«Un aleph en el callejón del gato. Espacio, cuerpo y ritual: una antropología de los tratamientos de heroína para la adicción a opiáceos en la biopolítica de la reducción de daños».

Identifier:  TDX:1885

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/TDX1885

Authors:  Massó Guijarro, Paloma

Abstract:
Since the nineties, there has been an intense medical, legal, political and media debate around the use of heroin as a maintenance treatment according to the harm reduction paradigm, reaching tested in several countries in Europe and North America and institutionalized in some of them. In my research, firstly I analyze the scientific discourses oriented to legitimate heroin prescription to methadone refractory drug users. After a critical view about the hegemonic epistemological models in this area, I justify my theoretical framework to analyze the heroin addiction treatments as a technology of power. So, through a system of tropes around the space, the body and ritual, in correspondence with the concepts of ‘heterotopia’ (Foucault), ‘esperpento’ junkie (Valle-Inclán) and ‘carnivalization’ (Bakhtin), respectively, I describe both a cartography and an anatomy of drug use control and yonqui abnormality, which will serve as coordinates to locate politically the heroin treatments. Following my interpretative proposal, an ethnographic approach to the Andalusian narcotics prescription centre (PEPSA) is presented to study the microphysics of power performed through this governmentality strategy. Though a ritual structure which shapes this clinical device, I analyze the processes of subjectivation, embodiment and resistances experienced by the users, framed within a dialogic perspective of the therapeutic encounter. In conclusion, despite the conflicts associated to the liminality of this technology, the ritual of care works as performative mechanism to transform the social identities for most users, accomplishing a “re-generative” function.