Green Letters invites papers of up to 6000 words in length for a special issue on Critical Psychedelic Studies and the Environmental Humanities, guest-edited by John Miller (University of Sheffield), Christie Oliver-Hobley (University of Sheffield) and Peter Sands (University of York).
It is widely asserted that a 'psychedelic renaissance' is underway (Sessa, 2012). After extensive research in the 1950s and 1960s into the value of LSD and other consciousness altering substances for psychotherapy, the association of psychedelics with counterculture produced a 'war on drugs' that shut down these explorations at a stroke. Since the 1990s, psychedelic research has gathered renewed momentum with studies on their value for the treatment of depression, addiction, PTSD and OCD showing considerable promise. While the 'psychedelic renaissance' is grounded to a significant extent in this clinical research, interest in wider questions about the meaning, significance, history and politics of psychedelic experience is beginning to solidify into the new interdisciplinary field of critical psychedelic studies.
Among the fast growing academic and popular literature on psychedelics, there is a consistent emphasis on ecological themes, most commonly in relation to the hypothesis that psychedelics enhance or produce a sense of 'nature-connectedness' (Kirkham and Letheby, 2022; Irvine et al., 2023). As Richard Doyle notes in Darwin's Pharmacy (2011), psychedelics can create a 'sudden and absolute conviction that the psychonaut is involved in a densely interconnected ecosystem for which contemporary tactics of human identity are insufficient' (p. 20). Such claims have encouraged some startling conclusions. An article in Vice opined that, 'if everyone tripped on psychedelics, we'd do more about climate change' (Love, 2019). This kind of sensationalist claim is not uncommon in the reporting of psychedelic research, and underpins an increasing focus in critical psychedelic studies on the current 'hype bubble' in which 'a disturbingly large number of articles have touted psychedelics as a [...] miracle drug' (Yaden, Potash and Griffiths, 2022, p. 943).
Notwithstanding Vice's hyperbolic headline, the links between ecological consciousness and psychedelic experience have a well-established history. Accounts of psychedelic use within 1960s' counterculture movements involve extensive reflection on ecological questions; indeed, there is a notable historical connection between 60s' psychedelia and the development of the modern environmental movement. On a longer timeframe, psychedelics - particularly peyote and ayahuasca - have a significant role in many Indigenous ecological philosophies, a facet of psychedelics that raises questions around cultural appropriation in the present renaissance, and their subsumption into existing colonial and capitalist structures. Moreover, shamanic uses of psychedelics raise complex questions around nonhuman agency, plant intelligence and species difference, which connect to theoretical work in animal studies and critical plant studies. These contexts provide a clear invitation for a psychedelic environmental humanities that aims to add a critical perspective to unfolding debates around the ecological meanings and implications of psychedelic experiences.
This edition is interested in open-minded explorations of the ecology of psychedelics. We welcome proposals for articles arising from any arts and humanities discipline, with a focus on any period, region or cultural form, as well as interdisciplinary and/or collaborative research that engages with the emerging or historic scientific literature on this topic. Rather than taking a general focus on drugs or intoxication, essays should engage with the specifics of psychedelics, which is to say substances which, in the words of the Psychedelic Society, 'induce a heightened state of consciousness' (https://psychedelicsociety.org.uk/introduction). Avenues for enquiry might include:
Green Letters is the journal of ASLE-UKI (the UK-Ireland branch of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment). A peer-reviewed journal published by Taylor & Francis, Green Letters explores the relationship between literary, artistic and popular culture and the various conceptions of the environment articulated by scientific ecology, philosophy, sociology and literary and cultural theory.
Articles should conform to Green Letters' style sheet. Articles should be submitted for consideration via Scholar One, our online submission system on this link https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rgrl.
Doyle, Richard. Darwin's Pharmacy: Sex, Plants, and the Evolution of the Noösphere. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011.
Irvine, Alexander, et al. 'Transpersonal ecodelia: Surveying psychedelically induced biophilia'. Psychoactives 2.2 (2023): 174-193.
Kirkham, Nin, and Chris Letheby. 'Psychedelics and environmental virtues'. Philosophical Psychology (2022): 1-25.
The Psychedelic Society, 'Introduction to Psychedelics', https://psychedelicsociety.org.uk/introduction (date accessed 9 April, 2024).
Shayla Love. 'If everyone tripped on psychedelics, we'd do more about climate change'. Vice, 27 June, 2019, https://www.vice.com/en/article/j5w49p/if-everyone-tripped-on-psychedeli... (date accessed 9 April, 2024).
Sessa, Ben. The Psychedelic Renaissance: Reassessing the Role of Psychedelic Drugs in 21st Century Psychiatry and Society. Muswell Hill Press, 2012.
Yaden, David B, James B Potash and Roland R Griffith. 'Preparing for the Bursting of the Psychedelic Hype Bubble'. JAMA Psychiatry. 17.10, October 2022, pp. 943 -44.