The Subject of Addiction: Culture and Clinic
The Centre for Critical Theory, University of Nottingham
This conference is taking place at the University of Nottingham on the 8th and 9th of September 2014. This interdisciplinary event brings together critical and cultural theorists with clinical practitioners in order to interrogate contemporary addiction discourse, whether in governmental policy, psychiatric diagnostic frameworks, literary and media representations, or in the neuroscience of the ‘addicted brain’.
The conference will address questions such as … What is the significance of the recent shift from substance-based to behavioural addictions? What does the resulting proliferation of new ‘disorders’ such as ‘internet addiction’ and ‘hoarding disorder’ reveal about our relationship to technology and consumption? What are the gains and losses involved in utilising the trope of addiction in the critique of neoliberal capitalism? What assumptions are built into the clinical frameworks used by therapists working in the fields of drug and alcohol as well as gambling addiction? What are the politics of popular self-help and recovery discourses around addiction? What is the experience of the subjects interpolated by these discourses as ‘addicts’?
For more information, please visit the conference blog. You will find a complete provisional programme there, including abstracts for papers. To register for what promises to be a stimulating event, just click here. (the closing date for registering is the 5th of September).