August 10, 2014, by criticalmoment

Conference: The Subject of Addiction (8-9th September)

Dear All,

I am delighted to be able to alert you to The Centre for Critical Theory’s upcoming conference entitled The Subject of Addiction: Culture and Clinic which is taking place in Highfields House on the 8th and 9th of September. 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 are the experiences of the subjects interpolated by these discourses as ‘addicts’?

For more information, please visit the conference blog here. 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, although it is also possible to pay the registration fee on the door). I very much hope to see you there.

Colin Wright (Colin.Wright@nottingham.ac.uk)

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