this.

---

1. Introduction 2. Bio-Politics, Normalcy and the Numerical Plotting of the Population 3. Governing Readers from Limitation to Proliferation 4. Reading Difficulties Become a Medical Concern 5. The Technological Operation of Congenital Word-Blindness: Marking Some Differences as More Deserving Than Others 6. Psychological Explanations of Congenital Word-Blindness 7. The Problem of Producing Literate Subjects: Education and Specific Reading Difficulties 8. Conclusion

---

Tom Campbell is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Leeds, UK, where he is a member of The Bauman Institute, Centre for Health, Technologies and Social Practice and Centre for Disability Studies.

---