Now that, divorce, homosexuality, transgendered identities, and
even to some extent sadomasochistic
behavior and other "sexual perversions" are becoming increasingly
mainstream, and thus under the purview of heteronormative neoliberalism, there
are few acts that remain legal that can be called deviant. Before there were
more symbolic prohibitions, which could incorporate a measure of transgression
and, thereby, enjoyment, but now that pleasure seeking is built into the
symbolic regulation of the neoliberal culture
itself, in an effort to create, increasingly singular identities, to which
products can be marketed (i.e. running shoes for the specialized athlete, LGBT
vacations, disability culture, self help books for the Caribbean Canadian,
visually impaired, transgendered lesbian, who can't find a man, because she has
bipolar two and an eating disorder), it is increasingly difficult to find
pleasure in anything, because this is a desire and satisfaction, which further
our alienation from ourselves, each other and our bodies is so totalizing. Smoking
is interesting, and I must stress that I smoke and for that matter drink about
once every four months, because it is wholly within the capitalist order, while
being one of the last legal actions, apparently worthy of approbation, the
extent of moral evil grows every day. Meanwhile, often people who
sanctimoniously decry smoking as perhaps the last and greatest of our common
postmodern transgressions, and secondhand smoke as illuminating the unethical
disregard of “smokers” for their fellow human beings health, forget the
catastrophic devastation we cause to our fellow human beings, at home and
abroad daily, to maintain an average Weston person in the lifestyle to which
she has been accustomed cause, probably,
at least five people in the global self TO DIE, if not more, not to mention the
horrendous suffering we cause to our fellow species. And the devastation people
continue to cause in the world by irresponsible sexual choices, including, sometimes,
abortion, but the sexual choices, of whatever sort, are framed in the rhetoric
of choice; for those are considered acceptable choices, whereas smoking is
framed in the rhetoric of an agent responsibility to others, because it’s not
deemed an acceptable choice. I’m probably more likely to get injured by people
drinking excessively around me than around people who are smoking.
I know the health implications, but the
event scenario of the addict does not always hold true. But it is
largely a mechanism to control, with Christian undertones, that’s with one
taste of the of the forbidden fruit, whatever that it happens to be, one will
fall into perdition never to return. The smoker is also interesting because he
is one of the last openly discriminated identities, which is fascinating
because most of modern prejudice happens at the level of disavowal. “I know
very well that new Canadians are immigrants just like I was, but, nonetheless
they are stealing my job. I know very well that persons with disabilities
should have the same opportunities by right, but to provide them with
opportunities is too expensive, in times of economic austerity, when we
increase military spending” the ironic thing is that the ideology of health and
wellness has made very few people more well. It produces a dialectical
opposite, obesity, as we pursue enjoyment not only by acquisition of capital,
but particularly by one of its related outgrowths in increased regulation,
domination and desire to perfect our own bodies\minds which has led to an
increasingly oppressive normative standard with two primary goals, insofar as
it is also ever adaptable to particular subjectivities. Not only do we have to
aspire to achieve a global norm, we also have to choose particular norms for
our kind of human being. Not only this, but according to Dove’s most recent
commercial we ought to love ourselves, in our singularity, and if we don’t
enjoy this pleasurable narcissism, there is something wrong with us, for after
all, everyone is special, and every life worth living. We must do this for as
long as you can! Apparently it does not matter whether you enjoy your life or
live an excellent one; all that matters is that you live, or more precisely
that you live while appearing to enjoy your life, lest you disturb others’
faith in the belief that believing in the pursuit of enjoyment is beneficial.
This is really quite pointless, since as we prolong our lives the prospect of
aging, on account of rampant social neglect of the elderly, is looking more and
more grim with each passing day.
The fact is that health and wellness is
a neoliberal marketing scheme that puts extreme pressure on persons with
disabilities to conform to their own standard of well-being, while excluding
them from the ideal normative standard. There is very little government funding
for me to obtain the health desired of the neoliberal subject, and as such you
could argue that my body is always “criminalized”. By smoking, very
occasionally I take on the criminal subjectivity of disability, born of the
confrontation with death that it represents, because I make people deal with
the supposed horror of an innocent disabled person being assisted in “perverse”
activity. Therefore, through this perversion I can subvert this consumptive
ideology through consumption itself, thereby effecting a negation of negation,
transcending the dialectic of desire, and thereby carving out for myself a
space of sexual and political freedom, which I longed for when I came out of
the closet, but perhaps I was born too late for that.
