The Politics of Consciousness and Immersive Media: An Integrative Review
Art&Sensorium July 6, 2025 Daniel Mirante
Awe-inspiring experiences and aesthetic rituals can produce deep shifts in how people know the world, and these shifts often intersect with power structures. Examining cases from Amazonian shamanic rituals to ancient Egyptian temple arts, Surrealist dream experiments, transpersonal psychology, and science-fiction cyberculture reveals a common thread: a 'politics of consciousness' in which altered states and symbolic systems shape individual and collective worldviews, entwining spiritual mythos, realpolitik, and sociotechnical imaginaries. Sacred art-ritual ecologies and modern media techniques serve as architectures of transformation. Technologically mediated awe can both elevate and undermine human freedom. Rituals of awe function as tools of epistemic change and sites of political contestation over the human spirit.