Decolonization is a metaphor towards a different ethic. The case from psychedelic studies

ABSTRACT

Indigenous psychedelic uses have long been imbricated with colonialism and its afterlives. Amidst tensions from accelerating investor interest in psychedelics and calls to decolonize research and practices, we argue that the study of psychedelics is troubled by dualisms used in both colonial and decolonial thought: subject and object, self and other, culture and nature, synthetic and natural, the colonizer and the indigenous, the literal and the metaphorical. Feminist and decolonial theory as well as a discussion of metaphor support our argument that the study of psychedelics often lacks critical engagement with these dualisms. A narrow understanding of coloniality hinders far-reaching critiques of contemporary capitalism, including progressive colonization of the life-world and commodification of psychedelic experiences. Fears that decolonization is becoming just a ‘metaphor’ implicitly reaffirm the conceptual power dynamics of colonization. In research on psychedelics, decolonization as a critical metaphor enables reassessing problematic distinctions that shape thinking, material realities, experiences.

KEYWORDS:

• Bioprospecting
• critical theory
• decolonization
• decolonizing ethics
• medicalization
• psychedelic patenting
• psychedelic studies
• Val Plumwood

Acknowledgements

We thank the editors of the Special Issue, especially Claudia Gertraud Schwarz, and the anonymous reviewers. Their thoughtful, detailed, and encouraging critique helped us to improve this article. We are grateful to the colleagues who joined our online seminars in 2021 with presentations and stimulating discussions. We further thank Eleanor Shaw M.A., who worked as a postgraduate intern; she helped organize our events and contributed literature research on intellectual property regimes.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

2 Ayahuasca and psychoactive mushrooms are prominent in both historical and current discourses on psychedelics, particularly in Mexico and Latin America. They are not synthetic. Salvia divinorum and psychoactive mushrooms can be consumed directly from the field, whereas ayahuasca is a preparation of plant ingredients, that is known under different names and can be brewed using different plant species and recipes.

Additional information

Funding

The University of Exeter awarded Prof. Hauskeller, Dr Fiske and Dr Schwartz Marin a European Network Fund grant on Decolonizing Philosophy and Anthropology of Psychedelics [European Network Fund grant ENF 4.10]. This supported the forming of the research group, our meeting and our research in 2021. The participation of Dr Gonzáles Romero has been supported by a Miseweskamik International Postdoctoral Fellowship from the University of Saskatchewan, Canada.

Notes on contributors

Christine Hauskeller

Christine Hauskeller is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Exeter, UK. She holds an MA in Philosophy, Sociology and Psychoanalysis and a PhD in Philosophy. Christine studies constellations of knowledge and power, of epistemology and ethics. Her expertise and research bridge across ethics and political philosophy to the philosophy of medicine, of nature and of the life sciences. She works with methods from Critical Theory and Feminism. She founded the Exeter transdisciplinary research group on philosophy and psychedelics https://blogs.exeter.ac.uk/philosophyandpsychedelics/. Publications include The Matrix of Stem Cell Research (Routledge 2020) and Philosophy and Psychedelics: Frameworks for Exceptional Experience (Bloomsbury 2022).

Taline Artinian

Taline Artinian is a philosopher and a psychologist. After her MA in Clinical Psychology (Saint- Joseph University), she studied questions linked to identity and intergenerational trauma, working with refugees and victims of human trafficking in the Middle East. This work inspired her philosophical interest in meaning-making and gratitude. Her PhD in Philosophy (University of Exeter) proposed transpersonal gratitude as a concept that frames exceptional experiences of thankfulness. Taline is Honorary Research Fellow and Associate Lecturer at the University of Exeter. Current research interests include the philosophy of gratitude, phenomenology of psychedelic altered states of consciousness, ethics of decolonization.

Amelia Fiske

Amelia Fiske is a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for History and Ethics of Medicine at the Technical University of Munich, Germany. Trained as a cultural anthropologist, Amelia has been working in interdisciplinary bioethics settings since 2017. Her work is situated at the intersection of cultural anthropology, feminist science and technology studies, social medicine and bioethics, and environmental humanities. She received her PhD in Cultural Anthropology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (USA), held a postdoctoral position at Kiel University, and has conducted extensive field research in Ecuador.

Ernesto Schwarz Marin

Ernesto Schwarz-Marin is a Science and Technology Studies scholar working in the fields of biomedicine, forensics, and citizen science. He conducts in-depth ethnographic research of race and genomics, and the colonial legacies of scientific research including psychedelics, and unaligned knowledges in the Global South. Thanks to ESRC funding Schwarz-Marin has developed participatory action research to intervene in humanitarian crises via DNA bio banking, grass-roots databases, and citizen-led science. Schwarz-Marin co-produced outputs include comic books, videogames (www.datajustice.mx) and telenovelas [Aka. Soap operas] (www.amorsecuestrado.com) informed by ethnographic research, to disseminate findings and catalyse emerging forms of socio-technical governance.

Osiris Sinuhé González Romero

Osiris Sinuhé González Romero earned his PhD at Leiden University, in the Faculty of Archaeology – Heritage of Indigenous Peoples. In 2015 he was awarded the Coimbra Group Scholarship for Young Professors and Researchers from Latin American Universities. Currently, he is a Postdoctoral Researcher on cognitive freedom and psychedelic humanities in the Department of History at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada. His research interests include philosophy of psychedelics, history of medicine, indigenous knowledge, heritage studies, decolonial theory, political philosophy, and aesthetics. Recent publications include: Tlamatiliztli: la sabiduría del pueblo nahua. Filosofía intercultural y derecho a la tierra (Leiden University Press).

Luis Eduardo Luna

Luis Eduardo Luna has a PhD from the Department of Comparative Religion, Stockholm University (1989) and an Honorary Doctorate from St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY (2002). He retired from the Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki. He is the author of Vegetalismo: Shamanism among the Mestizo Population of the Peruvian Amazon (1986), co-author with Pablo Amaringo of Ayahuasca Visions (1991), and co-editor with Steven White of Ayahuasca Reader (2000, 2016). He is the Director of Wasiwaska, Research Center for the Study of Psychointegrator Plants, Visionary Art and Consciousness, Florianópolis, Brazil (www.wasiwaska.org), and an honorary research fellow of the University of Exeter.

Joseph Crickmore

Joseph Crickmore is a graduate student of Philosophy and Politics. Having studied at the University of Exeter in both BA Philosophy, Politics and Economics, and MA Political Thought, he is now due to commence his PhD – Societies of Esteem Bereft of Labour – in the field of post-Hegelian philosophy. Joseph has assisted in the production of the volume Philosophy and Psychedelics (2022, Bloomsbury), and has been an active participant in the Exeter transdisciplinary research group on philosophy and psychedelics since 2021. Joseph is passionate for Sci-Fi and views psychedelia as Dune's ‘fountain of surprises.’

Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes

Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes is a philosopher of mind and metaphysics who specializes in the thought of Whitehead, Nietzsche, and Spinoza; and in fields pertaining to panpsychism and altered states of mind. Following his degree in Continental Philosophy at the University of Warwick, he became a Philosophy lecturer in London for six years after which he pursued his PhD at the University of Exeter – where he is now a Research Fellow and Lecturer. Peter is the author of Noumenautics (2015), Modes of Sentience (2021), co-editor of Bloomsbury's Philosophy and Psychedelics (2022), and the TEDx Talker on ‘psychedelics and consciousness’.