To add to the list of questions suggested (for which I have no answers, even
though many are very thought provoking), I would add a few that concern a
certain difficulty I have to reduce the "bio-politics" of drugs to a matter of
managing un-productive drug consumers and saying that every "dominant"
discourse wants to discourage drug use. For I feel these two quite widely
accepted ideas do not permit to understand/analyse certain things. For
example, how - if one focuses on unproductrive consumers - do you understand
all the mechanisms put in place to ensure that athletes would'nt expand their
performance too much? And how do you analyze the - very legal!- system of
prescription/distribtution of drugs put in place through what one could call
the medical/pharmacological complex? I guess my concern is that if one focuses
on certain practices, one could make the claims identified - but if you look
at the field of intervention in the relations between people and drugs from
another angle you might see other things... again, I have no real answers but
these are difficulties I encountered writing my thesis on the subject: quite
truly, I did'nt know what to do with those 'things'!
François
> 1. Gaze isn't what you think it is. There are several reasons why drug
> dealers are not analogous to physicians, psychologists, or prison wardens.
> There is NO dominant discourse in modern society which encourages drug use.
> In drug abuse physicians see the decay of the body, psychologists see the
> decay of the mind, sociologists see a system which takes potentially
> productive workers and turns them into uproductive addicts or criminals, the
> legal scholar sees a vast an growing area of criminal activity which must be
> stopped.
though many are very thought provoking), I would add a few that concern a
certain difficulty I have to reduce the "bio-politics" of drugs to a matter of
managing un-productive drug consumers and saying that every "dominant"
discourse wants to discourage drug use. For I feel these two quite widely
accepted ideas do not permit to understand/analyse certain things. For
example, how - if one focuses on unproductrive consumers - do you understand
all the mechanisms put in place to ensure that athletes would'nt expand their
performance too much? And how do you analyze the - very legal!- system of
prescription/distribtution of drugs put in place through what one could call
the medical/pharmacological complex? I guess my concern is that if one focuses
on certain practices, one could make the claims identified - but if you look
at the field of intervention in the relations between people and drugs from
another angle you might see other things... again, I have no real answers but
these are difficulties I encountered writing my thesis on the subject: quite
truly, I did'nt know what to do with those 'things'!
François
> 1. Gaze isn't what you think it is. There are several reasons why drug
> dealers are not analogous to physicians, psychologists, or prison wardens.
> There is NO dominant discourse in modern society which encourages drug use.
> In drug abuse physicians see the decay of the body, psychologists see the
> decay of the mind, sociologists see a system which takes potentially
> productive workers and turns them into uproductive addicts or criminals, the
> legal scholar sees a vast an growing area of criminal activity which must be
> stopped.