-Caveat Lector-
Towards a Rhetorical Genealogy of the War on Drugs
A Work in Progress by Bernardo Alexander Attias
------------------------------------------------------------
Contents:
Introduction to Rhetorical Genealogy
The Assumptions of Drug Hysteria
1. Opium
2. Cannabis
3. Hallucinogens
4. Cocaine
5. MDMA
Links to Related Web Sites
Drugs and the CIA
Exposing the Drug Warriors
------------------------------------------------------------
This site was mentioned in the September 1997 issue of High
Times! (p. 30)
This site was also mentioned at smokedot on November 15,
2000!!
(maybe I should update it soon!)
------------------------------------------------------------
I mean, I don't know if it's good, I don't know if it's
right, but it sure is good. And I was born to do it, I've
been trying to do it all my life, and I never knew it.
Someday you're gonna come into a room, and you're gonna see
this funny-looking thing, a piece of flesh clutching into a
naked console, and you're gonna stop and stare, because you
won't be sure where the flesh stops and the circuits begin.
They'll be, like, melted into each other, and some of the
console'll be as alive as flesh and some of the flesh'll be
dead as console, and that'll be me. All of that'll be me.
[1]
It ain't right but it sure is good. Watching junkies shoot
themselves up with slow death in an abandoned warehouse on
Chicago's west side I think of Pat Cadigan's cyberpunk
antihero permanently jacking himself into artificial
reality, leaving the meat of his body behind to become pure
information in a worldwide cybernetic circuit. The
difference between the electronic experience described in
Cadigan's novel and the chemical experience of the heroin
addict is both discursive and material, but it is the
discursive difference that defines the experience of the
drug user as illegitimate and a threat to society and the
"techno-cowboy" as at worst an antisocial computer geek.
The material difference is one of technology: the
artificial reality hacker in the novel "shoots up" with
bioelectronic technology whereas the junkie prefers a
chemical technology.
This comparison points to an extremely difficult problem in
any analysis of the War on Drugs -- that is, a question of
definition. What exactly is a "drug"? In the Ph�drus,
Socrates compares the written word to a drug (pharmakon).
This comparison is extremely important in the context of my
argument, for this paper is not about drugs but about the
discourse of drugs. Rather than attempting a delimiting
definition of the term, my purpose is to analyze the ways
in which the term and the various substances it denotes
have been imbued discursively with certain affective
contents throughout history. Thus I will purposefully avoid
defining the term except to put it in the context of
Derrida's use of the term in "Plato's Pharmacy":
This pharmakon, this "medicine," this philtre, which acts
as both remedy and poison, already introduces itself into
the body of the discourse with all its ambivalence. This
charm, this spellbinding virtue, this power of fascination,
can be -- alternately or simultaneously -- beneficent or
maleficent. The pharmakon would be a substance -- with all
that the word can connote in terms of matter with occult
virtues, cryptic depths refusing to submit their
ambivalence to analysis, already paving the way for alchemy
-- if we didn't have eventually to come to recognize it as
antisubstance itself: that which resists any philosopheme,
indefinitely exceeding its bounds as nonidentity,
nonessence, nonsubstance; granting philosophy by that very
fact the inexhaustible adversity of what funds it and the
infinite absence of what founds it.[2]
The pharmakon as antisubstance is the topic of this paper
-- the discourse surrounding drugs is the substance of my
research. In this genealogy I will attempt to probe the
points at which what has been written about drugs resists
previous historical philosophemes about drugs and thus
initiates a significant change in the discursive formation.
In a sense this project is an antihistory of an
antisubstance -- rather than search for historical
continuities and commonalities I will be paying attention
to "ruptures, thresholds, and changes in direction."[3] In
this project I am heavily indebted to the work of Michel
Foucault, whose later project was precisely that of
genealogy. I will briefly discuss some of the
presuppositions of genealogy as a practice of (re)writing
histories before turning to the work of writing the history
at hand. My goal in writing this history is to theorize the
relationship between the intentional use of chemical
substances to modify an individual's bodily chemistry and
the medical and legal constructions of the social and
institutional interests at stake in such individual
practice. My approach to this topic will be to analyze the
discursive constructions of the drug and its users in the
media and the legal and medical communities. I will be
looking for institutional interests that inform the
discourse in an attempt to theorize the relationship
between structural power and the individual body.
------------------------------------------------------------
Introduction to Rhetorical Genealogy
------------------------------------------------------------
Friedrich Nietzsche's conflation of truth and power[4]
marked a critical turn in philosophy towards the hodgepodge
of contemporary intellectual thought currently described as
"postmodernity."[5] This conflation is a key assumption of
postmodern thought, and points usefully in the direction of
historian as rhetorician. Nietzsche argued persuasively
that the assumptions of knowledge-production that have
guided the history of ideas are essentially deployments of
discursive power rather than unmaskings of the "truth." In
the second "untimely meditation," Nietzsche laments that
modern intellectuals are dependent upon an unattainable
ideal of "objectivity," and describes the resulting
cultural formation as fruitless and interior:
Knowledge, taken in excess without hunger, even contrary to
need, no longer acts as a transforming motive impelling to
action and remains hidden in a certain chaotic inner world
which that modern man, with curious pride, calls his unique
"inwardness" ... Our modern culture is ... no real culture
at all, but only a kind of knowledge about culture... and
so the whole of modern culture is essentially internal: on
the outside the bookbinder has printed something like
"Handbook of Inner Culture for External Barbarians."[6]
Foucault has employed this assumption throughout his
genealogies, arguing that "power produces knowledge ...
power and knowledge directly imply one another; that there
is no power relation without the correlative constitution
of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not
presuppose and constitute at the same time power
relations."[7] Knowledge is not some separate sphere
outside of everyday power relationships; rather, knowledge
is an exercise of power through the codification of power
relationships. At one point in time it was common
"knowledge" that dark-skinned people were inferior to
light-skinned people; this "knowledge" had material effect
in perpetuating power relationships. The kidnapping and
enslavement of African blacks and the genocide of American
natives were the material results of this "knowledge" in
this country. The one constant in the progress of knowledge
throughout history is the exercise of power as domination;
"Humanity," Foucault argues, "does not gradually progress
from combat to combat until it arrives at universal
reciprocity, where the rule of law finally replaces
warfare; humanity installs each of its violences in a
system of rules and thus proceeds from domination to
domination."[8]
This conception of history leads the genealogist to a
practice of historical writing as discursive intervention;
the rules by which domination is maintained are subverted
through the seizure of their means of production, i.e., the
historical narrative. Because all history is
interpretation, "[t]he role of genealogy is to record its
history: the history of morals, ideals, and metaphysical
concepts, the history of the concept of liberty or of the
ascetic life; as they stand for the emergence of different
interpretations, they must be made to appear as events on
the stage of historical process." (NGH, 152) The
genealogist approaches historical knowledge as the general
approaches warfare, for s/he realizes that "[t]he successes
of history belong to those who are capable of seizing these
rules, to replace those who had used them, to disguise
themselves so as to pervert them, invert their meaning, and
redirect them against those who had initially imposed them;
controlling this complex mechanism, they will make it
function so as to overcome the rulers through their own
rules... [I]nterpretation is the violent or surreptitious
appropriation of a system of rules, which in itself has no
essential meaning, in order to impose a new direction, to
bend it to a new will, to force its participation in a
different game." (NGH 151-2) Gilles Deleuze's conception of
"nomadic thought" characterizes the role of the
genealogist: "[Nietzsche] made thought into a machine of
war -- a battering ram -- into a nomadic force."[9]
Of course, genealogy is not simply a matter of writing new
histories to reflect the historian's stake in political
struggles. One could easily object to such a project that
even if truth is power, there is a real world "out there,"
however inaccessible through language, to which the
exercise of the power of truth must relate. Thus the
genealogist is dealing with materials present in
traditional histories, but s/he is specifically cognizant
of her/his work as an interpretation, and attempts to
uncover what the discourses of historical knowledge hide
from themselves. The genealogist works with what is
available, and "re-reads the surface of cultural activity
to find a meaning in it different from that which it seems,
itself, to offer and approve. Realignment of cultural
phenomena available publicly discloses the lines of force
in a culture organized towards certain ends and proceeding
through certain transformations. And genealogical
redistribution of surface fragments, not only demystifies
the veiling, legitimating ideologies of a system, but
produces a new reading which is a more convincing
asymptotic approximation of the truth of the matter."[10]
------------------------------------------------------------
The Assumptions of Drug Hysteria
------------------------------------------------------------
[I]t is this life of the memory that the pharmakon of
writing would come to hypnotize: fascinating it, taking it
out of itself by putting itself to sleep in a monument....
Letting itself get stoned {m�dus�e} by its own signs, its
own guardians, by the types committed to the keeping and
surveillance of knowledge, it will sink down into lethe,
overcome by non-knowledge and forgetfulness .... For
writing has no essence or value of its own, whether
positive or negative. It plays within the simulacrum. It is
in its type the mime of memory, of knowledge, of truth,
etc.[11]
The alteration of mood and mental state through the
ingestion of chemicals has a history at least as old as
human civilization. What follows is a rather eccentric
attempt to narrate portions of this history with a view to
the institutional appropriation of the discourses
surrounding chemical manipulation of the body. The writing
of which Derrida writes, the pharmakon, is my object of
study. As he notes above, it is pure simulacrum, with no
material essence; yet, this simulacrum is the basis of
historical memory, of knowledge, of truth, and hence, of
material power.[12] In writing this narrative I will be
attempting a partial genealogy of the changing
relationships among institutions and between those
institutions and the individual body. It is my contention
that the discursive formation surrounding the concept "drug
abuse" has been delimited and constructed in such a manner
as to allow the individual subject (however overdetermined
her/his subjectivity may be)[13] minimal control over the
chemistry of his/her body.
The purpose of this genealogy is to offer a challenge to
the official narrative of the past decade, which has firmly
established several assumptions in the public discourse.
These assumptions have become invisible as assumptions;
they have become truths in Nietzsche's sense of "illusions
about which one has forgotten that this is what they
are."[14] I hope in this narrative to spell out the places
where some of these assumptions became fixed into the
discursive formation; first, however, it is necessary to
examine two of the critical assumptions from a theoretical
standpoint. The first of these is that drugs are dangerous,
addicting, and probably deadly. The second is that drug
abuse is a key factor in the increasing crime rate. Drug
abusers themselves are criminals, some will kill or steal
to get a fix, and drug use thus rips apart the social
fabric.
The term "drugs" has been imbued with strong affective
content in American culture, and it is difficult to
establish a precise definition that encompasses only those
substances referred to in popular media concerning drug
abuse. It is clear that when one mentions "drug abuse" s/he
is not talking about the forcible injection of mental
patients with neuroleptics such as chlorpromazine or
haloperidol. Despite the known harmful effects of these
substances,[15] these are considered "antipsychotic agents"
by the medical community and "medicine" by the lay
population. Additionally, "drug abuse" does not refer to a
patient's physical addiction to chemicals such as morphine,
dilaudid, or valium, if prescribed in a hospital. These,
again, are "medicines" designed to help, not harm, the
patient. And while a person addicted to heroin is clearly
abusing drugs, a person addicted to methadone is just as
clearly seeking treatment to stop abusing drugs.
The statement that "drugs are dangerous" is ridiculous from
a purely literal standpoint. A pound of arsenic is no more
dangerous than a pound of lettuce -- both are merely inert
substances. The issue of physical or mental injury is only
relevant when the substance is ingested into a living body
, and all substances are toxic to the human body at some
dose level. "Heroin, cocaine, and marijuana pose no
problems for those who do not take them, and unlike the
currently fashionable psychiatric drugs, no one is forced
to take them."[16] Of course, drugs are meant to be
ingested, not to sit on the shelf. But their dangers must
be balanced by their benefits; after all, there is an
entire medico-pharmaceutical establishment dedicated to the
proposition that drugs are helpful and beneficial. One
should be leery of any foreign substance introduced into
the body, rather than developing a morbid fear of some
substances and a blind tolerance of others. I do not
contest the fact that drugs can injure or kill those using
them. I do, however, take issue with the hypocrisy that
allows hysterical fear of some chemicals such as THC while
avoiding even a mild skepticism concerning much more
dangerous chemicals such as alcohol, valium, or Demerol.
Derrida points out that "Plato is suspicious of the
pharmakon in general, even in the case of drugs used
exclusively for therapeutic ends, even when they are
wielded with good intentions, and even when they are as
such effective. There is no such thing as a harmless
remedy. The pharmakon can never be simply beneficial." (99)
Our society should share Plato's suspicions concerning all
drugs rather than being terrified of some while accepting
of others.
But the power of this assumption, drilled into Americans
daily in increasingly apocalyptic television commercials
and news stories, lies in its ability to personify the
inert substance and imbue it with agency. When "drugs"
become this omnipotent demon with the power to drag the
unsuspecting victim into addiction, crime, and death, it
becomes rational to "wage war" on the demon. The metaphor
of a "war on drugs" in itself comes to justify the massive
use of actual military force to combat the worldwide
metaphysical threat, as in the case of the invasion of
Panama or the National Guard deployment to marijuana
fields. Thus the metaphor gathers material reality -- there
is a very real war on drugs going on today.
The notion that "drugs are addicting" requires some
elaboration. Physical addiction, in medical terms, applies
to very few drugs, notably alcohol and the opiates. One who
develops a physical addiction to heroin quite simply needs
the drug to survive. When the drug is withdrawn from the
body, the individual becomes violently ill. Thus methadone
centers attempt to wean heroin addicts off their drug of
choice by providing the system a different opiate to become
addicted to. Psychological addiction, on the other hand, is
a more complex phenomenon, applying to drugs such as
marijuana and cocaine. William S. Burroughs dramatizes the
distinction in comparative notes on heroin and cocaine in
Naked Lunch: "Only excuse for this tired death route is THE
KICK when the junk circuit is cut off for the non-payment
and the junk-skin dies of junk-lack and overdose of time
... It is clear that junk is a
Round-The-World-Push-an-Opium-Pellet-with-Your-Nose-Route..."[17]
He continues: "We are getting some C on RX at this time.
Shoot it in the mainline, son. You can smell it going in,
clean and cold in your nose and throat then a rush of pure
pleasure right through the brain lighting up those C
connections. Your head shatters in white explosions. Ten
minutes later you want another shot ... you will walk
across town for another shot. But if you can't score for C
you eat, sleep and forget about it. This is a yen of the
brain alone, a need without feeling and without body,
earthbound ghost need, rancid ectoplasm swept out by an old
junky coughing and spitting in the sick morning." (19)
While psychological addiction is still addiction, it is not
nearly as debilitating as physical addiction. Additionally,
our society hosts a number of psychological addictions that
are seemingly far removed from the drug crisis; television
and sports being only two examples.[18]
The last issue of crime and the threat to the social fabric
is undoubtedly "true" in the sense that one can identify
material conditions that correspond to this discursive
deployment. Addicts do steal to support their habits, and
the prevalence of "drug-related" crime and violence is more
than simply a textual concoction. Yet it also has rather
obvious origins in the discursive formation -- drug use
itself is a crime; therefore, ipso facto, drug users are
criminals. There is more than semantics to my argument here
-- by defining drug use as a criminal activity, the state
ensures the creation of an underground of criminal activity
that is best maintained through connections with other
criminal activity. Hence it is no surprise that organized
crime "controls" the trade in heroin. For addicts, the
social stigma of being institutionally defined as a
criminal outside the bounds of ordinary society by a
physical condition of the body further ensures that they
are unlikely to function well in that ordinary society.
Thus, addicts steal. Or sell drugs.
The problems with this assumption are more insidious than
an increase in the crime rate. The rhetorical function of
labeling drug users "criminals" shifts the locus of concern
over drugs from behavior to personality. Until
approximately the last quarter of the nineteenth century,
the use of drugs was portrayed in the public discourse as
an activity some people engaged in rather than something
that defined the personality of the user. The intentional
ingestion of foreign chemicals generally fell into two
categories: religious ceremony and medical practice. While
warnings of the harms of these substances date back at
least to 1030 AD, the social definition of the drug user as
a different kind of person does not come to influence these
discourses until the end of the nineteenth century.
The notion of "social decay" is much more complex; the
phrase itself is meaningless in any materialist sense --
has anyone ever actually seen a society "fall apart"? The
metaphor of a "social fabric" or "structure" is useful when
discussing particular aspects of particular social
institutions, but the reified metaphor as used in the
rhetoric of the war on drugs is quite useless. Society is
not a building with material existence and shape; rather,
it is a discursive formation or set of articulations
existing only in language, thought and action. It has
political utility as an ideograph; that is, an empty phrase
which gets imbued with meaning in the minds of audiences
when politicians use it in particular political
conflicts.[19] Thus it, like the word "drugs," has strong
affective component and is quite useful in mobilizing
public audiences to fear a metaphysical threat to a
metaphysical social order. Ernesto Laclau explains this
metaphysical conception of "society": "Society as a sutured
space, as the underlying mechanism that gives reasons for
or explains its own partial processes, does not exist,
because if it did, meaning would be fixed in a variety of
ways. Society is an ultimate impossibility, an impossible
object; and it exists only as the attempt to constitute
that impossible object of order. That is to say, the order
of society is the unstable order of a system of differences
which is always threatened from the outside. Neither the
difference nor the space can be ultimately sutured."[20]
When I make the argument that society is a metaphysical
concept I am not arguing that there are no material
consequences of its metaphysical rupture; a stroll through
South Bronx or East St. Louis is all anyone needs to
realize that while the social order may be metaphysical, it
impacts the material world in decidedly visible ways. But
my point is that the social order does not "fall apart";
rather, it is always already in a constant state of flux.
Threats to this order are relative rather than absolute.
But the rhetorical tactic of labeling drugs a "threat to
the social order" allows politicians to justify a huge
expenditure of social resources to stave off the threat. If
society is threatened with destruction, then the $3.3
million Air Force interdiction operations, which resulted
in 8 drug seizures in 1986, were well worth every
penny.[21]
These assumptions, however misguided, have been embedded
into the public discourse to such an extent that in this
century our society has produced an incredible quantity of
irresponsible statements and arguments, ranging from mere
exaggeration to blatant mendacity, on the subject of drugs.
These arguments have had a large amount of influence on
public policy, and have led to today's full-fledged
hysteria over the use of illegal drugs. Throughout each of
the case studies I examine below, the discourse surrounding
the substance has followed a trend from enthusiastic
acceptance of the substance to equally enthusiastic
condemnation of it. To a large extent these discourses have
also followed a parallel trend from control by the
medico-pharmaceutical establishments and institutions to
control by the juridico-legal institutions and the
repressive state apparatus.[22] The media, in turn, have
exacerbated these trends to such an extent that a drug can
now be discovered by the media, panegyrized by practicing
psychotherapists as a panacea for many social problems,
placed on Schedule I by the DEA [23] and reviled by public
officials as a dangerous threat to society, and then
completely forgotten by the general public within the space
of four years. The material result of such discursive
developments has become disturbingly familiar and
predictable throughout this century: the drug becomes
"chic" in certain social formations for medicinal,
recreational, or therapeutic purposes, the legal system
prohibits its use, it becomes the object of heightened
media attention, the amount of actual drug use rises
dramatically, with a corresponding increase in crime,
violence, and adverse reactions associated with the use of
the substance.
much more at
http://www.csun.edu/~hfspc002/xxx.html
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