In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Modernism/modernity 11.2 (2004) 360-361



[Access article in PDF]
High Anxieties: Cultural Studies in Addiction . Janet Farrell Brodie and Marc Redfield, eds. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002. Pp. 232. $60.00 (cloth); $24.95 (paper).

Nietzsche's famous quip, "Who will ever relate the whole history of narcotica?" "—It is almost the history of 'culture,' of so-called high culture,"may have been "untimely" for the fin de siècle Nietzsche was addressing, but seems fully resonant for our own end of the millennium. In the past decade or so, the topic of "narcotica"—of drugs, and their cultural meaning—has preoccupied a large range of scholars, from philosophers to social historians and cultural critics. Among the many contributions to the growing field of addiction studies (to name yet another offshoot in cultural studies) is the volume of essays edited by Janet Farrell Brodie and Marc Redfield, High Anxieties . Like its counterpart, High Culture : Reflections on Addiction and Modernity, edited by Anna Alexander and Mark S. Roberts, also published in 2002, High Anxieties originates inthe conference on "Addiction and Culture" held in Claremont, California, in 1996.

In their introduction to High Anxieties, Marc Redfield (who also organized the Claremont conference) and Janet Farrell Brodie propose a sweeping overview of the multiple intersections between the concepts of addiction and culture, starting with the roots of the two words, the Latin colere, and addicere. While the abstract notions of "culture" and "cultivation" have a long tradition in English, "addiction," in the sense of "attachment" or "devotion to a person or cause," disappeared from use early on. It was only at the beginning of the twentieth-century, when age-old drugs, such as opium and hashish, and new drugs, such as morphine, were redefined within a new scientific paradigm, that "addiction" acquired its present meaning: "compulsive habit or use." As the authors point out, in both its historicity and its cultural specificity (toxicomanie, for instance, the French equivalent of "addiction," has its own history), the concept of addiction is a cultural one. The essays collected in the volume are meant to develop and illustrate this point.

The first chapter, "Constructions of Addiction," includes an article by Stacey Margolis, which reexamines the ghoulish possession narratives of late-nineteenth-century authors like Arthur Conan Doyle and Bram Stoker. Possession, like addiction, invites a redefinition of the subject, and its free will, which in turn creates a tension, if not a barrier, between the position of the individual, and society as a whole. The interesting point that Margolis makes is that rather than reflecting the growing consumerism of modern societies, the addict represents an exception "in terms of the subject-centered discourse of the market" (21). It is the drug itself (the "desiring object" that takes possession of the subject. Moreover, Margolis argues, British versions of "psychic vampirism" express Victorian anxieties over sexuality, while their American counterparts are often fables about repressed genealogies ("Negro blood") and racial identity. Although these narratives of self-erasure may seem to contradict the logic of the market, they could also reinforce it. One could argue, in Jean Baudrillard's fashion, that it is the market itself that "simulates" its own exceptions, satisfying not only particular craves and desires (under the illusion of free agency), but also the desire of being freed from desire itself. To use Nietzsche again, in our postmodern age, the market is perfectly able to provide both "excitement" and "anesthesia."

In the same chapter, Timothy Melley's essay focuses on William Burroughs's Naked Lunch, which exemplifies, according to the author, a certain anxiety or panic over human agency, and its ability to make rational choices. In Burroughs's work "junk" is personified, and displaces human relations. The self turns against itself, and the alien substance, like a cyber virus, takes control over the disabled mind. Postmodern interpretations of this phenomenon notwithstanding, philosophically, the problem of knowledge and its control is at least as old as Descartes's "evil genius," who could trick humans into fanciful beliefs. It is a painfully relevant problem, too, not only...

pdf

Share