Paying Attention to Women’s Lived Experiences:
Towards an Empirically Grounded Political Theology of Addiction

Abstract

This research develops an empirically grounded political theology of addiction that aims to better reflect the realities of women living with addiction in contemporary Britain. It is rooted in an in-depth qualitative study of a group of women living with addiction alongside their support workers. I offer a critique of the contemporary socio-political framing of addiction in the UK and construct an alternative, empirically grounded political theology. To do so, I draw particularly from the thought of Christian mystic and philosopher Simone Weil. I use her construction of attention to develop my political theological method, attending to subjective experiences and their socio-political location. My data analysis and theological reflection resulted in two key conclusions.

First, the predominant socio-political framing of addiction does not adequately reflect the reality of women’s lives and might be understood in Weilian terms as an example of force. This framing is shaped by a radically autonomous account of the subject and an individuated understanding of freedom and choice that does not contend with the formative nature of the social realm. Neither does it engage with human vulnerability nor the limits of our creatureliness and absolute dependence on God.

Second, my research participants’ accounts depict addiction as a socially located, subjectively felt experience of suffering. I suggest it might be well understood as a response to, and form of, Weilian affliction. Understanding addiction this way illuminates the disparity between the accounts of the subject, freedom and power underlying the contemporary socio-political framing of addiction and my research participants’ self-understanding.

In response, I develop a theological understanding of these categories that reckons with the relational, finite and vulnerable realities of being human as described by women living with addiction. In doing so, I develop a political theology of addiction that is better capable of love and justice.