Ambivalent pleasures: Towards narcofeminist alterlife

Abstract

Visual and text-based art plays a role in constituting and sustaining international harm reduction social movements based on drug user rights. The digital arts of harm reduction examined in this article counter sociological discomfort with pleasure by performing the artisanal pleasures of craft, context, and practice. Through close examination of the Instagram hashtag #celestialheartbreak, the article centers work by artist Jamie Harary, whose queer feminist harm reduction art places women and gender-nonconforming people at the center of harm reduction in life-affirming ways. The work expands the visual repertoire for speculative narcofeminist imaginaries, moving beyond rights-based formations to consider the play of emotional intensity. This article meditates upon the movement of affective neuroscience as supplement to feminist and queer drug research, as well as harm reduction practice, in offering socially situated accounts for getting at the lived dimensions of affective lives and claims to making sense of social worlds by living well with drugs.