“Addicted” women are…

Shannon Sahni

We are beginning to witness a turn to themes of agency and empowerment to combat the so-called ‘victim-centeredness’ that has dominated our understandings of women’s drug dependency. My zine contribution aims to visually show how this has left us with the false option of understanding ‘addicted’ women as either victims, or agents, but never both. This critique is crucial to the arguments of my thesis which aims to reframe this dilemma as a dualistic problem rooted in a false, oversimplified, static and oppositional ‘victim’/’agent’ binary. It is recognised that an alternative understanding which considers a continuous, connected, and interrelated relationship between victimisation and agency is needed to move beyond this dilemma and forge fluid, intersectional, and nuanced accounts of women’s diverse experiences of drug dependency. To reach this direction, I intend to draw on my personal closeness to drug dependency (familial ‘addiction), the voices of imprisoned women with histories of drug dependency and the framework of space and spatiality to articulate, engage with and analyse women’s experiences of victimisation and agency in the context of drug dependency. The attached submission is an adapted poster originally designed to present participants with the rivalling accounts of women’s drug dependency, in an accessible and transparent manner.