Addiction and Performance

by James Reynolds (editor), Zoe Zontou (Editor)

Addiction and Performance is a collection of essays offering a multidisciplinary exploration of the intertwined relationships between addiction, culture and performance. The problem of addiction is multifaceted, but existing approaches to it often emerge from the frameworks of single disciplines, foregrounding therapeutic or perhaps physiological perspectives over and above a combined approach. However, addictions are not formed or sustained in vacuum, but are blended with and supported by a wide range of factors. Moreover, the role of culture both in understanding addiction and offering useful strategies of recovery has often been dismissed. In this book, James Reynolds and Zoe Zontou have gathered together leading practitioners and academics in order to explore addiction and performance, and to trouble, theorise, and describe specific ways of approaching their many relationships. This volume consequently offers an alternative conversation, bringing together a variety of discourses to generate a more politicised conceptualisation of addiction, one that facilitates a more complex understanding of addiction and performance, and their many facets. Addiction and Performance is a new and significant resource for students, artists, cultural organisations, service providers, academic researchers and therapeutic professionals working in the field of addiction.

410 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2014