CULTURES OF THE DRUG: LANGUAGE, SELF, AND POLITICS IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN DRUG DISCOURSE ANDREW G. JENKINS A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophyin the Department of Communication in the Colle of Arts and Sciences Chapel Hill 2020 Approved by: Christian O. Lundberg Della Pollock John Muckelbauer Michael Palm China Medel ã2020 Andrew G. Jenkins ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Andrew G. Jenkins: Cultures of the Drug: Language, Self, and Politics in Contemporary American Drug Discourse (Under the direction of Christian O. Lundberg) This dissertation responds to the problems of illicit drugs in the contemporary United States. Drugs are also indivisible from the stories we tell about them. Therefore, the dissertation is at once about drugs and the stories we tell about drugs, tracing the dynamic becoming(s) of signification and materiality made to appear stable in the socio-semantic site of the drug. The dissertation shows that the terms that structure the evaluation of drugs are not neutral, but rather the product of the forceful establishment of a series of taxonomic distinctions presented as if the drug is a straightforward and inert field around which meaning can be stabilized and value secured. In opposition to commonsense understandings of drugs, the dissertation argues that prevailing definitions of drugs are ideological assays whose content is derived retroactively from moral and political evaluations of drugs. The dissertation traces the proliferative quality of drugs etymologically and conceptually through the Greek pharmakon to understand this quality as an unique mode of deconstructive potential. Pharmakon, multiply translatable as: poison or cure, or poison and cure, either singly or simultaneously, as well as ‘tint,’ ‘philter’ [a love potion], ‘remedy,’ ‘drug,’ ‘charm,’ ‘spell,’ ‘talisman,’ ‘dye,’ etc., names the deconstructive lever whereby drugs resist prevailing modes of taxonomic capture. Mobilizing cultural rhetoric and critical cultural studies, and reading across pharmacology, popular culture, ethnobotany, law, and medicine, I argue that, because of their structure as pharmaka, drugs tend to unwrite the coherence of almost every taxonomy applied to them. Foregrounding the legalization of cannabis, the Opioid Crisis, and the Psychedelic Renaissance as three loci of analysis, the dissertation argues that this pharmakological drive of drugs, which threatens the coherence of iii prevailing drugs discourses, is only stabilized by the emphatic assertion of a dispositif. These attempts at stabilization are inevitably unsuccessful, and more importantly, the dispositif creates second order effects on the social order, sanctioning violence and oppression. As an alternative, my study suggests sophrosyne as a practice of good character and moderation, defining good character, here, as an intentional pharmakological unwriting of the presupposition that so-called “drug ab/use” is a product of bad character. iv To my family v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation is the fruit of the labor of so many to whom I am ever grateful, and without whom this project would have been impossible. The support of my graduate colleagues, faculty, and undergraduate students in the Department of Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has been the bedrock foundation for my growth over the course of my doctoral education and the genesis of this work. I have benefitted immensely from the diverse, trans- and interdisciplinary approaches undertaken and perspectives articulated by the members of our departmental community. In particular, seminar work with Steve May on the Foucauldian enterprise became foundational in my thinking about the relations of power and discourse. Torin Monahan similarly introduced me to the field of Science and Technology Studies, especially the work of Nancy Campbell, for which I am deeply grateful and ever indebted. Kumi Silva enlivened and invigorated my commitments to feminist work, helping me to understand the broad and potent anti-oppressive force of and need for contemporary feminisms. Ken Hillis and Sarah Sharma pushed me to think deeply about the relations of mediation in drugs discourse in particular, and communication more broadly, a challenge that has deepened my appreciation for Media Studies, and opened important channels in my thinking about writing, drugs, embodiment, perception, signification, and media. Lawrence Grossberg also deserves special thanks for his early contributions to my education in the project of cultural studies, as well as for his challenging seminars engaging New Materialist thought which continue to prove generative in my thinking. Colleagues across the College of Arts and Sciences have been important interlocutors in my interdisciplinary approach to scholarship, and I am deeply grateful such a diverse and vibrant community to grow among. Special thanks go to Arturo Escobar for helping me think about political relations anthropologically, and for challenging me to think through the process of designing future political imaginaries. Special thanks, as well, are owed to Liana Richardson for introducing me to medical vi sociology and the phenomena of medicalization: these conceptual insights have proven both grounded and grounding for my thinking about social health phenomena and relations of power. I owe a special debt of gratitude to my advisor, Christian O. Lundberg, as well as to my generous and rigorous committee members, Della Pollock, John Muckelbauer, Michael Palm, and China Medel. China helped me to stay present with the lived, embodied political realities and implications of this work, to stay present with the people whose lives are implicated by and in this work. Michael Palm has kept me attuned to the cultural circuits of capital and power as they circulate through this work, and been a constant mentor and generous critic of my writing that has wrought only improvement in my practice. John Muckelbauer has been an immeasurably jovial and straightforward reader and interlocutor on this project. He has challenged me to think more broadly and to push my writing beyond the habituated limits it had rested in at the beginning of my doctoral education. He has shown me a generosity, energy, and enthusiasm that I hope to emulate. The unique and powerful generosity of Della Pollock marks every page of this dissertation. She is an inimitable, keen reader whose generative vision and gracious perception has helped me to see and write with a sensitivity and grace that I would never have accomplished without her. She has held me accountable to my scholarly practice and helped me to hold myself accountable to my commitments in doing this kind of work. Hers is a generosity in intellect and spirit that I aspire to, and of which there ought to be more, everywhere. For your criticism, insight, support, kindnesses, and rigor, indeed, for everything, thank you, Della. To my advisor, Chris Lundberg, I owe the deepest gratitude. For his leadership throughout the project, for his willingness to follow me into the strange and wild arenas of cultural life, and for his constant, quiet, certain support. I have never been able to adequately thank Chris for some of the most sincere and important compliments and critiques I have ever received. He has astonished me with his intellect, both in its depth and breadth, and he has challenged me to grow according to my own design, to cultivate myself and my work according to those circuits which constitute me in my specificity. Chris turned me towards pharmakon, and he walked with me when I took the vegetal route. He has helped me vii make connections across radically different discourses and realms of cultural life, and he has taught me how to be a scholar in the contemporary academy. For this, and for everything, thank you, Chris. Bryanne Young has been the most important partner in this work. When I write that this work would be impossible without her, I mean it in every sense from the most literal to the most abstract. She challenged me to think differently, more broadly, more incisively, more precisely, more generously, than I ever could have accomplished on my own. She picked me up when I felt I could not go on, and she helped me understand the importance of doing this kind of scholarly work. Her intellect is superlative, her intuition is near-prescient, her spirit is indominable, and her care is seemingly inexhaustible. She helped me out of writing blocks on more than one occasion, and she encouraged me to accept my identity as a writer—a process that continues with ever mark on the page. For this, and for everything, now and forever, thank you, Bryanne. A final word of deep thanks belongs to my parents, Mark and Kathy, and Dorna. Dorna has been an incredible and generous reader of my work, and deserves recognition and deep gratitude for her wonderfully keen eye. Her interpretation of and response to this work has been a gift. Thank you, Dorna. Mark and Kathy, my dad and mum, have been my rock, my anchor, that stable point in the universe whose existence is the very condition of possibility for the kinds of exploration this dissertation marks in my life. I could not have asked for better roots, better soil from which to grow. My father, a scientist, my mother, an artist, together, taught me that these roles are complimentary, not adversarial. This basic insight, this collaborative spirit that recognizes