Crack Wars - LITERATURE ADDICTION MANIA (Paperback)

Avital Ronell asks why there is no culture without drug culture. She deals with the usual drugs and alcohol (and their celebrities: Freud's cocaine, Baudelaire's hashish, the Victorians' laudanum), and moves beyond them to addictions that are culturally accepted--an insatiable appetite for romance novels, for instance, and romance itself. or counterculture deeply saturated with drugs, but such modern cultures needs subcultures, and need drugs on every level. Culture defines itself, its classes, its power structures, and its economy in terms of how it allows and encourages drugs to circulate. If drugs are dangerous, that danger seems to increase their appeal for millions. If drugs are unnatural and addictive, gasoline is a drug. What is art but a kind of drug, and what is art criticism but a kind of criticism of drugs and drug-induced states? Avital Ronell asks why there is no culture without drug culture. cocaine, Baudelaire's hashish, the Victorians' laudanum), and moves beyond them to addictions that are culturally accepted--an insatiable appetite for romance novels, for instance, and romance itself. It is a commonplace of modern culture to presume that there is a subculture or counterculture deeply saturated with drugs, but such modern cultures need subcultures, and need drugs on every level. Culture defines itself, its classes, its power structures, and its economy in terms of how it allows and encourages drugs to circulate. If drugs are dangerous, that danger seems to increase their appeal for millions. If drugs are unnatural and addictive, gasoline is a drug. What is art but a kind of drug, and what is art criticism but a kind of criticism of drugs and drug-induced states? Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary takes up the problems of drugs and addiction in numerous ways, which Ronnell unpacks and presents as examples of the safe and unsafe. From Emma Bovary's romantic hallucinations to her suicide by arsenic, she moves through this realistic novel constantly reaching for the unreal. For Ronell, Emma Bovary

General

Imprint:	University of Illinois Press
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	February 2004
First published:	February 2004
Authors:	Avital Ronell
Dimensions:	235 x 152 x 5mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback
Pages:	192
ISBN-13:	978-0-252-07190-4
Categories:	Books > Language & Literature > Literature: history & criticism > Literary studies > From 1900 Books > Language & Literature > Literature: history & criticism > Novels, other prose & writers > General Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Interdisciplinary studies > Cultural studies > General Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social issues > Illness & addiction: social aspects > Drug addiction & substance abuse
LSN:	0-252-07190-5
Barcode:	9780252071904

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