Neuro‐plastic Shamanism? Towards a Political Ontology of Whiteness and the Psychedelic Zeitgeist

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.

Community-based psychedelic integration and social efficacy: An ethnographic study in the Southeastern United States

“…It illuminates immediate contexts of use as well as issues of social injustice that make access to safe use less obtainable for some. Recognizing social efficacy opens the door for decolonizing psychedelic science and including stakeholders in all aspects of research and implementation of programs (Fotiou, 2019;Earp & Yaden, 2021;Keel, 2022). Combining theory and practice, or what is sometimes called 'praxis,' "emanates from the interlocking imperatives of intellectual efficacy and social responsibility" (Harrison et al, 2016).…”