Webbed Attachments: Psychedelic Lessons from the Multiverse

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.

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Abstract

Abstract: This essay explores how the fundamental qualities of the psychedelic experience—including heightened affective intensity, the disorganization of the ego, and a sense of cosmic interconnectedness with the universe—offers a hopeful alternative to contemporary left-wing identitarianism. This is a widely popular political logic that associates the pursuit of social justice with the passionate defense of seemingly coherent, bounded marginalized subjectivities that are depressively defined by their perpetual subordination to rigid hierarchies of power. Building on Wendy Brown’s classic formulation of “wounded attachment,” I argue that in a painful paradox, the obsessive attachment to cultural identity as the vehicle for articulating marginalized subjects’ bids for political freedom, often masks the underlying desire to commune freely across our differences. Against this logic, I turn to the distinctly psychedelic animated films, Spider-Man: Into (2018) and Across the Spider-Verse (2023), which use the titular superhero’s signature “webbing” as a visual theory of attachment and affiliation across infinite phenotypical, temperamental, and stylistic differences, or radically distinct forms of life. By visually and conceptually fracturing Spider-Man’s seemingly coherent ego across time and space, the film presents the fictional concept of the multiverse as a distinctly psychedelic figure for conceiving differences as an endless web of relations forged between multiple dimensions rather than rigidly formed identities.