Neuro-plastic Shamanism? Towards a Political Ontology of Whiteness and the Psychedelic Zeitgeist
Anthropology of Consciousness September 1, 2022 Mat Keel 3 citations
The paper argues that clinical psychedelic medicine today reproduces modern colonial whiteness, drawing on Elizabeth Povinelli's theory of late liberalism. It calls for placing contemporary plant medicine within broader discussions in cultural anthropology about political ontology and decoloniality, rather than treating psychedelic studies as a segregated academic area. By reinterpreting whiteness through the history of the psychedelic counterculture as a form of complex trauma, the work suggests new implications for decolonial praxis.