A major scholarly inquiry into the cultural, historical, and societal implications of psychedelics, the Psychedelics in Society and Culture program is a joint effort between UC Berkeley and Harvard University led by the UC Berkeley Center for the Study of Psychedelics (BCSP), the Art and Humanities’s (A&H) Center for Interdisciplinary Critical Inquiry (CICI) and Harvard University’s Mahindra Humanities Center. Made possible with generous support from the Flourish Trust, the project expands the conversation beyond the currently more common focus on psychedelics’ therapeutic uses.
In addition to being co-led by CICI, four of the initiative’s inaugural fellows come from within A&H: Beatrice De Faveri, a PhD student in the department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures; Darian Longmire, an assistant professor in Art Practice; Liam McEvoy, an undergraduate majoring in anthropology with minors in Middle Eastern Language and Culture and Race and Law; and Poulomi Saha, an associate professor in English and co-director of the Program in Critical Theory.
De Faveri will conduct a diachronic and lexicographical survey of the lotus flower (Nimphaea nouchali var. caerulea and alba) and mandrake (Mandrogora officinarium L.) in written sources such as medical papyri, and an autoptic study of ritual objects in the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston towards providing a clear definition of the modes and extent of the consumption of psychotropic substances to induce altered states of consciousness in ritual practices in ancient Egypt. McEvoy will conduct liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC-MC) chemical analysis on samples of Nymphaea Caerulea, one of the plants mentioned above, and “blue lotus” flowers and resins sold on the internet. McEvoy will work with the curator at the UC Botanical Garden to source living Caerulea material and to possibly add examples to the garden’s living collection.
Longmire is part of a group of UC Berkeley and Harvard artists and writers developing Elastic, a biannual print magazine featuring both new and previously overlooked psychedelic art and literature, much of which was made by radically innovative artists and writers of color. The two inaugural issues will expand the narrow and asepticized version of what psychedelic art is through the presentation of immersive, daring, genre- and time-bending work that locates the sublime in the ordinary and extends the contours of creativity, identity, and community.
Saha’s project, Towards Re-enchantment: Mysticism, Psychedelics, Reimagining Critical Theory is a yearlong project bringing together faculty and graduate students, mainly from the Critical Theory designated emphasis, to explore the methodological and epistemological challenges and possibilities inaugurated by psychotropic mystical experiences in ways of knowing. She notes that “Mystical experience shatters the fantasy of the knowing subject. In so doing it offers a different form of knowledge. This initiative returns to the emancipatory aim of critical theory that is imbued with mystical force, to ask how states of altered consciousness and ineffable experience facilitated by psychedelics may reimagine the very work of humanist critique.”
The program in Critical Theory is UC Berkeley’s oldest and largest designated emphasis. This year, its 19th, will see the graduation of its 100th student. Started by Judith Butler and Martin Jay in 2005, the program is at the forefront of the field. According to Saha, current co-director of the program, “We make critical theory for the world. And we do it in a way that is frankly, iconoclastic...our affiliates don’t do critical theory, critical theory is a product of what they do. And what our affiliates do is this remarkable range. Everything from the kinds of normative philosophical critique that we associate with critical theory…to people who are undoing the very center. We have people who are really interested in questions that get to the heart of what the psychedelic grant is asking, that is, what is the self? What is the disillusionment of the self? What is it possible to know when we’re not starting from this idea of that kind of thinking, individual person?”
Intentionally expansive, the Psychedelics in Society and Culture program has awarded ten fellowships at UC Berkeley and sixteen at Harvard with both universities supporting cross-campus collaboration and discussion between cohorts to advance and develop their work. “I’m especially pleased by this initiative’s focus on the role of the arts, humanities, and humanistic social sciences, which are crucial for understanding the histories of psychedelics, their invitation for us to sense the world, make meaning, and perhaps even understand ‘the human’ differently,” said Debarati Sanyal, Director of CICI and co-director of the Psychedelics in Society and Culture initiative. “The groundbreaking projects supported by this inaugural fellowship cycle explore how psychedelics have produced—and continue to produce—knowledge and inspire critical thought as well as creative expression.”