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Morphinisé/morphinomane/morphinée : cultural representations of a French opioid crisis, 1870-1940
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Wilson, Susannah (2019) Morphinisé/morphinomane/morphinée : cultural representations of a French opioid crisis, 1870-1940. Contemporary French Civilization, 44 (4). 333-357. doi:10.3828/cfc.2019.19 ISSN 0147-9156.
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.3828/cfc.2019.19
Abstract
This article examines narratives of morphine use in France between 1870, when hypodermic administration of the drug became widespread, and 1916, when a law to restrict access to psychoactive substances was passed. The article considers three types of morphine users: addicts within the medical profession; a range of female morphine addicts from prostitutes to upper-class women; and writers and artists who defended their right to dispose of drugs as they saw fit in the years following the 1916 law. The article argues that morphine’s visibility, its genderdness, and its incompatibility with classic Republican values pertaining to masculinity, self-control, and perfect femininity contribute in important ways to its cultural representation as a major crisis. Examining medical treatises, popular literature, visual culture, and personal narratives, the article argues that the nineteenth-century figure of the morphinomane is an early manifestation of the emergent idea of the toxicomane, and is the vehicle via which opiates came to be negatively imagined towards the end of the nineteenth century. The context of the First World War gave these ambient concerns, which were specifically French, legislative urgency, connecting the nation to the international move towards the prohibition of psychoactive substances.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
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Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > School of Modern Languages and Cultures > French Studies Faculty of Arts > School of Modern Languages and Cultures |
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Journal or Publication Title: | Contemporary French Civilization | ||||||||
Publisher: | Liverpool University Press | ||||||||
ISSN: | 0147-9156 | ||||||||
Official Date: | December 2019 | ||||||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 44 | ||||||||
Number: | 4 | ||||||||
Page Range: | 333-357 | ||||||||
DOI: | 10.3828/cfc.2019.19 | ||||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||||
Copyright Holders: | 2020 Liverpool University Press | ||||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 15 February 2019 | ||||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 31 December 2019 | ||||||||
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