Storytelling: Walter Benjamin and recovery from alcoholism

Abstract

What follows is a critical review of alcoholism and recovery. The objective is to examine Benjamin's account of storytelling in light of the value of stories for recovering alcoholics. The research design is qualitative, and it is explained that, because storytelling requires experience of a vanishing sort, the design must be qualitative. The method is theoretical, drawing upon Benjamin's account of the societal changes that have brought about the disappearance of the storyteller such as the predominance of information. The main outcome is that the features of Benjamin's account of storytelling are evident in the body of experience that comprises recovery from alcoholism, but not in such a way that would suggest that his account of historical change is thereby null. In conclusion, the oases of storytelling in recovery provide evidence for the erosion of experience of the kind required to have stories.

Keywords:

• alcoholism
• recovery
• stories
• Walter Benjamin
• alcoholics anonymous
• experience
• Erfahrung

Notes

The industry surrounding the short story is a symptom of the change in time under discussion (p. 93).

Normal epistemological circumstances repress experience of the object for the sake of the research design. For the sake of ruling out experience as epistemologically bad subjectivity, the ‘object’ is sacrificed in advance to the framework built by the subjective intention. The operation of the research question that precisely controls what is to count as an answer is a residue of subjectivity. In contrast, objectivity in a precise sense would be an appearance that comes despite how subjectivity has equipped itself, as a moment of difference and a matter of undergoing.

Magical thinking is a component of the persistence of alcoholic behaviour, which is a form of dissociation from reality, a ‘solution’ to a current problem that presents itself to fantasy in absence of the ability to discern real and tangible options.

Consequently, learning and memory are impaired (cf. Adinof, 2004).