Marcus Clarke’s “Cannabis Indica” and Altered States of Consciousness in 19th-Century Australian Mass Media

Marcus Clarke's 1868 short story 'Cannabis Indica' is one of the first fictional portrayals of altered consciousness and drug use by an Australian author. The story gothicises the experience of hashish, adapting colonial understandings of the drug's oriental origins and its link to medical perceptions of insanity. Clarke's tale engages in a literary experiment exploring colonial consciousness and the duality of rational versus irrational thought, scientific versus fantastical thinking, and being both a colonial and part of the empire.

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Abstract

ABSTRACT In 1868 eminent Australian author Marcus Clarke wrote a gothic tale for his own Colonial Monthly Magazine titled “Cannabis Indica”, purportedly under the influence of hashish. Contemporaneous reviewers discussed this little-known short story as merely a curio, and modern scholars have followed suit. However, the experimental short story is distinguished as one of the first fictional portrayals of altered consciousness and drug use in Australia by an Australian author. Scholars have primarily considered depictions of altered states of consciousness and drug use by European and American writers rather than colonial authors due to the plethora of international fictional and scientific accounts of drug taking. This article argues that Clarke’s story acknowledges and modifies these international understandings, gothicising the experience of drug taking and adapting colonial touchpoints of understanding about the drug, including its oriental origins and link to medical perceptions of insanity, to engage in a literary experiment into colonial consciousness and what it means to be torn by the duality of rational and irrational, of scientific thought and fantastical thinking, and of being both a colonial and part of the empire.