Abstract
This chapter addresses the persistence of perennialism in thought and discourse around both psychedelics and aesthetics. Beginning with discussions of tropes about childhood and primitivist thought, it connects the aesthetics of nostalgia to a broader colonialist discourse. More discussion of Artaud’s internal critique of the European tradition occurs, and connections are made to Mircea Eliade’s employment of the European phantasy structure. Explications of Diane di Prima, Timothy Leary, and The Fugs appear. Brief connections are made between psychedelic aesthetics and structuralism, followed by an account of the aesthetics of exhaustion.
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Notes
- 1.
George Boas, The Cult of Childhood, Dallas: Spring Publications, 1966, 11.
- 2.
Ibid., 24–25.
- 3.
Ibid., 26.
- 4.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or Treatise on Education, Trans. William H. Payne, New York: Prometheus Books, 2003, 4.
- 5.
Julien Levy, Surrealism, New York: Da Capo, 1936/1995, 6.
- 6.
Ibid.
- 7.
Peter Sloterdijk, In the Interior World of Capital: Towards a Philosophical Theory of Globalization, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013, 5.
- 8.
Robert Hemmings, “A Taste of Nostalgia: Children’s Books from the Golden Age-Carroll, Grahame, and Milne,” Children’s Literature Quarterly vol. 35 (2007): 55.
- 9.
Jacques Derrida, “The Theater of Cruelty and the Closure of Representation,” Writing and Difference, Trans. Alan Bass, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978, 235.
- 10.
Antonin Artaud, The Peyote Dance, New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1975, 21.
- 11.
Jacques Derrida, “The Theater of Cruelty and the Closure of Representation,” Writing and Difference, Trans. Alan Bass, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978, 232.
- 12.
Ibid., 233.
- 13.
Diane di Prima, “Revolutionary Letter #4,” theanarchistlibrary.org , accessed August 3, 2016 https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/diane-di-prima-revolutionary-letters#toc5
- 14.
Timothy Leary, High Priest, Oakland: Ronin, 1968, 26.
- 15.
Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane , New York: Harper Torchbooks. 1961, 196.
- 16.
Ibid., 203.
- 17.
Ibid., 212.
- 18.
Stanislav Grof, Modern Consciousness Research and the Understanding of Art (Santa Cruz: MAPS, 2015), 28–29.
- 19.
Ralph Metzner, The Ayahuasca Experience: A Sourcebook on the Sacred Vine of the Spirits, Rochester, Park Street Press, 2014: 34.
- 20.
Ibid., 35.
- 21.
Ibid., 5–6.
- 22.
Robert E. L. Masters and Jean Houston, Psychedelic Art, New York: Grove Press, 1968, 96.
- 23.
Ibid., 97.
- 24.
Ibid., 99.
- 25.
François Dosse, History of Structuralism, Vol. 1: The Rising Sign, 1945–1966, trans. Deborah Glassman (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), 72.
- 26.
Roland Barthes, Elements of Semiology, Trans. Annette Lavers and Colin Smith, New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 1967, 11.
- 27.
Ibid., 10.
- 28.
Ibid., 11.
- 29.
Ibid., 16.
- 30.
Ibid., 18.
- 31.
Ibid., 21.
- 32.
Ibid., 77.
- 33.
Ibid., 86.
- 34.
Ibid., 94.
- 35.
Jacques Derrida, Positions, Trans. Alan Bass, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981, 63.
- 36.
Ibid., 65.
- 37.
Lewis MacAdams, The Birth of the Cool: Beat, Bebop, and the American Avant-garde, New York: The Free Press, 2001, 164.
- 38.
John Cage, “Lecture on Nothing,” Silence, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1961, 111.
- 39.
Jacques Derrida, “The Theater of Cruelty and the Closure of Representation,” Writing and Difference, Trans. Alan Bass, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978, 250.
- 40.
Jacque Derrida, Of Grammatology. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1974, 164.
- 41.
Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse on Modernity, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1990, 166–67.
- 42.
Ibid., 165.
- 43.
Ibid., 166.
- 44.
Robert Ellwood, The Politics of Myth: A Study of C. G. Jung , Mircea Eliade , and Joseph Campbell, New York: State University of New York Press, 1999, 35.
- 45.
Jacques Derrida, “The Theater of Cruelty and the Closure of Representation,” Writing and Difference, Trans. Alan Bass, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978, 250.
- 46.
Robert E. L. Masters and Jean Houston, Psychedelic Art, New York: Grove Press, 1967, 90.
- 47.
Antonin Artaud, The Theater and Its Double. New York: Grove Press, 1958, 25.
- 48.
Ed Sanders, “Homage to Catherine and William Blake,” The Fugs : Live From the 60s, http://www.allmusic.com/album/live-from-the-60s-mw0000605219
- 49.
Alexander Roob, Hermetic Museum of Alchemy and Mysticism, New York: Taschen, 2014, 222.
- 50.
Ibid., 223.
- 51.
Antonin Artaud, The Theater and Its Double, New York: Grove Press, 1958, 39.
- 52.
Jacques Derrida, “The Theater of Cruelty and the Closure of Representation,” Writing and Difference, Trans. Alan Bass, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978, 250.
- 53.
Robert E.L. Masters and Jean Houston, Psychedelic Art, New York: Grove Press, 1967, 87.
- 54.
Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Tests , New York: Bantam, 1968, 224.
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Green, R.K. (2019). The Return to “Nature” and the Problem of the Perennial. In: A Transatlantic Political Theology of Psychedelic Aesthetics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15318-2_4
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