An ethico-aesthetics of heroin chic: art, cliche and capitalism

This chapter examines the relation between image and spectator. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's writings on art, capitalism, and ethics, it explores the extent to which heroin-chic images might be understood as productive of bodily transformations in order to re-read drug-referenced advertising and explore its ethico-aesthetic capacities. The findings reveal that although heroin-chic images do indeed contain an ethico-aesthetic potential, this capacity is severely curtailed by cliché and capitalism.