Altered States of Ontology: Hallucinogenic Psychiatry, Psychedelic Fascism, and Acid Communism

• In Event: Domains of Critical Drug Studies: Absent Pleasures and Risky Presents in Emerging Spaces of Harm Reduction - I

Abstract

This paper analyzes the so-called Psychedelic Revival as a (Euro-American) social movement converging around the peculiar material-semiotic objects that are psychedelic drugs. This movement primarily finds legitimacy through the innovative use of psychedelics in the therapeutic treatment of trauma, anxiety, and other psychiatrically articulated conditions. By juxtaposing two conceptions of anxiety — one informed by the (bio)medical models of ‘the psy-complex,’ the other by theory that politicizes embodied suffering — I frame the revival as a moment of contestation over the potentiality offered by psychedelically-altered states of consciousness. Drawing on work responding to ‘capitalist realism,’ I situate this struggle over articulation in a moment of neoliberal precarity, in which the ‘dominant reactive affect’ of anxiety gets embodied through neoliberal subjectivities. I argue that this anxiety not only interrupts radical solidarity formations, but that its materializations among authoritarian subjects acts as a driving force of contemporary authoritarian movements. This project thus aims to interrupt these ontological dimensions of late capitalism from being relegated to the biomedical domain, which ultimately conceals and precludes liberatory potential. I explore these concerns through analysis of, and participant observation in, spaces where psychedelic ontologies are being constituted (integration circles, internet forums, conferences, popular media), and through interviews with a diversity of actors (therapeutic users, psychonauts, researchers, clinicians). Following Dimitris Papadopoulos, I suggest that psychedelic clinical practice be complemented by compositional practices of creating alternative ontologies that might prefigure a radical politics of psychedelic experiences - what Mark Fisher envisioned as Acid Communism.

Author

• William James Guerrero, University of California, Santa Cruz