Saris, A. Jamie (2021) Growing Appetites and Hungry Subjects: Addicts, the Undead, and the Long Arc of Theory in Western Social Science. Ethnologia Europaea, 21 (1). pp. 102-133. ISSN 1604-3030

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Abstract

This paper explores the Western philosophical idea of “appetites” through the lens of “addiction.” I begin with a brief ethnographic description of a woman whose subjectivity seems to emerge only in the play of her unmanageable desire for various pharmaceuticals. In other words, she is a self-described “addict.” I then look at the relationships between addicts and the undead, especially vampires and zombies, who are seemingly enslaved to their appetites. This leads me to an analysis of the centrality of what I am calling “recursive need satisfaction” in much of Western (especially Anglophone and Francophone) Social Theory that, I argue, relies on a particular understanding of “appetite” in establishing the political-economic subjectivity that lies at the heart of market-oriented state. This same understanding also pushes this formation in a specific historical direction of increasing growth and organisational and technological complexity. As a globalised Western society in the last few decades has become ever more anxious of its place in the world, its impact on various interdependent systems, and the validity of the grand récits that served as its charter, such growth and complexity have emerged as objects of anxiety, even apocalyptic fear, and the terms “addict” and “addiction” have seemed ever more useful for modelling these concerns. I end with some reflections on how we use both zombies and addicts to think through some of the same issues of unchecked and damaging consumption.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	addiction; appetite; crisis; social theory;
Academic Unit:	Assisting Living & Learning,ALL institute Faculty of Social Sciences > Anthropology
Item ID:	16165
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.2478/eas-2021-0023
Depositing User:	Andrew Jamie Saris
Date Deposited:	21 Jun 2022 14:42
Journal or Publication Title:	Ethnologia Europaea
Publisher:	Open Library of Humanities
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	Publisher
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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