Abstract
Anna Rowntree reads De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater in terms of the posthuman, challenging an approach to psychopharmacology that sees drug action or drug effects as inherently measurable. Rowntree pays attention to the non-empirical affects of opium, theorising “thing power” in line with Jane Bennett’s theory of vital materialism. By shifting the focus away from an understanding of agency as a uniquely human quality, Rowntree blurs the line between the human and the nonhuman, describing a flatter ontology that challenges humanistic ideas of the rational, self-defining human. By refusing to pathologise the individual addict, Rowntree opens up an ethical approach to addiction, one that demands a humble appreciation of the human/world relationship.
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Notes
- 1.
See essay in this volume by C. A. Vaughn Cross.
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Rowntree, A. (2020). A Posthumanist Approach to Agency in De Quincey’s Confessions. In: Roxburgh, N., Henke, J.S. (eds) Psychopharmacology in British Literature and Culture, 1780–1900 . Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53598-8_7
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