Date of Award
11-1-2013
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Organizational Unit
College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences
First Advisor
Clark Davis
Second Advisor
Laird Hunt
Third Advisor
Linda Bensel-Meyers
Keywords
Aesthetics, Literature, Political, Psychedelic, Theology
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 reimagine 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.
Publication Statement
Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.
Rights Holder
Roger K. Green
Provenance
Received from ProQuest
File Format
application/pdf
Language
en
File Size
342 p.
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
Copyright date
2013
Discipline
Literature, Aesthetics, Philosophy