Drugged Subjectivity, Intoxicating Alterity
Anthropology of Consciousness March 2, 2016 Donald Pollock 6 citations
Among the Kulina Indians of western Brazil, intoxication with alcohol, tobacco, and ayahuasca serves as a means of semiotically appropriating the identities of cosmological others—animal spirits, creator beings, other indigenous groups, and Brazilians. Embodying practices like song and physical movement amplify the experience of becoming an 'alter,' a transformation enabled by the altered states of consciousness that intoxicants produce.