Of pharmakon: Hallucination in Amerindian perspectivism and speculative materialism

Abstract

Aims The paper discusses the concepts of hallucination and psychedelic experience in philosophical and anthropological contexts, where these terms bring in presuppositions regarding body and soul, nature and culture. Method The discussion of the concepts is presented in the context of the debate between Viveiros de Castro's Amerindian perspectivism and Meillassoux's speculative materialism, where in the former the concepts have undergone an anthropological epoché in addressing the problematic presuppositions of unreality and in the latter hallucination and related concepts appear in a canonical western sense as imitations of the real. Results This debate appears to be closely related to the project of naturalization of spirituality. The critique also extends to concepts such as psychedelic and entheogen. In respect to certain indigenous concepts like kepigari of the Matsigenka, observed in anthropology (Shepard, 2018; Danowski, Viveiros de Castro, 2021) and by revisiting Derrida's Plato's Pharmacy (1981) we suggest that the philosopheme of pharmakon suits the role of proximity with indigenous thought for comparative analyses and offers a perspective for psychedelic philosophy. Conclusions The suggestion of considering psychedelics as an existential medicine (Letheby, 2017) could be interpreted as offering a pharmakon with ambiguous, indeterminate possibilities which would emphasize its theoretical soundness.