Please cite this article in press as: Race, K., The use of pleasure in harm reduction: Perspectives from the History of Sexuality, International Journal of Drug Policy (2007), doi:10.1016/j.drugpo.2007.08.008 ARTICLE IN PRESS DRUPOL-715; No. of Pages 7 International Journal of Drug Policy xxx (2007) xxx–xxx Review The use of pleasure in harm reduction: Perspectives from the History of Sexuality Kane Race * Department of Gender and Cultural Studies, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia Received 23 April 2007; received in revised form 15 August 2007; accepted 17 August 2007 Abstract The absence of pleasure in harm reduction discourse is more and more frequently noted, but few have considered what, exactly, more attention to pleasure might do. What is the value of pleasure for harm reduction praxis? Central to such an inquiry is the question of how pleasure is grasped, conceptually and methodologically. In this paper I use Foucault’s History of Sexuality to elaborate a perspective on the use of pleasure within harm reduction. I argue that Foucault’s work suggests a distinction between therapeutic and social-pragmatic approaches to pleasure, and that such a distinction is important for harm reduction – to the extent that it seeks to maintain a critical awareness of the relation between stigma and care – in that the latter model raises the possibility of maintaining de-pathologizing modes of care. An appreciation of pleasure in terms of its social pragmatics helps to recognize practices of safety, care and risk that might otherwise go unregistered in the current punitive political environment. It provides a basis for conceiving practical measures that are in touch with given concerns and bodily practices, and thus have more chance of being taken up. It also enables a more dynamic and responsive approach to the practice of bodies and pleasures. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Harm reduction theory; Pleasure; Ethics; Drugs; Self-care; Moralism Introduction In this article I use the History of Sexuality to discuss the use of pleasure within harm reduction (Foucault, 1978, 1986, 1990). I have used this text to structure a graduate course on harm reduction theory and practice, based at the National Centre in HIV Social Research, called ‘Bodies, Habits and Pleasures’. The course was designed to encourage students to reflect critically on the social and political dynamics of sex, drugs and public health; to develop skills in interdisci- plinary practice; and to frame their projects within a broader field of struggle and intervention. To this end, I combined Foucault’s work with readings on sex and drugs from a range of disciplines, including empirical social science. The History of Sexuality provides an excellent basis for framing social research and education in this field. Although the text is dense, historical and philosophical – not the sort * Tel.: +612 9351 3662; fax: +612 9351 3556. E-mail address: krace@usyd.edu.au. of thing you are likely to hear much of in the mainstream fields of public health, social policy and medicine – it pro- vides one of the most trenchant and far-reaching analyses of the involvement of the medical and human sciences in the social maintenance of categories of deviance, normality and abnormality. It gives us a way of thinking through the regulative and coercive, as well as valuable and life-saving, aspects of health and medicine. This is important in the con- text of infectious diseases such as HIV and Hepatitis C, where medicine provides important resources, but can also func- tion as a source of oppression (Race, in press). Combined with concepts from the second and third volumes, such as the ‘use of pleasure’ and ‘care of the self’, the History of Sexuality provides a basis for conceiving how subordinated groups might make use of medicine in ways comparatively less encumbered by the normalizing effects of psychological and medical discourses. Enormously influential within HIV activism around sexuality (Halperin, 1995), the utility of this text for broader practices of harm reduction and drug pol- icy is yet to be fully realized (Duff, 2004), and takes some 0955-3959/$ – see front matter © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.drugpo.2007.08.008