| Alcoholics Anonymous offers hope to suffering alcoholics in Canada, the U.S., and many other parts of the world. As a powerful discourse, AA serves as a regulatory agent. Accordingly, issues of power are closely investigated in this research. Moving beyond "outside-in" representations and theoretical analyses of Alcoholics Anonymous, this study illuminates the strengths and vulnerabilities within AA text and discourse from the "inside-out", and traces its technologies of power through interpretive interactionism, ethnography, deconstruction, conversation and discourse analyses, textual analyses, and postmodern sociology. Sources of data include Usenet newsgroup discussions, autobiographical narratives, authorized AA literature and published literature independent of AA. It is found that AA members reproduce AA text and larger discourse in a circular manner. This research discloses the regime of knowledge and the relations of power that form the individual, social, and political landscape of AA text and practice. Assumptions and contradictions within AA discourse, the intersection of pastoral power and disciplinary power, and docility of bodies are examined as components of the larger complex AA whole. It is concluded that the AA treatment program and its underlying truth are founded upon a variety of fictions, and AA as a whole has evolved little since its inception in 1935. This research demonstrates that members' recovery experiences within AA are discursively informed and organized. Thus, the AA self becomes constituted through AA discourse. Further, the accomplishment of AA is paradoxical in that it offers its members freedom only through sameness and normalization. |
