Subject, Object, Agent, Other: Zoom, PNP and Crystal Methamphetamine

Abstract

This paper advances the argument that gay men using online meeting spaces to smoke methamphetamine together are re-enacting the HIV/AIDS crisis. Using ethnographic observations of gay men smoking meth through an online meeting software called Zoom, this paper attempts to synthesise pharmaceutical insight with Freudian and Foucauldian theory. The idea of naked bodies presenting themselves before others while administering powerful pharmaceuticals – quarantined and isolated – expresses a recurrence of the HIV/AIDS crisis. The paper argues the crisis instantiated a logic of quarantine and containment which required gay men to insert themselves into an ascetic discourse and conduct, engaging only in isolated sexual practices. Gay populations were to be surveilled by medical institutions. Constant testing and monitoring of behaviour were to be used as a technique to contain the virus. Finally, powerful retroviral medications appeared in the mid-1990s and became the saviour of the AIDS infected populace, freeing queer bodies from the shackles of HIV. All of this creates new techniques for the function of power. Now, in place of quarantine, bodies isolate themselves. In place of surveillance, bodies become spectacles. In place of antiretrovirals, bodies infuse their blood with stimulants.