Our Opium Wars: The Ghosts of Empire in the Prescription Opioid Nightmare. Issue 5 (2nd November 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Haiven, Max
• Is Part Of: Third text. Volume 32:Issue 5/6(2018)
• Page Start: 662
• Page End: 669
• Publication Date: 2018-11-02
• Subjects: Max Haiven -- Susan Buck-Morss -- Walter Benjamin -- Nan Goldin -- Sackler -- OxyContin -- Purdue Pharma -- opioid epidemic/crisis -- narco-capitalism -- colonialism and empire -- Opium Wars -- political (an)aesthetics -- art museums -- pharmaceutical corporations -- pain -- protest -- fascism; Art and society -- Periodicals; Art -- Developing countries -- 20th century -- Periodicals; Developing countries -- Intellectual life -- Periodicals; 700.91724
• DOI: 10.1080/09528822.2018.1559169
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0952-8822

Abstract

Abstract: The prescription opioid crisis in the United States is among the worst human-caused public health disasters in modern history, with over 500, 000 dead and by some estimates almost 5% of the American population 'misusing' these drugs. This article supplies some unusual resources for understanding that crisis and the way it inherits a legacy of empire, now transfigured for a corporate age. From the museums funded by the sale of these drugs to the British-led Opium Wars to the present-day racialised dimensions of the epidemic, much can be gained from dwelling with its tangled and haunted complexities. The article concludes with a consideration of Susan Buck-Morss's reading of Walter Benjamin's meditations on the aestheticisation of politics in an age of what she calls capitalist anaesthetics.