A War on People. Jarrett Zigon
A War on People
A War on People
Drug User Politics and a New Ethics of Community
Jarrett Zigon
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu.
University of California Press
Oakland, California
© 2019 by The Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Zigon, Jarrett, author.
Title: A war on people : drug user politics and a new ethics of community / Jarrett Zigon.
Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2018017687 (print) | LCCN 2018021810 (ebook) | ISBN 9780520969957 (ebook) | ISBN 9780520297692 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780520297708 (pbk : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Drug control—Citizen participation. | Drug abusers—Political activity.
Classification: LCC HV5801 (ebook) | LCC HV5801 .Z54 2019 (print) | DDC 363.325/15613—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018017687
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For all of those who fight against wars on people.
It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place.
It has to face the men of the time and to meet
The women of the time. It has to think about war
And it has to find what will suffice. It has
To construct a new stage. It has to be on that stage . . . .
—Wallace Stevens, “Of Modern Poetry”
Contents
Introduction: On War and Potentiality
1. The Drug War as Widely Diffused Complexity
2. “Addicts” and the Disruptive Politics of Showing
3. A Community of Those without Community
4. Disclosive Freedom
5. Attuned Care
Epilogue: Otherwise
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments
This book would not have been possible without the help and support of what I call the anti–drug war movement, so before anything else I need to begin by thanking everyone who is a part of it, not only for their help with this research, but, much more importantly, for their tireless fight to end this war on people. I would like to single out a few individuals and organizations, however, who were particularly helpful in the research that led to this book: Matt Curtis, Daniel Wolfe, Mark Townsend, Russell Maynard, Sarah Evans, Fred Wright, Jeremy Saunders, Terrell Jones, Robert Suarez, Elizabeth Owens, and everyone at VOCAL-NY, the Portland Hotel Society, and the Danish Drug Users Union—for active drug users.
The research and writing of this book were made possible from funding provided by a Vidi grant from the Dutch Science Foundation (NWO) and the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme, ERC grant agreement n° 281148. I would like to thank everyone at the University of Amsterdam who helped administer these grants and provided much-needed and helpful support along the way. Special thanks for this go out to José Komen and Janus Oomen.
Parts of this book have appeared either partially or as earlier drafts in the journal Cultural Anthropology (chapter 1) and the book Disappointment: Toward a Critical Hermeneutics of Worldbuilding (New York: Fordham University Press; introduction and chapter 1).
Many people over the years have in one way or another stimulated my thinking and thus took part in the emergence of this book. I thank the following persons for important conversations around the topics and ideas explored in this book or for reading versions of it, whether in part or in whole, all of whom have been essential to its outcome: Talal Asad, Jason Throop, Patrick Neveling, Martin Holbraad, Robert Desjarlais, China Scherz, Charles Stewart, Thomas Schwarz Wentzer, Rasmus Dyring, Alessandro Duranti, Megan Raschig, Lex Kuiper, Oliver Human, Stine Grinna, Annemarie Samuel, Michael Jackson, Niko Besnier, Jonathan Lear, Cheryl Mattingly, Elizabeth Povinelli, Oskar Verkaaik, Henrik Vigh, Joshua Burraway, Kabir Tambar, Ghassan Hage, Samuele Collu, Miriam Ticktin, Joe Hankins, James Laidlaw, Brian Goldstone, Elinor Ochs, and Joel Robbins. I also thank Natalie Frigo, Eric Werner, Steve Chaney, and Mark Francis for their ever-important friendship. For their ceaseless support, I thank my parents: Sandy, David, Janelle, and Chris. The final version of this book took shape thanks to the editorial guidance of Reed Malcolm and the helpful comments of the reviewers. I also thank all those whom I may have forgotten.
Lastly, as always, Sylvia Tidey is the key to everything. Without her with me, nothing would be possible.
Introduction
On War and Potentiality
War is the health of the State.
—Randolph Silliman Bourne
The novelty of the coming politics is that it will no longer be a struggle for the conquest or control of the State, but a struggle between the State and the non-State (humanity), an insurmountable disjunction between whatever singularity and the State organization.
—Giorgio Agamben
Recently, political anthropologists and theorists have begun to address two interrelated problematic concerns. The first is the seemingly widespread lack of motivation for participating in political activity.1 The second is the political and intellectual focus on critique rather than offering alternatives for possible futures.2 Addressing these two problematics of politics seems increasingly urgent in a time characterized by anxiety and precarity. Across the globe a predominantly—and thus by no means exclusively—right-wing-led populist response to this has been a nostalgic return to a past greatness that never actually was. Thus, for example, the 1950s seems to be the best imagined future for many in both the United States and Russia today, while in the United Kingdom and much of Europe there is a strong desire to return to an ethnonationalist purity that supposedly existed sometime before the European Union arrived on the scene. If history did end with the Cold War, then it increasingly seems that many do not consider it to have been a happy ending and are eager to restart it, this time as farce.
While this nostalgic nationalist imperative may be to turn back time, many on the political and intellectual left hope to begin to create worldly conditions that are more open and inclusive than they have been in the past, reduce economic inequality and precarity as much as possible, and do all of this in a way that avoids the existential threat of climate change. Despite this hope, the political and intellectual