There is no 'real world.' Instead, there are definite configurations of what is given as our real, as the object of our perceptions and the field of our interventions. The real always is a matter of construction, a matter of 'fiction'….

Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics - Jacques Ranciere

The personal narratives of those trapped in poverty and addiction are a very particular form of ‘fiction’ in the sense suggested by Ranciere above. They resist translation into rational linear form – they loop and repeat – they are both horrifically compelling in their individual accounts of personal tragedy and astonishingly similar across the board (almost to the point of empathy-numbing generality). Addicts' stories, especially can be frustrating and incomprehensible from the outside. This is part of the nature of the disease. Their historical trajectories aren’t logical. They don’t advance in a traditional narrative arc or resolve in a satisfying conclusion. To understand and empathize, to hear and accept, a listener must be moved beyond the logic of cause and effect and into the realm of affect. Taking affect and “fiction” seriously may be the point where “real” “politics" begins.

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