Altered States: Cultures of Intoxication

Altered States: Cultures of Intoxication and Addiction 

This seminar investigates the literary and philosophical treatment of intoxication and addiction from Romanticism to critical theory to contemporary recovery literature with an eye toward the  Germanophone context. Examining intoxication not merely as a pathological or medical  phenomenon but as a site of existential inquiry and aesthetic experimentation, the course explores  how thinkers and writers have grappled with states of excess, compulsion, altered consciousness, enlightenment, and the dissolution of the self. We will situate these discussions within three important historical developments: 1) the colonial drug trade, 2) drug production in Germany,  which was the site of the synthesis and manufacture of morphine, heroin, and codeine in the  nineteenth century as well as in Switzerland, which was the site of the discovery of LSD and psilocybin in the twentieth century, and 3) the medicalization of the discourse around addiction  and drug treatment programs.  

Points of emphasis include the metaphysics of intoxication, the aesthetics of fragmentation, the  tension between autonomy and compulsion, and the role of intoxication in critiques of bourgeois  rationality, modernity, and capitalism. We will engage with a range of genres—poetry, fiction,  philosophy, psychoanalysis, memoir, and recovery literature—as well as relevant secondary  scholarship and critical theory. Discussions and materials will be in English.