The Nearly Forgotten Futures of Acid Communism: Foucault and Antonioni at Zabriskie Point
Krisis | Journal for Contemporary Philosophy December 17, 2025 DOI: 10.21827/krisis.45.1.42381 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Narrative Focus optics Futures contract Point geometry Perspective graphical Gulag Psychoanalysis Aesthetics Epistemology Art history Work physics Promotion chess Jungian analytical psychology |
| Key points | Argues that analyzing Foucault's LSD experience and Antonioni's film as emblematic 1970s events reveals how psychedelics' radical potential has been contained by neoliberal forces. |
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.