The Nearly Forgotten Futures of Acid Communism: Foucault and Antonioni at Zabriskie Point

This article examines the radical political and aesthetic potential of psychedelics in the 1970s, focusing on Michel Foucault's 1975 LSD experience at Zabriskie Point in Death Valley and Michelangelo Antonioni's 1970 film Zabriskie Point. Drawing on Mark Fisher, Herbert Marcuse, and others, the author reads these events emblematically and genealogically, as symptoms of how larger discourses, ideas, and bodies intersected with psychedelics during that decade. The analysis seeks to recover radical potential that may still remain, given neoliberalism's recent recuperation, containment, legalization, medicalization, and promotion of these drugs.

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Abstract

With a focus on the 1970s—in particular, narratives recounting Michel Foucault’s 1975 LSD experience at Zabriskie Point in Death Valley, as well as Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1970 film Zabriskie Point—this article seeks to recover any politically or aesthetically radical potential that psychedelics might still retain, given neoliberalism’s recent recouperation, containment, legalization, medicalization, and even promotion of these drugs. Drawing upon work by Mark Fisher, Herbert Marcuse, and others, I read these two events (Foucault’s LSD experience and Antonioni’s film) emblematically and genealogically, as symptoms or representations of how larger discourses, ideas, and bodies intersected with psychedelics in the 1970s.