Historicizing psychedelics: counterculture, renaissance, and the neoliberal matrix

The essay argues that the shift of psychedelics from counterculture to mainstream acceptance is tied to the rise of 'capitalist realism,' a term from Mark Fisher meaning capitalism is seen as the only viable social system. Neoliberalism, the driving force, defused the political and collective potential of 1960s psychedelic movements by emphasizing individualism over social change. The anti-work and communal aspects of psychedelic culture were lost as they became tools for enhancing or treating individual brains without challenging capitalist society. The author contends that psychedelics' context-dependence shows that personal change, aligned with values of love and connection, requires transforming society, especially given ecological and social crises.

Study at a glance

Abstract

In this essay, I would like to suggest that the historical transition of psychedelics from an association with counter culture to becoming part of the mains tream is related to the rise of what late cultural theorist Mark Fisher termed “capitalist realism”—the notion that there is no alternative form of social organization and, as such, capitalism simply is reality. For Fisher, the economic and political project of neoliberalism was the main agent behind this re-instauration of capitalist hegemony after its de-stabilization by the convergence of several radical forces at the end of the 1960s and early 70s, of which psychedelic “consciousness-expansion” was one. Thus, historicizing psychedelics within the shifts in political economy and culture associated with the “collective set and setting” of neoliberalism can serve both to understand the current shape and operations of the psychedelic “renaissance” as well as help us retrieve these substance's lost political potential. Concretely, this essay argues that such potential was not inherent to psychedelics but embedded in the political economy of the New Deal order, which supported both the formation of discourses, demands, and hopes based on “the social” and, relatedly, the idea that “the personal is political.” As neoliberalism displaced this object of reference in favor of individualism, the personal was de-linked from the political and the dreams—and the threats—of psychedelic utopianism were successfully defused and forgotten. In the process, concretely, the anti-work and collective dimensions of the psychedelic counterculture have been all but lost as psychedelics have returned to enhance or treat individual brains—while leaving capitalist society unchallenged. In light of our ecological and social predicaments, the famous context-dependence of psychedelics can be a powerful reminder that, contra individualism, the social and political traverse the personal—and thus that to change the self in line with the psychedelic values of love and connection ultimately requires changing the world.