Book Review: The Culture of Recovery: Making Sense of the Self-Help Movement in Women's Lives

Abstract

The Culture of Recovery: Making Sense of the Self-Help Movement in Women's Lives, by Elayne Rapping (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), 256 pp., $24.00, cloth only. The 12-step has permeated 1990s American culture. This is both a reflection of and a contradictory, confusing development in the enduring struggle for gender justice that originated with second wave feminism. That is the conclusion reached by media critic and columnist Elayne Rapping (Communications/Adelphi University) in The Culture of Recovery, a feminist analysis of the flourishing selfhelp that originated with the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). Intending lay bare the deeply reactionary agenda the [recovery] supports (p. 8), Rapping critically examines the proliferation of 12-step groups and thought in contemporary society. In a tone that is simultaneously respectful and severely cautionary, Rapping illuminates the strengths, contradictions, twists and transformations of feminist ideology within the idiom manifest today in the media, in literature, and even in politics. Rather than being disillusioned by this burgeoning and often repressive presence, Rapping regards the as an interruption, not an end point, in the ongoing feminist-driven revolution in gender politics. The Culture of Recovery is as much a cultural and social history as an analysis of the movement. In a brief introduction and six chapters, Rapping reviews much that is familiar about the social, economic and political climate of the last three decades vis-a-vis feminism and the movement. Beginning with a focus on the television and film media, she describes the changing representations of women and in the context of the social transformations and economic interests of an evolving postindustrial society. Chapter two examines, in a and cursory (though well referenced) fashion, the evolution of second wave feminism. Beginning with the utopian vision of revolutionary leaders of the sixties, Rapping traces the disillusionment, backlash and ultimate reformulation of feminist thought into the nineties. By examining the internal structures of the movement, including operation within educational, medical and criminal justice systems, Rapping establishes, in chapter three, the linkage between feminist history and the history of the as it has evolved since the eighties. Each of the remaining three chapters-focused upon the movement's social workings, master narratives, and political uses, respectively-incorporates that historical perspective into this analysis. Rapping states from the outset her intention to conduct this analysis of the with an eye toward its roots in feminist history, culture and theory (p. 8). She delimits feminist history to that period since the sixties when second wave feminism propelled the personal into political discourse and activism. Feminism provoked dramatic and transformative changes in the way women thought about and acted in their lives and relationships. It focused attention on the public and political causes of suffering. It acted, with mixed success, to find public and political solutions to that suffering. As defined by Rapping, the recovery movement excludes AA and Narcotics Anonymous. It consists, instead, of the Anonymous/12-Step groups founded in the 1980s and 1990s that deal with emotional/relational issues (p. 190, n. 4). This movement, she asserts, incorporates selective features of feminist ideology and strategy in providing a response to the tensions and demands of a postmodern, postfeminist world. However, in using the language of addiction and recovery, the focuses on the effects rather than the causes of suffering. This blending of feminist thought and apolitical context is at once the movement's strength and potential danger to gender justice. …