Learning Animacy Through Embodying Others: Plant Diets in the Peruvian Amazon
University of Chicago August 1, 2024 Lorna Hadlock
Foreigners, mostly Westerners, travel to the Peruvian Amazon for ayahuasca tourism, and some undertake long-term shamanic training with indigenous Shipibo healers. Central to this training are plant diets—periods of abstinence during which a would-be healer gains knowledge from a teacher plant. Based on ethnographic research at a shamanic training center, this dissertation describes how students learn and experience plant diets, which are a process of merging permanently with a plant spirit. Dieters describe themselves as plant-human hybrids and cultivate an ability to perceive an animate plant world. They develop skills such as attunement, discipline, reciprocity, and discernment to interact with plant spirits. The project argues that what dieters learn supports an alternative ontological stance to Otherness, managing difference in the pursuit of healing.