Webbed Attachments: Psychedelic Lessons from the Multiverse
Theory and Event April 1, 2025 Ramzi Fawaz 1 citation
A hopeful alternative to contemporary left-wing identitarianism is offered by the fundamental qualities of the psychedelic experience—heightened affective intensity, ego disorganization, and a sense of cosmic interconnectedness. Building on Wendy Brown's concept of 'wounded attachment,' the obsessive defense of bounded marginalized identities paradoxically masks a desire to commune freely across differences. The animated films Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) and Across the Spider-Verse (2023) use Spider-Man's 'webbing' as a visual theory of attachment across infinite differences. By fracturing Spider-Man's ego across time and space, the multiverse becomes a psychedelic figure for conceiving differences as an endless web of relations between dimensions, not rigid identities.