A hell of a life: addiction and marginality in post-industrial Detroit

Abstract

Drawing on concepts from Foucault and Agamben, we maintain that the lives of daily heroin users provide a prime illustration of bare life in the zone of indistinction that is contemporary Detroit. First, we consider the case of Detroit as a stigmatized and racially segregated city, with concrete consequences for its residents. We then present evidence from in-depth ethnographic and economic interviews to illustrate the various spaces of confinement—that of addiction, that of economic marginality, and that of gender—occupied by these men and women, as well as the indeterminacy of their daily lives, captured through their descriptions of daily routines and interactions. We examine their expressions of worth as expressed in economic, emotional and moral terms. Finally, we draw connections between the sustained marginality of these individuals, as a contemporary category of homo sacer, and the policies and powers that both despise and depend upon them. Heroin, we contend, helps to fill and numb this social void, making bare life bearable, but also cementing one’s marginality into semi-permanence.

Lessons in Biopolitics and Agency: Agamben on Addiction

“…'While it may be less stigmatizing and punitive than other approaches, medicalization further cements the distinction between "addicts" and "normal" people, collaborating in the production of the segregated and confining space of addiction' (p.670). Draus et al (2010) criticize the way politics define addicts as 'out of control', and not recognizing enough the interaction between substance use and social contexts. Although some claim that marginality is caused by addiction, Draus and colleagues defend a symbiosis between the two conditions which is fed and maintained by structural factors (p.674).…”

“…Not only the lives of substance dependent persons in prison is a naked life that is no longer viewed as human, Draus et al (2010) argue that the lives of daily heroin users in Detroit also provides a prime illustration of naked life. The help heroin users from Detroit get from the State is based on maintaining their biological life, not to promote flourishing life, which results in 'a hell of a life'.…”

“…Zieger (2008, p.240) describes the political approach to addiction as a grey zone, a zone of indistinction, between medical and criminal conceptualizations of addiction, between the criminal model and the disease model, which LESSONS IN BIOPOLITICS AND AGENCY: AGAMBEN ON ADDICTION builds heavily from Agamben's concept of naked life or the politization of biological life. Draus et al (2010) criticize the definition of addiction as a disease, which justifies radical intervention, and the mingling of moral, behavioral, legal and medical concepts in court. 'While it may be less stigmatizing and punitive than other approaches, medicalization further cements the distinction between "addicts" and "normal" people, collaborating in the production of the segregated and confining space of addiction' (p.670).…”

“…Giorgio Agamben's work on biopolitics and naked life is increasingly used in conceptualizing and understanding stigmatization and substance dependency 1 (Acevedo 2007;Zieger 2008;Coyles 2009;Sarang et al 2010;Draus et al 2010;McLean 2011). Biopolitics are characterized by an increasing penetration of politics into the realm of our biological existence.…”

Multiple racial futures: Spatio-temporalities of race during World War I

“…Shifting national borders are complemented by enclosed carceral geographies separating racialized threats from the white population (Martin, 2012;Moran, 2015;Morin and Moran, 2015). More porous urban neighborhoods segregate while producing differentiated political agency and resistance (Draus et al, 2010;Oliver-Didier, 2016). Thus many of these biopolitical geographies are more complex spaces of "custody and care" (Minca and Ong, 2016), with multiple rationalities of power at work, producing multiple racializing effects.…”