Citation

Race K. Int. J. Drug Policy 2017; 49: 144-149.

Affiliation

Department of Gender & Cultural Studies, School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry, Main Quadrangle A14, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia. Electronic address: Kane.race@sydney.edu.au.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.drugpo.2017.07.019

PMID

28886888

Abstract

Within the field of drug and alcohol studies, researchers think about pleasure or against it; we analyse, consider, investigate, invoke or ignore it. The philosophically inclined may think of pleasure or write on it, but in each of these scenarios pleasure is kept at an arm's length while the researcher appears to remain unmoved - detached observers, objective scientists, conceptual experts, program directors, sharp critics, policy advocates - sober judges whose sovereignty is secured by the formal conventions of positivist research, established theory, institutional authority and/or disciplinary knowledge. This paper asks what happens when pleasure is allowed to emerge as a constitutive element in the relations of drug and alcohol research. What happens when we conceive our work as thinking with pleasure, rather than simply researching pleasure or thinking about it? I return to the later work of Foucault, reading it alongside conceptions of the experiment drawn from Science and Technology Studies, arguing that both the pleasures of drug consumption and drug research might be conceived more generatively as mutually implicated in events.

Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Language: en

Keywords

Experiments; Foucault; Pleasure; Problematization; Queer theory; Science and Technology Studies