Drugs and the Abject

Abstract

In this chapter I look in detail at the spatial practices of a street drug market. Open street drug markets throughout the world provide the most abhorrent visual evidence of the damage of drug use. Here, drawing on the work of Massumi and others, my detailed study of the communication of fear and horror in one open street drug market provides a case study for how we frame drug use as an abject consumption behaviour. In this case, the abject takes on a thoroughly productive form through the use of contemporary theory about the links between capital and affect.