BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
PRODID:iCalendar-Ruby
BEGIN:VEVENT
LAST-MODIFIED:20071213T115432
SEQUENCE:0
ORGANIZER:Goldsmiths Centre for the Study of Invention and Social Process (
 CSISP)
DTEND:20080110T190000
UID:2008-08-22T00:20:54-0400_541912062@socialweb1
DESCRIPTION:Pleasure is more or less absent from serious talk within medici
 ne\, though it is a common enough motive for\, and element of\, human activ
 ity. When it comes to drugs\, pleasure is often positioned as the grounds u
 pon which legal and moral distinctions (between licit and illicit instances
 ) are made. Taking drugs for pleasure would appear to transgress the moral 
 logic of ‘restoring health’ that guarantees medical legitimacy.  But th
 e undeniable importance and common appeal of pleasure might lead us to wond
 er whether this routine exclusion and disavowal of pleasure doesn’t serve
  to prop up the self-evidence of medical rationality. After all\, enabling 
 pleasure is also one of medicine’s most basic concerns.  In this paper I 
 consider how a more open acknowledgement of pleasure might help to reframe 
 public health practice and policy concerning the use of illicit drugs. I us
 e Foucault’s History of Sexuality to conceptualize practices of ‘harm r
 eduction’ (the loose mix of policies and procedures that take distance fr
 om prohibitionist initiatives).  Making reference to concepts such as ‘ca
 re of the self’ and the ‘use of pleasure’\, I argue that Foucault’s
  work suggests a distinction between ‘therapeutic’ and ‘social pragma
 tic’ approaches to pleasure\, and that this distinction may be useful for
  framing relatively de-pathologizing modes of care.  While Foucault is ofte
 n used to critique the regulatory effects of public health\, my reading aim
 s to develop a more flexible approach to the practices of bodies and pleasu
 res – one that is critically attuned to the operation of disciplinary nor
 ms\, capable of preventing specific dangers\, but also open to embodied exp
 erimentation and the different possibilities of pleasure. 
\n
\nDr Kane Rac
 e is a Senior Lecturer of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of 
 Sydney. He has published widely on questions of risk\, government and ethic
 s in the context of HIV prevention\, sexual practice and drug use\, and par
 ticipates extensively in the social response to HIV/AIDS in Australia. His 
 forthcoming book\, Pleasure Consuming Medicine (Duke University Press) take
 s up questions of sex\, drugs\, citizenship and health\, and provides a cri
 tical analysis of neoliberal discourses of drug use.
\n
\n
SUMMARY:Drugs\, Medico-moralism and the Use of Pleasure in Harm Reduction
DTSTART:20080110T170000
CREATED:20071213T115240
DTSTAMP:20080822T002054
LOCATION:Goldsmiths\, University of London Warmington Tower Room 1204
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