Distributed for HAU
Becoming Somebody Else
Blackouts, Addiction, and Agency amongst London’s Homeless
A study of homelessness and addiction exploring the void of drug-induced blackout and its impact on identity and time.
What does it mean to pursue forms of life not just outside of time, but outside of self? Becoming Somebody Else takes up this question, offering a window into the fragmented and chaotic lives of London’s urban homeless as they drink and drug themselves into blackout. A state-of-being where time, body, agency, and self collapse into a memoryless abyss, the blackout has consistently alluded to a deep anthropological investigation.
What does it mean to pursue forms of life not just outside of time, but outside of self? Becoming Somebody Else takes up this question, offering a window into the fragmented and chaotic lives of London’s urban homeless as they drink and drug themselves into blackout. A state-of-being where time, body, agency, and self collapse into a memoryless abyss, the blackout has consistently alluded to a deep anthropological investigation.
300 pages | 7 halftones, 3 line drawings | 6 x 9 | © 2025
Anthropology: Cultural and Social Anthropology
Table of Contents
Prologue: Two Millimeters
Introduction
Dropping Like Flies
Anthropology and Intoxication
The Art of Intoxication
What Are We Forgetting?
Unpacking the Toolkit
Clock Time, Subjective Time, and Consciousness
Contextual Chemicals
Difference and Sameness, Phenomenology, and Psychodynamics
Outline of the Book
A Note on Gender
Chapter 1: Itchy Park
Fields of Play
Itchy Park and Itchycoo Park
The Welfare State and Spaces of Homelessness
Homelessness and New Labour
The Age of Austerity
Chapter 2: Killing Time
Itchy People
Waste Not, Want Not
Boredom: A Brief History
Looking the Right Way
The Rush
Bittersweet Branches
Chapter 3: Not Enough
Going Out with a Bang
The Godfather
Taking the Piss
The Rumor Mill
Moving On
Chapter 4: The Blackout
Real Pain and Letting Go
Interruptions and Dissociation
Memory and Metamorphosis
The Crisis of Presence
Memory, Mourning, and Rituals of the Self
The Singularity
Chapter 5: Lost Time
Remember What?
Rewind and Fast Forward
Swiss Cheese and Lost Time
The Last Traveler
Chapter 6: Becoming Somebody Else
Amnesiac Ballads and Double Images
Possession without Spirits
Lost and Found
Conclusion: Towards a Poetics of Blackout
The Strange and the Familiar
Anthropological Poetics and White Holes
Limitless
References
Introduction
Dropping Like Flies
Anthropology and Intoxication
The Art of Intoxication
What Are We Forgetting?
Unpacking the Toolkit
Clock Time, Subjective Time, and Consciousness
Contextual Chemicals
Difference and Sameness, Phenomenology, and Psychodynamics
Outline of the Book
A Note on Gender
Chapter 1: Itchy Park
Fields of Play
Itchy Park and Itchycoo Park
The Welfare State and Spaces of Homelessness
Homelessness and New Labour
The Age of Austerity
Chapter 2: Killing Time
Itchy People
Waste Not, Want Not
Boredom: A Brief History
Looking the Right Way
The Rush
Bittersweet Branches
Chapter 3: Not Enough
Going Out with a Bang
The Godfather
Taking the Piss
The Rumor Mill
Moving On
Chapter 4: The Blackout
Real Pain and Letting Go
Interruptions and Dissociation
Memory and Metamorphosis
The Crisis of Presence
Memory, Mourning, and Rituals of the Self
The Singularity
Chapter 5: Lost Time
Remember What?
Rewind and Fast Forward
Swiss Cheese and Lost Time
The Last Traveler
Chapter 6: Becoming Somebody Else
Amnesiac Ballads and Double Images
Possession without Spirits
Lost and Found
Conclusion: Towards a Poetics of Blackout
The Strange and the Familiar
Anthropological Poetics and White Holes
Limitless
References