Fay Dennis
Biographic Data
| ID | 322561 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Fay Dennis |
| GIVEN NAMES | Fay |
| FAMILY NAME | Dennis |
| SIGNATURE | DENNIS F |
| AFFILIATIONS | Goldsmiths University of London |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2441-6313 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 58 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Narcofeminist affects
While much sociological research suggests that gender dynamics can make alcohol and other drug consumption settings potentially unsafe, these practices can still be highly pleasurable and meaningful for young people. Analysis of influential understandings of young people’s alcohol and other drug consumption highlights how the notion of ‘harm’ is gendered, with men and masculinity rarely addressed, while women are constituted as uniquely vulnerabl…
Chemical species
We live within and are made up of ever-changing chemical flows. Witnessing a “chemical turn” in the social sciences, this article asks what a chemical reading of drugs and bodies can offer an understanding of drug dependency and recovery. Where chemicals render bodies “molecular” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987), they open them up to more intimate forms of connection that extend our understanding of drug–body relationships beyond limiting categories …
Narcofeminism and its multiples
Sociology has a long-standing interest in the consumption of licit and illicit drugs, particularly as a feminist concern with scholars highlighting the ways in which drugs are used as regulatory technologies to control the conduct and subjectivities of women and other marginalised groups. This monograph flips the focus from a feminist sociological concern with drugs as a means of confining minoritised peoples, to explore what they can do as a fem…
Refusing recovery, living a ‘wayward life’
Drawing on cultural historian Saidiya Hartman’s (2019) book Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval, this essay reads one woman’s life with drugs and resistance to drug treatment as a feminist act of refusal, a ‘wayward life’ in Hartman’s terms. Wayward lives are those that refuse dominant forms of servitude and push open alternative ways of being. Although living in a different time and location to the young b…
Living and responding at the margins
On 25 November 2021, the editors of this monograph had the honour and pleasure of talking to five founding members of the narcofeminist activist movement from Eastern Europe and Central Asia. They discuss the history and vision of the movement, the issues confronting women and gender minorities who use drugs, and the significance of the political context of drug prohibition in shaping their experiences. This article documents this conversation as…
Afterword
In this piece we reflect on the tensions and complexities of drug use that narcofeminism has prompted us to grapple with in producing this collection. Narcofeminist approaches challenge us to move beyond simplistic, moralistic frameworks that pathologise and stigmatise those who use drugs, and instead seek more nuanced understandings of the social, cultural and political forces through which drug use materialises. By foregrounding the experiences…
Not in our Name
In this paper, we draw on our collaborative work running a salon for thinking about care in STS research, which quickly became more about fostering an ethico-politics for thinking with care as a mode of academic intervention. Not dissimilar to the origins of the salon in nineteenth-century France, the salon provided a provocative and disruptive space for early career researchers (ECRs) to think together. As attention and critique increasingly poi…
Drug fatalities and treatment fatalism
Deaths related to drug 'misuse' remain at an all-time high in the United Kingdom (UK). Older heroin consumers are particularly at risk, with the highest rates of deaths among people aged 40-49 and the steepest rises in the over-fifty age bracket. Accordingly, a popular theory for the UK's increase in drug-related deaths, made by the government, and propelled in the media, is that there is an ageing cohort of heroin users with age-related health c…
Advocating for diamorphine
Britain was the first country in the world to prescribe diamorphine (pharmaceutical-grade heroin) to heroin users as a treatment for opioid dependency. Known and admired internationally as the British System, Britain has a somewhat more ambivalent relationship to its own invention. Where patients were once prescribed diamorphine and other injectable opioids on an unsupervised basis, new patients are no longer initiated in this way and those exist…
More-than-harm reduction
Mapping the Drugged Body
Drugged bodies are commonly depicted as passive, suffering and abject, which makes it hard for them to be known in other ways. Wanting to get closer to these alternative bodies and their resourcefulness for living, I turned to body-mapping as an inventive method for telling different kinds of drug-using stories. Drawing on a research project with people who inject heroin and crack cocaine in London, UK, I employed body-mapping as a way of studyin…
The interplay between substance use and intimate partner violence perpetration
The interplay between substance use and IPV perpetration occurs at numerous contextual levels and is perceived differently by perpetrators and survivors. Behaviour change interventions must address the meanings behind divergent narratives about IPV perpetration and substance use
Making Problems
The arts and arts-based methods are rarely visible in critical studies of alcohol and other drugs. This article explores the potential role of the arts for allowing research on alcohol and other drug problems to develop in more collaborative (with participants, broadly conceived) and thus more generative ways. Following turns in the field toward the performativity of alcohol and other drug realities, this article instead asks: What happens if we …
The injecting ‘event’
Since the 1980s, the primary public health response to injecting drug use in the UK has been one of harm reduction. That is, reducing the harms associated with drug use without necessarily reducing consumption itself. Rooted in a post-Enlightenment idea of rationalism, interventions are premised on the rational individual who, given the right means, will choose to avoid harm. This lies in stark contrast to dominant addiction models that pervade p…
Materialising drugged pleasures
Conceiving of addicted pleasures
Encountering “Triggers”
Drawing primarily on interviews conducted in London with people who inject drugs, this article looks at participants’ accounts of encountering “triggers,” variously described as material things, spaces, people, situations, and memories. This article argues that instead of understanding triggers or “cue-induced cravings” in terms of a separation between objects and subjects, the former triggering the latter, they suggest a relational “becoming” th…
Narcofeminism and its multiples
Sociology has a long-standing interest in the consumption of licit and illicit drugs, particularly as a feminist concern with scholars highlighting the ways in which drugs are used as regulatory technologies to control the conduct and subjectivities of women and other marginalised groups. This monograph flips the focus from a feminist sociological concern with drugs as a means of confining minoritised peoples, to explore what they can do as a fem…
Encountering “Triggers”
Drawing primarily on interviews conducted in London with people who inject drugs, this article looks at participants’ accounts of encountering “triggers,” variously described as material things, spaces, people, situations, and memories. This article argues that instead of understanding triggers or “cue-induced cravings” in terms of a separation between objects and subjects, the former triggering the latter, they suggest a relational “becoming” th…
Mapping the Drugged Body
Drugged bodies are commonly depicted as passive, suffering and abject, which makes it hard for them to be known in other ways. Wanting to get closer to these alternative bodies and their resourcefulness for living, I turned to body-mapping as an inventive method for telling different kinds of drug-using stories. Drawing on a research project with people who inject heroin and crack cocaine in London, UK, I employed body-mapping as a way of studyin…
Refusing recovery, living a ‘wayward life’
Drawing on cultural historian Saidiya Hartman’s (2019) book Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval, this essay reads one woman’s life with drugs and resistance to drug treatment as a feminist act of refusal, a ‘wayward life’ in Hartman’s terms. Wayward lives are those that refuse dominant forms of servitude and push open alternative ways of being. Although living in a different time and location to the young b…
Drug fatalities and treatment fatalism
Deaths related to drug 'misuse' remain at an all-time high in the United Kingdom (UK). Older heroin consumers are particularly at risk, with the highest rates of deaths among people aged 40-49 and the steepest rises in the over-fifty age bracket. Accordingly, a popular theory for the UK's increase in drug-related deaths, made by the government, and propelled in the media, is that there is an ageing cohort of heroin users with age-related health c…
Narcofeminist affects
While much sociological research suggests that gender dynamics can make alcohol and other drug consumption settings potentially unsafe, these practices can still be highly pleasurable and meaningful for young people. Analysis of influential understandings of young people’s alcohol and other drug consumption highlights how the notion of ‘harm’ is gendered, with men and masculinity rarely addressed, while women are constituted as uniquely vulnerabl…
Not in our Name
In this paper, we draw on our collaborative work running a salon for thinking about care in STS research, which quickly became more about fostering an ethico-politics for thinking with care as a mode of academic intervention. Not dissimilar to the origins of the salon in nineteenth-century France, the salon provided a provocative and disruptive space for early career researchers (ECRs) to think together. As attention and critique increasingly poi…
Afterword
In this piece we reflect on the tensions and complexities of drug use that narcofeminism has prompted us to grapple with in producing this collection. Narcofeminist approaches challenge us to move beyond simplistic, moralistic frameworks that pathologise and stigmatise those who use drugs, and instead seek more nuanced understandings of the social, cultural and political forces through which drug use materialises. By foregrounding the experiences…
Making Problems
The arts and arts-based methods are rarely visible in critical studies of alcohol and other drugs. This article explores the potential role of the arts for allowing research on alcohol and other drug problems to develop in more collaborative (with participants, broadly conceived) and thus more generative ways. Following turns in the field toward the performativity of alcohol and other drug realities, this article instead asks: What happens if we …
Encountering “Triggers”
Drawing primarily on interviews conducted in London with people who inject drugs, this article looks at participants’ accounts of encountering “triggers,” variously described as material things, spaces, people, situations, and memories. This article argues that instead of understanding triggers or “cue-induced cravings” in terms of a separation between objects and subjects, the former triggering the latter, they suggest a relational “becoming” th…
The injecting ‘event’
Since the 1980s, the primary public health response to injecting drug use in the UK has been one of harm reduction. That is, reducing the harms associated with drug use without necessarily reducing consumption itself. Rooted in a post-Enlightenment idea of rationalism, interventions are premised on the rational individual who, given the right means, will choose to avoid harm. This lies in stark contrast to dominant addiction models that pervade p…
Materialising drugged pleasures
Conceiving of addicted pleasures
The interplay between substance use and intimate partner violence perpetration
The interplay between substance use and IPV perpetration occurs at numerous contextual levels and is perceived differently by perpetrators and survivors. Behaviour change interventions must address the meanings behind divergent narratives about IPV perpetration and substance use
Making Problems
The arts and arts-based methods are rarely visible in critical studies of alcohol and other drugs. This article explores the potential role of the arts for allowing research on alcohol and other drug problems to develop in more collaborative (with participants, broadly conceived) and thus more generative ways. Following turns in the field toward the performativity of alcohol and other drug realities, this article instead asks: What happens if we …
Advocating for diamorphine
Britain was the first country in the world to prescribe diamorphine (pharmaceutical-grade heroin) to heroin users as a treatment for opioid dependency. Known and admired internationally as the British System, Britain has a somewhat more ambivalent relationship to its own invention. Where patients were once prescribed diamorphine and other injectable opioids on an unsupervised basis, new patients are no longer initiated in this way and those exist…
More-than-harm reduction
Mapping the Drugged Body
Drugged bodies are commonly depicted as passive, suffering and abject, which makes it hard for them to be known in other ways. Wanting to get closer to these alternative bodies and their resourcefulness for living, I turned to body-mapping as an inventive method for telling different kinds of drug-using stories. Drawing on a research project with people who inject heroin and crack cocaine in London, UK, I employed body-mapping as a way of studyin…
Not in our Name
In this paper, we draw on our collaborative work running a salon for thinking about care in STS research, which quickly became more about fostering an ethico-politics for thinking with care as a mode of academic intervention. Not dissimilar to the origins of the salon in nineteenth-century France, the salon provided a provocative and disruptive space for early career researchers (ECRs) to think together. As attention and critique increasingly poi…
Drug fatalities and treatment fatalism
Deaths related to drug 'misuse' remain at an all-time high in the United Kingdom (UK). Older heroin consumers are particularly at risk, with the highest rates of deaths among people aged 40-49 and the steepest rises in the over-fifty age bracket. Accordingly, a popular theory for the UK's increase in drug-related deaths, made by the government, and propelled in the media, is that there is an ageing cohort of heroin users with age-related health c…
Chemical species
We live within and are made up of ever-changing chemical flows. Witnessing a “chemical turn” in the social sciences, this article asks what a chemical reading of drugs and bodies can offer an understanding of drug dependency and recovery. Where chemicals render bodies “molecular” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987), they open them up to more intimate forms of connection that extend our understanding of drug–body relationships beyond limiting categories …
Narcofeminism and its multiples
Sociology has a long-standing interest in the consumption of licit and illicit drugs, particularly as a feminist concern with scholars highlighting the ways in which drugs are used as regulatory technologies to control the conduct and subjectivities of women and other marginalised groups. This monograph flips the focus from a feminist sociological concern with drugs as a means of confining minoritised peoples, to explore what they can do as a fem…
Refusing recovery, living a ‘wayward life’
Drawing on cultural historian Saidiya Hartman’s (2019) book Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval, this essay reads one woman’s life with drugs and resistance to drug treatment as a feminist act of refusal, a ‘wayward life’ in Hartman’s terms. Wayward lives are those that refuse dominant forms of servitude and push open alternative ways of being. Although living in a different time and location to the young b…
Living and responding at the margins
On 25 November 2021, the editors of this monograph had the honour and pleasure of talking to five founding members of the narcofeminist activist movement from Eastern Europe and Central Asia. They discuss the history and vision of the movement, the issues confronting women and gender minorities who use drugs, and the significance of the political context of drug prohibition in shaping their experiences. This article documents this conversation as…
Afterword
In this piece we reflect on the tensions and complexities of drug use that narcofeminism has prompted us to grapple with in producing this collection. Narcofeminist approaches challenge us to move beyond simplistic, moralistic frameworks that pathologise and stigmatise those who use drugs, and instead seek more nuanced understandings of the social, cultural and political forces through which drug use materialises. By foregrounding the experiences…
Narcofeminist affects
While much sociological research suggests that gender dynamics can make alcohol and other drug consumption settings potentially unsafe, these practices can still be highly pleasurable and meaningful for young people. Analysis of influential understandings of young people’s alcohol and other drug consumption highlights how the notion of ‘harm’ is gendered, with men and masculinity rarely addressed, while women are constituted as uniquely vulnerabl…
Psychology (15 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Political science (10 works) · Psychiatry (8 works) · Social Psychology (8 works) · HIV, Drug Use, Sexual Risk (7 works) · Medicine (7 works) · Criminology (6 works) · Harm (6 works) · Law (6 works)