Crack Wars: Literature Addiction Mania

by Avital Ronell

Avital Ronell asks why "there is no culture without drug culture." She deals with the usual drugs and alcohol (and their Freud's cocaine, Baudelaire's hashish, the Victorians' laudanum), and moves beyond them to addictions that are culturally accepted--an insatiable appetite for romance novels, for instance, and romance itself. 
 
It is a commonplace of modern culture to presume that there is a subculture or counterculture deeply saturated with drugs, but such modern cultures need subcultures, and need drugs on every level. Culture defines itself, its classes, its power structures, and its economy in terms of how it allows and encourages drugs to circulate. If drugs are dangerous, that danger seems to increase their appeal for millions. If drugs are unnatural and addictive, gasoline is a drug. What is art but a kind of drug, and what is art criticism but a kind of criticism of drugs and drug-induced states?
                                                           
Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary takes up the problems of drugs and addiction in numerous ways, which Ronnell unpacks and presents as examples of the safe and unsafe. From Emma Bovary's romantic hallucinations to her suicide by arsenic, she moves through this realistic novel constantly reaching for the unreal. For Ronell, Emma Bovary represents the first addict, embodying a yearning that calls from the bottom of her humanity, and which it seems can only be satisfied by some sort of drug.
 

Genres: Philosophy, Theory, History, Nonfiction, Drugs, Addiction

175 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Avital Ronell is Professor of German, comparative literature, and English at New York University, where she directs the Research in Trauma and Violence project, and has also written as a literary critic, a feminist, and philosopher.

Ronell to Israeli diplomats and was a performance artist before entering academia.

She gained a B.A. from Middlebury College and studied with Jacob Taubes at the Hermeneutic Institute at the Free University of Berlin. She received her Ph.D. under the advisement of Stanley Corngold at Princeton University in 1979, and then continued her studies with Jacques Derrida and Hélène Cixous in Paris.

She joined the comparative literature faculty at the University of California, Berkeley before moving to NYU. She is also a core faculty member at the European Graduate School.

Reviews

[6655321 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can't tell if this is a pretentious mess with the occasional extremely piercing insight or is something simply beyond my comprehension because i have such a marginal connection to literature. The core thesis and questions about the relationship between drugs/culture/literature is an intriguing one but most of Crack Wars is a weird fixation on the text of Madam Bovary (a book i have never read) and seems to be caught up in literary interventions into the question (the creative writing method employed for theory by Ronell) which is perhaps a methodological turn that i lack the critical tools to actually engage with (although it feels stilted and awkward in my reading).

[Andy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had some high hopes and reasonably set expectations for this book. Narco-analysis seems a very fine lit crit work to take on, yet this spiraled off into what read more like self-indulgent whimsy than rigorous but playful work. Sometimes it's for a good reason that you've not heard of a book that on the surface seems so likely to be outstanding.

[Steven Pennebaker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hard to say what Ronell is on about, but it was a fun read.

[Luna Miguel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Qué gozada cuando alguien que escribe filosofía se preocupa también por el estilo, por la buena escritura, por el ritmo, por las metáforas... Este libro es maravilloso para pensar alrededor de la adicción. Si adicción no hay creación, nos dice Ronell, una filósofa a la que llegué gracias a Paul B. Preciado, pero también a su vínculo con Anne Dufourmantelle.

[Ever Roman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pariente de Blanchot, Bataille, Baudelaire, etcétera, Avita Ronell habla de la literatura, emparentándola a las adicciones y las experiencias artificiales, poniéndola al margen de la ley. Y elabora una batería conceptual para pensar las drogas y a partir de ellas. Librazo

[Hazel.Z · Rating 4 out of 5]

That squandering of our own existence that we know in love