Psychedelics can enable a broad and paradoxical spectrum of linguistic
phenomena from the unspeakability of mystical experience to the eloquence of
the songs of the shaman or curandera. Interior dialogues with the Other,
whether framed as the voice of the Logos, an alien download, or communion
with ancestors and spirits, are relatively common. Sentient visual languages are
encountered, their forms unrelated to the representation of speech in natural
language writing systems. This thesis constructs a theoretical model of
linguistic phenomena encountered in the psychedelic sphere for the field of
altered states of consciousness research (ASCR). The model is developed from
a neurophenomenological perspective, especially the work of Francisco Varela,
and Michael Winkelman’s work in shamanistic ASC, which in turn builds on
the biogenetic structuralism of Charles Laughlin, John McManus, and Eugene
d’Aquili. Neurophenomenology relates the physical and functional
organization of the brain to the subjective reports of lived experience in altered
states as mutually informative, without reducing consciousness to one or the
other. Consciousness is seen as a dynamic multistate process of the recursive
interaction of biology and culture, thereby navigating the traditional
dichotomies of objective/subjective, body/mind, and inner/outer realities that
problematically characterize much of the discourse in consciousness studies.
The theoretical work of Renaissance scholar Stephen Farmer on the evolution of
syncretic and correlative systems and their relation to neurobiological
structures provides a further framework for the exegesis of the descriptions of
linguistic phenomena in first-person texts of long-term psychedelic selfexploration.
Since the classification of most psychedelics as Schedule I drugs,
legal research came to a halt; self-experimentation as research did not.
Scientists such as Timothy Leary and John Lilly became outlaw scientists, a
social aspect of the “unspeakability” of these experiences. Academic ASCR has
largely side-stepped examination of the extensive literature of psychedelic selfexploration.
This thesis examines aspects of both form and content from these
works, focusing on those that treat linguistic phenomena, and asking what
these linguistic experiences can tell us about how the psychedelic landscape is
constructed, how it can be navigated, interpreted, and communicated within its
own experiential field, and communicated about to make the data accessible to
inter-subjective comparison and validation. The methodological core of this
practice-based research is a technoetic practice as defined by artist and
theoretician Roy Ascott: the exploration of consciousness through interactive,
artistic, and psychoactive technologies. The iterative process of psychedelic
self-exploration and creation of interactive software defines my own technoetic
practice and is the means by which I examine my states of consciousness employing
the multidimensional visual language Glide.
Date of Award | 2011 |
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Original language | English |
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Awarding Institution | |
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Supervisor | Roy Ascott (Other Supervisor) |
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- Psychedelics
- Neurophenomenology
- Language
- Technoetics
Communicating the Unspeakable: Linguistic Phenomena in the Psychedelic Sphere
Slattery, D. R. (Author). 2011
Student thesis: PhD