University of Denver Digital Commons @ DU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate Studies 11-1-2013 Beware of Mad John: Political Theology, Psychedelics and Literature Roger K. Green University of Denver Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd Part of the American Literature Commons Recommended Citation Green, Roger K., "Beware of Mad John: Political Theology, Psychedelics and Literature" (2013). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 245. https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd/245 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate Studies at Digital Commons @ DU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ DU. For more information, please contact [email protected],[email protected]. BEWARE OF MAD JOHN: POLITICAL THEOLOGY, PSYCHEDELIC AESTHETICS AND LITERATURE __________ A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of Arts and Humanities University of Denver __________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy __________ by Roger K. Green November 2013 Advisor: Clark Davis ©Copyright by Roger K. Green 2013 All Rights Reserved Author: Roger K. Green Title: Beware of Mad John: Political Theology, Psychedelic Aesthetics and Literature Advisor: Clark Davis Degree Date: November 2013 ABSTRACT Using the discourse of Political Theology as a mode of enquiry we can overcome a longstanding tension between aesthetics and history that characterized much of twentieth century thought. Focusing on literary and occasionally musical works from the mid twentieth century, my aim is to show how works displaying psychedelic aesthetics are important venues for political deliberation with regard to citizenship. Through affective means, psychedelic aesthetics re- imagine the boundaries of liberal subjectivity through a consciousness expansion and return from that expansion. The subject who returns from a psychedelic “experience” – which can be attained in various ways – comes to ethically realign and re-norm his or her “self” according to a moral authority beyond the authority of the nation state. While critical of liberalism on one level, this “expanded” citizenship ultimately offers liberalism political advice in crisis situations by performing a public sacrifice on the state and disseminating social responsibility to individuals. Psychedelic aesthetics perform this ‘public sacrifice’ through affective enchantment, using spiritual and religious rhetoric to change the relationship between citizen and state. Because artistic works of the mid twentieth century are essentially “ahead of the game” regarding states of exception and economic crises, it is to this period that we should look for methods of cultural recovery in current ones. But this requires that we take both aesthetic and religious enchantment seriously in a post-secular world. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my dissertation committee: Clark Davis, Linda Bensel- Meyers and Laird Hunt. Clark was graciously willing to be my advisor and my dissertation has its roots in his Early American Aesthetics course during winter quarter of 2010. I would also like to thank my fourth reader, Carl Raschke, not only for participating in my defense but for writing many books that were enormously useful to my project. I have had helpful feedback at various stages of this project from professor Eleanor McNees. Professor Alexandra Hennessey Olsen oversaw some of my ancient mythical work. I would especially like to thank Selah Saterstrom for many discussions concerning hermeneutics, writing and re-enchantment in general. I am grateful to Jan Gorak’s work on intellectual history and his ability to defend the uses of literature in his lectures. I am grateful to Rob Gilmor, Kristy Firebaugh and Dan Singer for meeting regularly to share our writing and to Joshua Ramos for discussions about religious theory and book recommendations. I am also continually indebted to some professors who believed in my potential early on: Joan Griffin, Elizabeth Holtze, Cindy Carlson, Jake Adam York, Ron Miles, Catherine Kemp, Mitchell Aboulafia, Myra Bookman and Rob Metcalf. I am also thankful to countless hours of aesthetic discussions with Jennifer Denrow, Joe Sampson and Colin Bricker. This is dedicated with love to E. P. and “misplaced tenderness.” iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter One: Introduction: Liberal Subjectivity, Religion, and the State .......................... 1 Methodological Problems in the Disciplines ........................................................ 14 Political Theology ................................................................................................. 20 Subjectivity ........................................................................................................... 25 Psychedelic Aesthetics and Political Theology .................................................... 31 The Question of Citizenship ................................................................................. 37 Psychedelic Aesthetics and Spirituality ................................................................ 45 A Note on Method ................................................................................................ 55 What is to Follow .................................................................................................. 60 Chapter Two: European Influences .................................................................................. 61 Earlier European Roots ......................................................................................... 71 Artaud and Enchantment ....................................................................................... 75 Weber and Heidegger ........................................................................................... 80 The European Social Imaginary ............................................................................ 87 One Dimensional Man .......................................................................................... 88 Manifestations in the 1960s .................................................................................. 99 Chapter Three: The Return to ‘Nature’ and the Problem of the Perennial ..................... 104 The Problem of the Perennial ............................................................................. 111 Analyzing Psychedelic Literature ....................................................................... 124 Liberalism and Subjectivity ................................................................................ 131 Chapter Four: Theorizing the Psychedelic Experience ................................................... 142 The Professional Discourse of Psychedelics in the 1960s .................................. 163 Chapter Five: Psychedelic Citizenship and Re-enchantment: Affective Aesthetics as Political Instantiation ...................................................................................................... 172 What’s for Tea, Mum? ........................................................................................ 182 Narrative Comparisons ....................................................................................... 191 Psychedelic Citizenship ...................................................................................... 221 Chapter Six: Aldous Huxley the Political Theologian .................................................... 237 Soma ................................................................................................................... 255 Island ................................................................................................................... 273 Huxley and More Recent Discussions of Political Theology ............................. 293 Chapter Seven: Conclusion: Re-enchantment and Psychedelic Aesthetics .................... 302 iv Works Cited .................................................................................................................... 320 v CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION: LIBERAL SUBJECTIVITY, RELIGION, AND THE STATE To speak of an aesthetic is already a gesture toward a notion of transcendence, toward something above and between individual subjectivities. Psychedelic aesthetics1 re-imagine the boundaries of liberal subjectivity through a consciousness expansion and then a return from that expansion. As such, psychedelic aesthetics challenge liberal subjectivity itself. A subject who returns from a psychedelic “experience” – which can be attained in various ways – ethically realigns and re-norms his or her “self” according to a moral authority beyond the forces that shape liberal subjectivity, beyond the 1 I use terms psychedelic aesthetics as a singular collection of a variety of different senses. This is partly because the artistic works that evidence such aesthetics tend to have synaesthetic qualities; however, as will become apparent, my intention is to point to a version of aesthetics that pushes the meaning beyond the concept “of the senses.” My attempt is not to redefine a word so much as to point to a notion of aesthetics that precedes modernity and what Jerome Schneewind calls “the invention of autonomy.” ‘Sensibility’ as an aesthetic quality depends on modern conceptions of the body in a period of secularization, and as Alasdair MacIntyre and others have pointed out, accompanies the emergence of a publicly determined moral politics. In Martin Heidegger’s ‘return’ to ontology as first philosophy in