High Culture: Reflections on Addiction and Modernity (Suny Series in Postmodern Culture) (SUNY series, Hot Topics: Contemporary Philosophy and Culture)

Addresses the place of addiction in modern art, literature, philosophy, and psychology, including its effects on the works of such thinkers and writers as Heidegger, Nietzsche, DeQuincey, Breton, and Burroughs. Introduction / Anna Alexander And Mark S. Roberts -- Part I. Philosophical And Literary Reflections On Addiction -- The Rhetoric Of Drugs / Jacques Derrida -- Nietzsche's Dionysian High : Morphin' With Endorphins / David B. Allsion -- Ariadne's Thread : Walter Benjamin's Hashish Passages / Gary Shapiro -- Profane Hallucinations : From 'the Arcades Project' To The Surrealists / Alima Clej -- Heidegger's Craving : Being-on-schelling / David L. Clark -- Trauma, Addiction, And Temporal Bulimia In Madame Bovary / Elissa Marder -- Baudelaire, Artaud, And The Aesthetics Of Intoxication / Allen S. Weiss -- Junk And The Other : Burroughs And Levinas On Drugs / Jeffrey T. Nealon -- Part Ii. Socio-cultural And Psychological Reflections On Addiction -- Socially Significant Drugs / Felix Guattari -- Freud's Pharmacy : Cocaine And The Corporeal Unconscious / Anna Alexander -- Schreber's Ecstasies, Or Who Ever Listened To Daniel Paul? / Zui Lothane -- Smoke Screen : The Cultural Meaning Of Women's Smoking / Lorraine Greaves -- Love Junkies / Alphonso Lingis -- Possession, Addiction, Fragmentation : Is A Healing Community Possible? / Bruce Wilshire -- Gambling And Addiction / Jon Elster -- Addicts Without Drugs : The Media Addiction / Mark S. Roberts -- The Drug Addict In Absentia : Hidden Populations Of Illicit Drug Users And The Gaze Of Power / John Fitzgerald. Edited By Anna Alexander And Mark S. Roberts. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. Seventeen contributions from Alexander (Concordia U., Montreal), Roberts (philosophy, SUNY, Stony Brook), and other scholars take a cultural studies approach to addiction. The volume opens with an essay by Jacques Derrida on the rhetoric of drugs. Other topics include Walter Benjamin's hashish passages, the cultural meaning of women's smoking, and A cultural survey of addiction explores the theme in modern literature, art, philosophy, and psychology, revealing its affects on Heidegger, Nietzsche, Breton, and Burroughs, among others. (Philosophy)