Rethinking Recovery: Reconciliation and Searching for Our Mother

Abstract

Rethinking Recovery: Reconciliation and Searching for Our Mother is a critical study of addiction that uplifts and centers Black folk. This dissertation utilizes Black feminist and Afrocentric theory, queer of color theory, performance studies, critical ethnography, and critical addiction studies to advance performance studies and to address the relationship between 21st Century Black social life and addiction as it intersects with dominant notions of recovery. I approach my study through an analysis of historical narratives of the term recovery in 20th century U.S. society that produced normative meanings of recovery, deployed by the Recovery Movement, Alcoholics Anonymous and Addiction Studies. I examine how these institutions frame the reduction of addiction to a problem of the individual, the continued pathologization of blackness as diseased, and the normalization of whiteness as the exemplar of a recovered person. These institutions ignore the impacts of state violence such as the continued hyper-criminalization of those with addictions and legacies of neglect by the Federal government in recovery projects such as the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina–which left thousands of Black and brown folk dead and millions of others draggled, dislocated, and in complete destitute to this day. While this research primarily deals with narratives of recovery from addiction, addiction cannot be separated from larger themes of social neglect and historic marginalization, thus I recontextualize recovery beyond its relationship to compulsive substance use to broader themes of colonization, land displacement, and systemic racism. My dissertation raises important questions of what is meant by “recovery” when articulated from the margins and how does recovery get redressed from normative notions embedded in power and dominance? How does Black communities “recover” when tasked to reconcile with what may never be able to be regained? How does one return if one has been displaced and has no place to return to? How do we “recover” pleasure? What qualities of African-Diasporic culture are responsible for the retention of Black folk in Alcoholics Anonymous? Chapters argue that “Recovery” is a process of reconciling with loss, which includes the loss of social and spatial connection, time, and pleasure. Additionally, I invoke a critical performance ethnography, which combines critical praxis around ethnography with the performance in order to understand the ways embodied performance illuminate the culture of Black AA. I utilize a social justice orientation toward ethnography and performance as a method of disseminating culturally relevant literature options for Black folk reconciling with addiction: theater and performance.