Punishing or Privileging Marginalization?

Abstract

In a similar vein to the previous chapter, I want to explore key notions which need to be re-worked and re-shaped in the development of feminist embodiment theories on drugs. My aim is to ensure that these notions and ideas reflect the knowledge, know-how and interests of women drug users, who have been traditionally marginalized in terms of both treatment and research practice in the drugs field. Given that a reconsideration of the subjects and authors of research are crucial within the postmodern paradigm, questions around who clarifies, decodes, prioritizes and has possession of research and research outputs are crucial.

Much of Western European history conditions us to see human differences in simplistic opposition to each other: dominant/subordinate, good/bad, up/down, superior/inferior. In a society where the good is defined in terms of profit rather than in terms of human need, there must always be some group of people who through systematized oppression can be made to feel surplus, to occupy the place of the de-humanized inferior.

Audre Lorde (1984: 245–50)