“To Fathom Hell or Soar Angelic”: Theorizing a Psychedelic Politics

In an era of overlapping crises, people are pushed toward individual solutions for economic and political freedom while being offered digital illusions of community. Transhumanist proposals to escape mortality and impermanence have gained popularity, emerging from liberal views of political imagination as an expression of will. The author argues that recovering imagination as a faculty of political judgment requires transformative, transcendent experiences that disrupt ingrained habits of thinking. A psychedelic politics is proposed, beginning with individual self-work and leading to collective political action. By breaking from the familiar, alternative political worlds can be imagined and built, guided by lessons from transcendent experiences.

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Abstract

Abstract: Amidst a heyday of overlapping crises, political subjects are encouraged to pursue economic and political freedom through individual effort, amidst illusions of collectivity in digital spaces. From these logics of alienation, transhumanist solutions to these crises have gained increased traction, even striving to liberate us from the anxieties of impermanence and mortality. I note that these disturbing, apolitical developments have emerged from liberal conceptions of political imagination—as a boundary-breaking expression of human will. I posit that recovering imagination, as a faculty of political judgment, requires transformative, transcendental experiences that reclaim the free play of our cognitive faculties and rupture our ingrained habits of thinking and being. To that end, I articulate and argue for a psychedelic politics that begins as individual self-work, and manifests as collectively rooted political action. By willfully breaking away from the familiar, we can imagine alternative political worlds and collectively act to bring them forth, through the lessons that remain with us after a transcendent experience.