By Ritu Birla

Gandhi’s thematics of addiction mark him as acutely present in his time, even as they launch his temporal performativity. Publicized via transnational debates on the legality of opium and anxieties about the market as casino, the problem of addiction reflected the circulation of law and economy as global technologies and Gandhi’s travels with them. At the same time, addiction named Gandhi’s condemnation of modern civilization and its slavish relation to technology and futurity. This would be counteracted not with an easy cure but by recasting law and economy as tools and habits of self-mastery.

http://publicculture.dukejournals.org/content/23/2/471.abstract