Cultural Ecstasies

Drugs, Gender and the Social Imaginary

Ilana Mountian

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780415583831
• eBook ISBN: 9781136219030
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

In this important contribution to the field, Ilana Mountian critically analyses discourses surrounding drug addiction, drug prohibition, treatment and prevention, and highlights new ways of understanding the role that gender plays in the ethics of drug use across cultures.

The book analyses the discourses of religion, criminality and medicine, and shows how they, combined with key historical events, affect our views of drug use and drug users based on gender, race and class.

The book draws on research from a variety of fields to provide alternative conceptual and methodological perspectives on the subject, including:

• critical theory
• gender studies
• post-colonial studies
• psychoanalysis
• philosophy.

Cultural Ecstasies is an innovative study of drugs and addiction, and will be of great interest to students, researchers and professionals working in psychology, sociology, social work, health care, criminology, and allied disciplines.

1    Introduction

Taking a critical psychological approach, this deconstructionist account explores and informs elements of the social imaginary of drugs and gender, and intersections with sexuality, race, class and age. The analysis highlights the often contradictory and ambiguous definitions of drugs and addiction, and how these relate to broader ethical and moral concerns. This book is primarily a critical analysis on the theme of drugs and gender; by generating a wider field for debate, it contributes to more progressive social policies, highlighting key aspects to be taken in account in research.

This book aims first to provide theoretical frameworks for critical analysis and second to highlight critical insights into mainstream discourses on drugs, addiction and drugs users. For this aim, examples drawing on the history of drugs, drug treatment and drug policies will be utilised. Seen as social text, these will serve to highlight underlying key discursive foundations. Analysis of gender will work in two ways: I utilise gender as a means for deconstructing drugs and to unravel effects of drug discourses on gender. It is claimed that understandings of drugs, drug treatment and drug policies have to be seen in their specific social and political contexts; therefore I do not provide readymade answers to these viewpoints. Instead, I offer, on the one hand, an approach to deconstruct and build alternative discourses in this area, while, on the other hand, I call attention to key aspects in the fields of drugs that are often excluded in both conceptualisations of drugs and drug policies, such as gender and intersections with sexuality, class, race and age.

This approach is partly the result of my previous research undertaken in England (Mountian, 1999, 2004a, 2005b) and my clinical practice in the area of drug treatment. As a clinical psychologist in Brazil and given my experience as a visiting clinical psychologist in England and in France, I had witnessed the struggles of the drug addict and the wide range of procedures and explanations for addiction. Furthermore, I was puzzled by how societal views on this issue inform the use of drugs and contribute to define and maintain certain forms of identifications (of the addict, for example). I felt the need for critical perspectives to contrast with (which typically seemed restricted to) medical, legal and/or moralistic approaches.

By giving examples of discourses of a range of drugs, and in diverse contexts, I highlight how approaches to drugs appear in many instances individualistic, reductionist, self-evident and contradictory, and how these discourses are frequently polarised, oscillating between only good or bad, and often informed and produced by moral panics. Of course, I am also not ignoring the different effects of different drugs, as well as the quantity and frequency of use of subjects, but rather I am emphasising the societal views of specific uses of drugs. Further, in terms of drug treatment, the clinical practice indicates that each case should be seen individually, accounting for their social context.

In order to produce this critical account, I utilise contributions from critical psychology, critical theories, gender studies, feminist research, queer studies, post-colonial studies, philosophy and psychoanalysis. Philosophical perspectives and psychoanalytical notions are used in various ways in this book. Their main contribution is to provide the means for deconstructing taken-for-granted assumptions, bringing different perspectives to these debates. The encounter with gender perspectives and post-colonial studies provides both a theoretical background for a political agenda concerned with power inequalities, and to the role of deconstruction and challenge of naturalising and dominating categories in discourse. These include sexuality, race, class and age.

The classification of drugs as established by the World Health Organization includes all psychoactive substances, legal and illegal (tobacco, alcohol, anti-depressives, tranquillisers, amphetamines, marijuana, heroin, cocaine, etc.). Hence, in this book you will not find an emphasis on a specific drug, although some drugs are more discussed than others. Rather, I juxtapose different approaches to what is discursively stipulated as drugs in order to highlight how the cultural, social and political contexts define drugs. For example, alcohol is shown to have a variety of usages and meanings: as a recreational drug, medicine, food and sacred substance. This work draws on broad mainstream discourses of drugs in Western societies. It does not claim to generalise or restrict discourses of drugs, to those identified, but rather it highlights key discourses and their effects.

The definition of gender needs also to be clarified. Gender is not understood as a natural and biological predisposition, but rather as a performative process (Butler, 1993), in terms of what is socially expected from gender categories. This approach can be extended to address other power relationships, such as those surrounding race, age and class differences. In this book, although the main focus is on women, the categories identified should not be read as women’s categories, in the sense of being properties of women.

This deconstruction of discourses on drugs and gender therefore challenges essentialist approaches to what is understood as natural and/or moral categorisations. Moreover, taking gender into account provides two main resources for analysis: on the one hand, it allows us to look at how gender figures in the field of drugs and, on the other hand, understanding gender as a place of inequality broadens the discussion to include analysis of power relations within contemporary cultural-political practices.

The focus on the notion of the ‘social imaginary’ is used in this book to emphasise the importance of images, fantasies, desires, ideas and (mis)recognition, to the constitution of subjectivity. Although I am emphasising the importance of these aspects to the constitution of subjectivity, it is crucial to highlight that at no point is the individual (nor the notion of subjectivity) understood as separate from society, society in the radical sense, including language, history, culture, etc. Rather, the individual is intrinsically social.

The notion of the other will be employed in the analysis of drugs and drug users based on two main theoretical approaches: the Foucauldian tradition on otherness and Lacanian psychoanalytic insights into the imaginary other and the symbolic big Other. This work is also illustrated by an analysis of visual images in media and interviews from previous research.

The discursive object ‘drug’ is explored in this book as condensing a wide area of investigation, related to religious, medical, judicial, economic, political and cultural realms. Mainstream discourses on drugs are often situated in the interplay between medical and religious discourses, and consequent legislative imperatives, thereby allowing us to unravel ethical and moral aspects in which these discourses are embedded. Throughout this book, examples are given in order to illuminate and counter existing mainstream discourses, as a device to generate further debate. Although I do not provide prompt prescriptive answers to the questions raised within this book, I focus attention on the imaginary formations of drugs, drug users and gender as aspects that are typically overlooked. I believe these are vital aspects to be taken into consideration, since they also inform drug legislation and practices (e.g. forms of intoxication). Hence, this book offers a contribution towards mapping the way in which these aspects have been worked through, providing insights into drug policies.

The book is divided into seven chapters. Chapter 2 sets the conceptual frameworks for critical psychology and to the deconstruction proposed, that is, the notions of social imaginary and discourse and contributions from feminist research, queer studies and post-colonial studies. In Chapter 3, in order to contextualise the often-contrasting debates around drugs, key historical events are highlighted, providing insights into the meanings and social functions of drugs. It is important to note that the aim is not to trace a genealogy of drugs, but rather to highlight key discourses that provide the ground for the following analysis of the moral and ethical standpoints of health and drugs, focusing on the interplay of the racialised, classed and sexualised gendered formation of drugs and drug users.

These discourses can be seen in circulation in most Western countries, having similar discursive constructions (medical, religious and legislative discourses). I concentrate particularly on the UK and US history of drugs, as these have a major impact in policies worldwide, particularly on prohibition. The discourses highlighted in the book point to key aspects to be considered in future studies in this field, that is, the impact of religious, medical, political discourses, and the need to consider gender, sexuality, class and race, as well as the social and cultural contexts and consequent specificities of drug use for drug policies.

In Chapter 4, I critically analyse current definitions of drugs and addiction, attending both to their antagonistic definitions and the moral foundations of mainstream medical discourses. Two main aspects are emphasised here: specific understandings of ‘health’ and morality (Katz, 1997), and the production of hierarchical moral dichotomies within drug discourses, such as good and bad, natural and artificial, true and false, and accounting for the importance of classifying drugs as legal and illegal as defining the modern era of drug use (Xiberras, 1989). Here, I elaborate on the flexible notion of Pharmakon (as both remedy and poison, Derrida, 1997) and explore the notion of free will within drug discourses (Sedgwick, 1992).

Chapter 5, ‘Drug use and social imaginary’, addresses some of the aspects of the imaginary surrounding the drug user, which often circulate around the victim and the threat in discourse, drawing on Badiou’s (2001) analysis of ethics and the relation to ‘difference’, and on Foucault’s (1991) works on mechanisms of power and the formation of the other, I highlight aspects of the moral background of the war on drugs.

Chapter 6 concentrates on discourses of the female drug user. The categories of victim and threat and the notion of the other are analysed as being transposed on to the feminine, whereby discourses on drug use around weakness, uncontrollability, madness and dependency are highlighted, notions also typically feminised. From these perspectives, I analyse some visual images of women and drugs.

Moreover, I present an analysis of the association between women and drugs in which ‘sexual vulnerability’ and the relation with race figures in discourse. Here, the idea of nation plays an important role, in which women are posited as symbolically representing and reproducing nation (Yuval-Davis, 1997). Hence, the imaginary formation of the ‘public woman vs. woman in public’ (Kohn, 1992) has specific effects in relation to this field, being intrinsically related to the dynamics of (in)visibility (Ettorre, 1989). There are three aspects to this dynamic: women as being more visible (in relation to the social gaze), invisible women (e.g. drinking at home, medical drugs) (Littlewood, 1994; Ettorre and Riska, 1995), and how paradoxically this visibility produced the conditions for women’s use of drugs, seen at times as challenging social stereotypical roles. This social gaze is seen as highly sexualised, where discourses often circulate around the mother or mother-to-be (victim, childlike, innocent, bad mother) (asexual), prostitute (hypersexual) or homosexual.

In Chapter 7, I briefly discuss the impact of this specific social imaginary into drug policies, which often oscillate between punishment and treatment. I highlight the lack of research and treatment that take gender and sexuality as relevant, and the problems associated when punitive models are applied (e.g. losing guardianship of children, sterilisation – also for men in this case).

It is important to point out that the main objective of this book is to critically analyse mainstream discourses on drugs, unravelling ideological, moral and ethical values of these discourses. It aims to provide a broader analysis of the current debates on drug use that seem all too often to be framed by a moralistic standpoint that is presumed and unquestioned, and so uncontested and naturalised. In such a complex and controversial field, major intellectual and political manoeuvres are frequently required in order to escape subscribing to moralistic approaches such as good or bad, for such commitments to value judgements tend to foreclose the available range of analysis. Thus, I want to make clear that I do not ignore the suffering of the drug user, the circularity of addiction or the damage caused by some forms of intoxicationm but by situating these contemporary phenomena within their social climates and contexts, we can begin to reassess practical and policy approaches that avoid the widespread psychological stigmatisation and demonisation of drug users.

2 Conceptualising the social imaginary

Setting the theoretical ground

This book offers a critical approach to mainstream discourses on drugs, underlying discursive structures of societal practices, and locates the roles of discourses on drugs within these. This, then, is primarily a critical psychological work, in which I set to analyse societal discursive foundations, metaphysical dichotomies, ideological, moral and ethical standpoints, and so forth. A key claim of this book is that discourses on drugs reveal specific societal moral values and ethical standpoints.

By offering a critical approach to discourses on drugs, focusing on the social imaginary of drugs and its intersections with gender perspectives, contributions from different perspectives are required in order to access the different meanings and practices. In the drug field, there are a large number of academic approaches within this range. The book focuses mainly on the critical deconstruction of medical, sociological and psychological research. Douglas (1987), discussing anthropological research on alcohol, argues that anthropological approaches do not necessarily treat drinking as a problem, and this contrasts with the work of specialists in alcohol abuse who focus upon pathology, ‘their assumptions and methods are problem-oriented’. One of the effects of this kind of approach is that it can produce an exaggeration, which is evidenced by critical research (Douglas, 1987). This approach often produces individualistic analysis, risking pathologising the subject, and, by decontextualising drug use from society, it does not consider social structural imbalances, reproducing these very social dynamics, and maintaining the invisibility of specific groups (e.g. women, Ettorre and Riska, 1995). From this, it becomes clear that research on drugs is not value-free, but rather it expresses political and moral standpoints prevalent within this area.

Attempting to avoid individualising and/or pathologising approaches, this book proposes a debate on discourses on drugs and their transformations throughout history, treating the material as social text, including images available in the broad media and interviews from previous research (Mountian, 1999, 2004a). Visual texts provide important resources for critical analysis (Mountian 2005a, Mountian et al., 2011). Rose (2001) highlights how images are not only a product of the social context, rather they are also productive, having their own effects, (re)producing power relations. Taking into account the work of Barthes (1973) and Saussure (1974), this reading will be primarily based on discourse analytic approaches.

In this chapter, I present the main theoretical perspectives and epistemological background for this analysis, aiming to unravel understandings of meaning production, following a deconstructionist approach. I draw on a variety of contributions, including the fields of history (Berridge and Edwards, 1987; Escohotado, 1998; Musto, 1999), anthropology (Douglas, 1987; McKenna, 1992; MacRae, 1998), social theories (Bourdieu, 1977; Xiberras, 1989; Coomber, 1994, 1998; N. Rose, 1994; Illich, 1995; Klein, 1995) and feminist research on drug use (Kohn, 1992; McDonald, 1994; Ettorre and Riska, 1995; Campbell, 2000).

Epistemological perspectives

Critical research (Foucault, 2002/1969; Teo, 2005) and gender studies (feminist research and queer studies) have made clear that knowledge is not neutral, but rather the contextualisation of the epistemological background is paramount.

Harding (1986) argues on the importance of making explicit the epistemological background and the distinction between method, methodology and epistemology, that is, method relates to the techniques for gathering the research material, a technical device; methodology specifies the theoretical background for how the study should proceed; and epistemology refers to the philosophical perspective that enables to decide the type of possible knowledge and what can be known (e.g. the traditional exclusion of women as ‘knowers’) (also Maynard, 1994).

In this section, I present some key aspects of the epistemological approach employed in this book, and their methodological implications, and signal how this theoretical approach can be used for critical debates. As a critical psychological enquiry, these theoretical frameworks allow for deconstructing taken-for-granted assumptions, aiming to unravel meanings and significations through exploring social-historical contexts.

Castoriadis (1991) analyses philosophy by taking into account its social-historical location (in this case, focusing on the project of autonomy). He points out that philosophy, by creating self-reflective subjectivity, is a project of breaking closure. Nevertheless, philosophy can break the closure if it retains a gap. This gap does not produce a major break, but rather ‘it posits something, reaches results and may as well produce a closure’ (ibid.: 21).

This assertion connects with the approach utilised in this book in which, through this process of deconstruction, it aims to open up some ‘closures’ that mainstream perspectives on drugs evoke (e.g. through their presumed but implicit moral standpoints), and attempts to keep a gap.

In relation to this process of deconstruction of taken-for-granted assumptions, Žižek (1992) gives some insights through debating the hermeneutical perspective, in which preconceit (preconceptions) are already there, as ‘given’. Žižek highlights how the objective of the hermeneutical perspective is to keep visible the ‘contours of a ‘frame’, a ‘horizon’ that, by remaining invisible (by eluding the subject’s grasp), determines the field of vision. Hence, what can or cannot be seen is given ‘through a historically mediated frame of preconceits’ (ibid.: 15). Žižek reminds us that the term preconceit, in this sense, does not refer to a pejorative connotation, but it has a transcendental status; i.e. ‘it organises our experience into a meaningful totality’ (ibid.: 15). Therefore, in this sense, Žižek continues:

It involves an irreducible limitation of our vision, but this finitude is in itself ontologically constitutive: the world is open to us only within radical finitude. At this level, the impossibility of metalanguage equals the impossibility of a neutral point of view enabling us to see things ‘objectively’, ‘impartially’: there is no view that is not framed by a historically determined horizon of ‘preu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Conceptualising the social imaginary
• 3 Historical discourses of drugs
• 4 Discourses of addiction
• 5 Drug use and the social imaginary
• 6 Gender in the social imaginary of drugs
• 7 Drug policies
• Notes
• References
• Index