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Philopsychedelia beyond the West: The decolonial reflorescence of psychedelic philosophy.

Jan Clefferson Costa de Freitas, Nathalia Cristina Medeiros Maia, Markone Brandão Da Silva Shanenawa, Juan Vásquez Amaringo, René Alvarado Martinez

Progress in Brain Research 2025 DOI: 10.1016/bs.pbr.2025.07.001 (opens in new tab)

Study at a glance

AI-extracted from the abstract
Characteristics Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed
Keywords Decolonial thought Entheogenic wisdoms Psychedelic philosophies
Key points Proposes that decolonial thought and psychedelic philosophy are mutually illuminating, with psychedelic experiences offering ways to understand insurgent knowledges and decolonial conceptions providing interpretive keys for psychedelic experiences.

Abstract

The main purpose of this work is to identify the intersections between decolonial thought and psychedelic philosophy. By "psychedelic" we mean a pharmacological category, the effects of substances that modulates perception, a myriad of consciousness states, a set of ecstatic practices, a variety of countercultural movements, a constellation of artistic avant-gardes, and a plurality of ways of being. We thus intend to demonstrate how visionary aesthetics, liminal phenomenologies, ancestral epistemologies, ethics of resistance, politics of freedom and kaleidoscopic metaphysics are conceptual horizons from which a decolonization of the "manifestations of the mind" can come to light. Through an analytical-descriptive methodology, we idealize obtaining, as a result of this research, a philosophical justification of the indispensability of integrating decoloniality into the reflorescence of psychedelia. In a nutshell: we envision to clarify the extent to which psychedelic experiences can be ways of understanding insurgent knowledges, as well as explaining the proportion to which decolonial conceptions can be keys to interpreting psychedelic experiences.