ABSTRACT
Traditions of feminist thought and practice have been attentive to the representation, deployment, and significance of pathological attributions specific to women. In the late twentieth century, the female addict has primarily been understood through pathologizing disease models of treatment. This disease paradigm searches for common pathologies and links them to the nature of women’s bodies. Historically, addiction has been associated with the interarticulation and complex crossings of a whole range of differences including race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, and religious-cultural identity. The addict first emerged in the nineteenth century amid industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and the appearance of new technologies of production and reproduction. The 1986 film Sid and Nancy tells the tragic story of the lives of Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious and his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen. The movie dramatized their drug-centered world and self-destructive rock-and-roll milieu. Courtney Love made her film debut cast as Nancy’s punk rock friend and drug connection.
