Becoming Somebody Else

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. 

Joshua Burraway is a medical anthropologist working at the intersection of social and political theory, critical phenomenology, addiction medicine, and psychiatry. He has conducted extensive ethnographic research studying the lives of people experiencing homelessness in London as well as marginalized populations in rural Appalachia in the Eastern United States.