Unmasking the unjust practice and social exclusion: A critical reflection on drug addiction research

Abstract

This paper attempts to reflect critically upon the dominant research on drug addiction. Briefly put, the mainstream researches on drug abuse and addiction largely focuses on the pathological aspect and the methods, assumptions and concepts are essentially problem oriented. They always narrow down their analysis to the micro level and ignore the structural effects. Undoubtedly, this individualistic approach would artfully decontextualize the problem of drug uses and subtly conceal the structural imbalances, leaving the social problems or injustice unquestioned.

The paper will firstly employ Jacques Lacan’s theory of psychoanalysis to unravel the social construction of drug user identity. The Lacanian individual self can be divided into the real, the imaginary and the symbolic. The real is impossible to say, that is it cannot be described, discussed or presented through language. The imaginary is the mirror image of the individual, the understanding of the self through the imagination of how the other seeing one’s self. The symbolic is the language structure, the linguistic order of the society. Simply put, individual is and can be represented only via signifiers, to use Lacan’s language; the real self cannot be said.

Accordingly, the master signifiers define the boundary, nature and essence of the discussion of drug uses or addiction. Based upon this understanding, the paper will also adopt Foucault’s theory of discourse to analyze the mainstream research and social practice towards drug uses. Foucault maintains that we should not confine our understanding of knowledge to epistemological level; he argues that knowledge induces surveillance, either individual or social. Thus, when one is defined from the biomedical model as drug addicts, one would be under medical or social surveillance.

In light of the works of Lacan and Foucault, the paper will critically review the historical and contemporary discourses on drug uses and addiction imaginary, aiming to unmask the unjust practice towards, and the social exclusion of, the drug users. The paper also discusses the discourse of the fear of treatment of the biomedically defined drug abusers, hoping to illustrate the suffering of the drug users in the process of subjectivating themselves to the addiction signifiers.