Psychedelic Imaginaries

This special issue offers fresh and innovative humanities perspectives on the contemporary psychedelic renaissance from scholars in literature, Black and Indigenous studies, anthropology, and medieval and religious studies. The essays explore how the biochemical effects of psychoactive compounds—including an extreme heightening of emotional receptivity, the disorganization of the ego, and an expansive psychological encounter with the cosmos—might be hitched to less abusive and more life-sustaining forms of social connection in an increasingly xenophobic world. The essays make surprising and timely arguments about the ethical uses and abuses of psychedelic substances. They variously argue for understanding humanities education as a type of collective psychedelic therapy; the urgent necessity to acknowledge and resist the settler colonial uses of psychedelics; the potential usefulness of seeing positive psychedelic experiences as an alternative to the delusional logics of racism and xenophobia; and the power of psychedelic creative forms to induce hallucinatory and transformative effects in readers and viewers.

Contributors: Majd Al-Shihabi, Lana Cook, Patricia Dailey, Erika Dyck, Esmat Elhalaby, Ramzi Fawaz, J. Christian Greer, Suleiman Hodali, Darieck Scott, Arun Saldanha, Maya Wind, and Voices from the Refaat Alareer Encampment at Ghent University