Pleasure Consuming Medicine investigates the significance of the classification of drugs for conceptions of personhood in the context of consumer citizenship.It examines how drug discourses operate politically to sustain particular notions of personhood and organise bodies.As the normative conception of social life shifts to a discourse of consumer agency and active citizenship, it is argued, drugs come to describe the moral boundaries of a freedom configured around personal consumption.The thesis tracks the parallel rise of two discourses of drug mis/use from the 1970s -a discourse of 'drug abuse' and a discourse of 'patient compliance' -illustrating how these discourses bind personal agency to medical authority through a vocabulary of self-administration.It describes how illicit drugs are constructed as a sign and instance of excessive conformity to consumer culture, and how this excess is opportunistically scooped off and spectacularised to stage an intense but superficial battle between the amoral market and the moral state.Pleasure Consuming Medicine uses a theoretical frame developed from queer theory, corporeal feminism, governmentality studies and cultural studies to explore the political character of drug regimes, tracing some of the ramifications for sex, race, class, and citizenship.Then it turns to the field of gay men's HIV education to conceive some alternative and provisional vocabularies of safety.The thesis develops an argument on the exercise of power in consumer society, with the aim of contributing to cultural and critical understandings of consumption, embodiment, sex, health, and citizenship.It has been my privilege to have enjoyed the guidance, support and encouragement of many people over the course of this inquiry.Rosalyn Diprose took on supervision of this project at a difficult stage and I have benefited enormously from her kindness, patience, wisdom and advice.Helen Keane saw this thesis through many strange incarnations and offered invaluable clarification, encouragement, and heartening comprehension of the concerns it embodies.
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