Can the lunatics actually take over the asylum?: Reconfiguring subjectivity and neo-liberal governance in contemporary British drug treatment policy

Abstract

Health crises have historically served as moments for the transformation of the role of the liberal state. At various points in the history of the 20th century, whether it was panic over venereal disease or tuberculosis, the state has—taken the role of setting public health policies that define, regulate and govern the practices of its citizens. In the 1980s, the threat of AIDS brought about one such reconfiguration. It forced a significant re-evaluation of the state’s policies and practices surrounding injection drug use and its proven correlation to the transmission of blood-borne disease. This paper will assess how the onset of AIDS as a public health emergency in the UK led to a re-evaluation of how the state, under Prime Minister Thatcher, defined the practice of drug use and how drug users were then redefined within those parameters. Through participant observation, interviews and an examination of government documents, I demonstrate how this particular reconfiguration illuminates new technologies of governance that not only attempt to regulate the practices of drug users, but also how those very technologies set the contemporary conditions for drug users to demand a participatory role in service provision and state policy formation.