Overview

Addiction is now seen as an ordinary feature of human nature, an idea that introduces new doubts about the meaning of our desires. Over the last forty years, a variety of developments in American science, politics, and culture have reimagined addiction in their own ways, but they share an important understanding: increasingly, addiction is described as normal, the natural result of a body that has been exposed to potent stimuli. This shift in thinking suggests that addiction is a condition latent in all of us, a common response to a society rich in thrills. In Addiction Becomes Normal, Jaeyoon Park provides a history and critical analysis of the normalization of addiction in late-modern American society. By exploring addiction science, diagnostic manuals, judicial reform, and public health policy, he shows how seeing addiction as normal has flourished in recent decades and is supported throughout cultural life in the United States by the language of wellness, psychotherapy, and more. Building on Michel Foucault's depiction of the human figure, Park argues that this shift reflects the emergence of a new American subject, one formed by the accretion of experiences. This view of the human subject challenges the idea that our compulsions reflect our characters, wills, or spirits. For if addiction is an extreme but ordinary attachment, and if compulsive consumption resembles healthy behavior, then desire is no longer an expression of the soul so much as the pursuit of a past reward. A perceptive work of recent history and political theory, Addiction Becomes Normal raises new questions about what it means to be human in America today.

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9780226827070

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Reviews

“Today’s addiction discourse turns us all into addicts in waiting. Park’s brilliant genealogy of the modern American subject not only clarifies how this strange and pervasive conception of the human came to be. It also sketches a portrait, deeply unsettling, of a post-disciplinary, post-Foucauldian addicted subject whose soulless cravings come at the cost of its freedoms. A must-read.” -- Lynne Huffer, Emory University “In this ingenious and provocative book, Park argues that twenty-first century Americans increasingly think of themselves as the sites of desires that originate elsewhere—in fitness watches, in ‘wellness’ culture, in Netflix algorithms, and, not least, in psychoactive substances. The result is a thrilling and maddening account of the unexpected but immediately recognizable ways that we are invited to imagine and govern ourselves in a world where ‘addiction has become normal.’” -- David Herzberg, University at Buffalo “What distinctive notions of the subject have become paramount during new regimes of addiction definition, judgment, and treatment in the United States today? What cultural impacts do they carry? In this incisive and groundbreaking book, Park both delineates the details of these new regimes and explores the image of subjectivity they help to insinuate into late-modern life. The author grasps the stakes of this inquiry, and he compels us to appreciate them too. A superb, detailed, and timely study.”  -- William E. Connolly, Resounding Events: Adventures of an Academic from the Working Class

“In this ingenious and provocative book, Park argues that twenty-first century Americans increasingly think of themselves as the sites of desires that originate elsewhere—in fitness watches, in ‘wellness’ culture, in Netflix algorithms, and, not least, in psychoactive substances. The result is a thrilling and maddening account of the unexpected but immediately recognizable ways that we are invited to imagine and govern ourselves in a world where ‘addiction has become normal.’” -- David Herzberg, University of Buffalo

“Today’s addiction discourse turns us all into addicts in waiting. Park’s brilliant genealogy of the modern American subject not only clarifies how this strange and pervasive conception of the human came to be. It also sketches a portrait, deeply unsettling, of a post-disciplinary, post-Foucauldian addicted subject whose soulless cravings come at the cost of its freedoms. A must-read.” -- Lynne Huffer, Emory University “What distinctive notions of the subject have become paramount during new regimes of addiction definition, judgment, and treatment in the United States today? What cultural impacts do they carry? In this incisive and groundbreaking book, Park both delineates the details of these new regimes and explores the image of subjectivity they help to insinuate into late-modern life. The author grasps the stakes of this inquiry, and he compels us to appreciate them too. A superb, detailed, and timely study.”  -- William E. Connolly, Resounding Events: Adventures of an Academic from the Working Class

Author Information

Jaeyoon Park teaches political theory at Amherst College.

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