Saris, A. Jamie (2021) Growing Appetites and Hungry Subjects: Addicts, the Undead, and the Long Arc of Theory in Western Social Science. Ethnologia Europaea, 21 (1). pp. 102-133. ISSN 1604-3030
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Abstract
This paper explores the Western philosophical idea of “appetites” through the lens of
“addiction.” I begin with a brief ethnographic description of a woman whose subjectivity
seems to emerge only in the play of her unmanageable desire for various pharmaceuticals.
In other words, she is a self-described “addict.” I then look at the relationships between
addicts and the undead, especially vampires and zombies, who are seemingly enslaved to
their appetites. This leads me to an analysis of the centrality of what I am calling “recursive
need satisfaction” in much of Western (especially Anglophone and Francophone) Social
Theory that, I argue, relies on a particular understanding of “appetite” in establishing the
political-economic subjectivity that lies at the heart of market-oriented state. This same
understanding also pushes this formation in a specific historical direction of increasing
growth and organisational and technological complexity. As a globalised Western society in
the last few decades has become ever more anxious of its place in the world, its impact on
various interdependent systems, and the validity of the grand récits that served as its charter,
such growth and complexity have emerged as objects of anxiety, even apocalyptic fear, and
the terms “addict” and “addiction” have seemed ever more useful for modelling these
concerns. I end with some reflections on how we use both zombies and addicts to think
through some of the same issues of unchecked and damaging consumption.
Item Type: | Article |
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Keywords: | addiction; appetite; crisis; social theory; |
Academic Unit: | Assisting Living & Learning,ALL institute Faculty of Social Sciences > Anthropology |
Item ID: | 16165 |
Identification Number: | 10.2478/eas-2021-0023 |
Depositing User: | Andrew Jamie Saris |
Date Deposited: | 21 Jun 2022 14:42 |
Journal or Publication Title: | Ethnologia Europaea |
Publisher: | Open Library of Humanities |
Refereed: | Yes |
Related URLs: | |
URI: | https://mu.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/16165 |
Use Licence: | This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here |
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