Pastiglie per il bene, pastiglie per il male. Farmaci, corpi, desideri

Scienza E Filosofia 23:142–169 (2020)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Pills for good, pills for bad. Drugs, bodies, desires This paper focuses on the non-neutrality of Science – Chemistry in particular – starting by the specific standing point: the relationship between (sexuated) bodies and drugs. The feminist analysis on social role of medicine has been deepened since the end of Sixties and has permitted to underlying the strong ambivalence of medical knowledge between self-determination and subjection. Feminism and critical medicine have opened a deconstructive breach in the passive acceptance of the medical science by the identification and the complaint of social origin of a lot of (pathologized) diseases. Today we are facing a paradox: even the international institutions have acknowledged connections between health conditions and social-economic context, but the use of drugs is increasingly widespread and not directly related with pathologies. To unravel these aspects, the research will focus on three kinds of drugs: psychotropic drug, food supplements and synthetic hormones. The contemporary capitalism extracts value from interpersonal, cognitive, emotional performances requiring a perpetual presence – both physical and mental – which finds in the use of food supplements and psychotropic drugs a formidable technical support. This ambivalence implies, on one hand, the use of drugs to support the performance and the self-perception of being efficient and measured up, while on the other hand, it shows the dark side of the self-exploitation. At the same time, the theoretical work of trans-feminist movements on synthetical hormones adds the reflections about the desires to those on needs, filling the picture of the ambivalences related with the use of drugs. To imagine a science and a tech useful to design a healthy society, it is necessary to question how today the use of drugs is not only connected with pathologic conditions, but rather how it has violently crawled into our lives as device of capitalistic subjection of the (sexuated) bodies.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Drugs symposium: introduction.R. E. Ashcroft - 2004 - Journal of Medical Ethics 30 (4):332-332.
Psychology and psychotropic drugs.Christopher M. Aanstoos - 1988 - Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology 8 (2):54-55.
Psychotropic drugs and women.P. Susan Stephenson & Gillian A. Walker - 1980 - Journal of Medical Humanities 2 (1):20-38.
The Medical Drug as a Technological Object.Jonathan Simon - 2019 - Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 23 (1):51-67.
Optimal drug use and rational drug policy.Geoffrey F. Miller - 2011 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 34 (6):318-319.

Analytics

Added to PP
2020-06-30

Downloads
8 (#1,138,679)

6 months
1 (#1,042,085)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references