On a summer night in 2007, the Azure Party, part of Sydney's annual
gay and lesbian Mardi Gras, is underway. Alongside the party
outfits, drugs, lights, and DJs is a volunteer care team trained to
deal with the drug-related emergencies that occasionally occur. But
when police appear at the gates with drug-detecting dogs, mild
panic ensues. Some patrons down all their drugs, heightening their
risk of overdose. Others try their luck at the gates. After
twenty-six attendees are arrested with small quantities of illicit
substances, the party is shut down and the remaining partygoers
disperse into the city streets. For Kane Race, the Azure Party drug
search is emblematic of a broader technology of power that
converges on embodiment, consumption, and pleasure in the name of
health. In "Pleasure Consuming Medicine," he illuminates the
symbolic role that the illicit drug user fulfills for the
neoliberal state. As he demonstrates, the state's performance of
moral sovereignty around substances designated "illicit" bears
little relation to the actual dangers of drug consumption; in fact,
it exacerbates those dangers.
Race does not suggest that drug use is risk-free, good, or bad,
but rather that the regulation of drugs has become a site where
ideological lessons about the propriety of consumption are
propounded. He argues that official discourses about drug use
conjure a space where the neoliberal state can be seen to be
policing the "excesses" of the amoral market. He explores this
normative investment in drug regimes and some "counterpublic
health" measures that have emerged in response. These measures,
which Race finds in certain pragmatic gay men's health and HIV
prevention practices, are not cloaked in moralistic language, and
they do not cast health as antithetical to pleasure.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
