Carnal pleasures and grotesque bodies: Regulating the body during a 'big night out' of alcohol and party drug use

摘要

This article explores the role that discourses of health promotion play in the regulation of the human body during sessions of alcohol and "party drug" use. Drawing on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork, I show how a group of young "mainstream" recreational drug users attempted to manage the tension between their identification with governing images propagated by public health and their desire for pleasure by regulating their alcohol and drug use in certain ways so as to avoid appearing outwardly disorderly while still pursuing pleasure in spaces they deemed appropriate for transgression. Constructing controlled or moderate drug use as the only acceptable form of pleasure fails to appreciate the dynamic and strategic ways that young drug users attempt to maximize