It’s all you! Australian ayahuasca drinking, spiritual development, and immunitary individualism
Ayahuasca, a psychoactive plant decoction, has spread from indigenous communities in South America to urban areas in the Americas, Europe, and Australia where it is used in neoshamanic rituals. This paper draws on ethnography of Australian ayahuasca ceremonies to examine the ways that individualism shapes the structure of ayahuasca rituals, the interpretation of visionary experiences, and notions of spiritual development. I show how the metaphors that Australian drinkers involved in this study use to understand their ayahuasca experiences and spiritual development reflect a form of immunitary individualism, which is premised on the negation of difference and relationality. Secular disenchantment and a culture of narcissism may drive people to seek ayahuasca, but transcendence is interpreted in terms of an expansive, non-relational self. In this sense, neoshamanic ayahuasca culture may be an escape from and reproduction of the culture of narcissism associated with the malaise of modernity.
Duke Scholars
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- Anthropology
- 4404 Development studies
- 4401 Anthropology
- 1601 Anthropology
Citation
Published In
DOI
EISSN
ISSN
Publication Date
Volume
Issue
Start / End Page
Related Subject Headings
- Anthropology
- 4404 Development studies
- 4401 Anthropology
- 1601 Anthropology