ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 moves from mapping attachments to flows of desire to understand the ways that bodies are plugged into others for everyday living beyond the drug consumption event. Drawing on a Deleuzian concept of desire and, in particular, seeing bodies as ‘desiring machines’, the chapter explores some of the injecting assemblages’ deepest workings for living. Participants explain how drugs help them physically and emotionally, for well-being. But just as these connections for sustaining and enhancing life come into being, we similarly see how they can become blocked in their relation to others - human (e.g. police, dealers), nonhuman (e.g. needles, mobile phones), imagined (e.g. ‘junkie’ image in film and media), and discursive (e.g. gender, legislation) - in processes of overdose, addiction, sexual exploitation, homelessness and imprisonment. Taking bodies to be defined by their assemblic power to act (affect and be affected), mapping these flows of desire allows us to know where, when and how to produce more powerful bodies.
