Altered vision: Ayahuasca shamanism and sensory individualism

Ayahuasca, an indigenous Amazonian shamanic brew, is being adopted by Australian neoshamanic practitioners who treat it as a medicine that provides personalized visions with clear moral meaning. This adoption reflects a new style of practice rooted in Western notions of individualism and visualism. In contrast, indigenous Amazonian approaches emphasize synesthetic and socially shared personhood, where visions are entangled in morally ambiguous everyday life. The article argues that neoshamanic ayahuasca use reproduces Enlightenment modes of property ownership by integrating visions as inalienable objects of healing, highlighting divergent forms of individualism between indigenous and Australian groups.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Notions of visualism and individualism have long been employed to elucidate the contours of Western subjectivity. It is therefore not surprising to find the indigenous Amazonian shamanic brew ayahuasca being adopted by Australian neoshamanic practitioners as a medicine that provides personalized visions delivering unambiguous moral import. While this adoption represents a radically new style of its practice, ayahuasca drinking emerged from indigenous societies characterized by robust forms of individualism and visualism of a different kind. Indigenous approaches to ayahuasca drinking have emphasized synesthetic and socially partible configurations of personhood while entangling the visionary content of inebriation in a morally ambiguous field of everyday life. In this article, we argue that the individual of ayahuasca neoshamanism reproduces European Enlightenment modes of property ownership by integrating visions into the self as inalienable objects of healing. The article illustrates how ayahuasca vision is a marker of divergent forms of individualism among indigenous Amazonian and Australian neoshamanic groups.