Ecstasy-Belonging in Madagascar and Brazil
Kélina Gotman
Oxford Scholarship Online December 21, 2017 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190840419.003.0009 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Historical analysis Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | MDMA |
| Key points | Argues that colonial physicians' classification of anti-colonial uprisings as choreomania transformed political revolt into a medical disorder subject to government administration. |
Abstract
Choreomania became distinctly political. Missionary physicians and neuroscientists stationed in Madagascar and Brazil compared trance-like revolutionary uprisings to the literature on choreomania. Unlike earlier cases, however, these ‘movement disorders’, large-scale anti-colonial demonstrations characterized by shaking, frothing, falling, and visions—as well as, in Madagascar, ancestor worship—tipped ‘choreomania’ (and ‘epidemic chorea’) into the realm of government administration. Worried that uprisings could take place in other colonies, physicians argued that choreomania spread by pathological sympathy; it migrated. Demonstrators angered at the missionaries’ black hats, gathering at sacred sites, convulsing, and ultimately unseating a pro-European king represent, following Giorgio Agamben, a form of ecstasy-belonging: a state of exception characterized by spirit possession and repossession, through which they take back what is rightly theirs. The disorder of ‘choreomania’ represents a choreopolitics of revolt. Similarly, in Brazil, revolutionary underclasses gathered together in what was dismissed as a ‘choreomaniacal’ epidemic of delusion—a religious psychosis.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on MDMA, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Differences Between the Mechanism of Action of MDMA, MBDB, and the Classic Hallucinogens. Identification of a New Therapeutic Class: Entactogens | 1986 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| The Background and Chemistry of MDMA | 1986 | Historical analysis | |
| The origin of MDMA (ecstasy) revisited: the true story reconstructed from the original documents* Original documents in Merck's historical archive in Darmstadt, Germany, years 1900–1960 | 2006 | Historical analysis | |
| Distinct neural mechanisms for the prosocial and rewarding properties of MDMA | 2019 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| How could MDMA (ecstasy) help anxiety disorders? A neurobiological rationale | 2009 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |