Dennis Schep

Drugs Rhetoric of Fantasy, Addiction to Truth Dennis Schep

In Drugs - Rhetoric of Fantasy, Addiction to Truth, Schep argues that the majority of writings about drugs fall into two categories: scientific work that establishes objective knowledge but neglects the experiential dimension, and texts that foreground the experiential aspects of drug intoxication at the expense of rigor. In this wide-ranging analysis of drug discourse and its conceptual foundations, the author claims that there are historical and metaphysical reasons for our apparent inability to address drugs directly. Drugs have become the locus of a number of political, juridical and philosophical debates, but most of these debates fail to address the tensions between drugs, language and truth that lie at the root of the cultural history of narcotics. According to the author, if we want to transcend the simple dichotomy between condemnation and propagation that has characterized our attitudes toward drugs in recent decades, we must first come to terms with these tensions. about the author: Dennis Schep (1985) holds an MA degree from the European Graduate School, Saas-Fee. He is currently living in Berlin, where he pursues his PhD research into autobiographical incursions in post-structuralist theory.