‘Whatever you want to believe’: kaleidoscopic individualism and ayahuasca healing in Australia
The Australian Journal of Anthropology July 14, 2015 Alex K. Gearin 23 citations
In Australia, the use of the indigenous Amazonian psychoactive beverage ayahuasca has been reimagined in alternative healing circles over the last fifteen years. Acts of vomiting and ecstatic trance-visions in these rituals involve heightened affective states and moral projects of healing. Aspects of everyday life are purged, rearticulated, and reconstituted through codes of conduct and discursive exchange that encourage personal evaluation and reflexivity, indexing ideologies of individualism. Ritual conventions define the individual as autonomous and responsible in relation to ecstatic trance and articulations of wellbeing, shaping sensory organization and social prohibitions.