Neuro-plastic Shamanism? Towards a Political Ontology of Whiteness and the Psychedelic Zeitgeist
Anthropology of Consciousness September 1, 2022 DOI: 10.1111/anoc.12159 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Longitudinal Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Shamanism |
| Citations | 3 |
| Key points | Argues that clinical psychedelic medicine sustains the reproduction of modern colonial whiteness and that psychedelic studies must engage with decoloniality and political ontology. |
Abstract
Abstract This paper argues for reorienting our investigation of the psychedelic zeitgeist towards the longitudinal history of psychedelia with a committed attention to its relationship to colonialism. It demonstrates that clinical psychedelic medicine appears to sustain the reproduction of modern colonial whiteness in line with Elizabeth Povinelli’s theorization of late liberalism. It also challenges the notion of a restricted or segregated academic area for psychedelic studies. Instead, it is imperative to place discussions of contemporary plant medicine in line with broader contemporary discussions in cultural anthropology around political ontology and decoloniality. This paper attempts to demonstrate that doing so may challenge our understanding of whiteness—reinterpreting it—by recourse to the history of the psychedelic counterculture, as a form of complex trauma, and thus potentially demonstrating new implications for decoloniality and its praxis.