Participating Members of Haunting & (Post-Apocalypse)

Jana Cattien

Kate Cooper

Michael Dunn

Anais Maurer

Theresa Meerwarth

Emilia Roig

I Concepts

Introduction & Ghost(s)

Theresa Meerwarth

There is a wide range of scholarship that employs haunting, and especially the figure of the ghost, as a tool for critical thinking. Our working group explored haunting, ghosts, and other uncanny figures in the context of apocalyptic studies, and used these concepts to shed light on the notions of ‘apocalypse’ and ‘post-apocalypse.’

In general, the ghost is a liminal figure. It is situated between life and death, past and present, presence and absence, visibility and invisibility, materiality and immateriality, and so forth (see del Pilar Blanco and Peeren 2013). Ghosts are culturally specific, and, throughout our discussions, we tried to keep in mind that ghost appearances and the intentions of haunting depend on their various cultural contexts.

Our working group was particularly interested in the temporalities of haunting. The ghost is often conceptualized as a ‘figure of return’ of the past, but also considered an “arrivant” from the future and, as such, we tried to explore “haunting from the future” with nods to Derrida’s Specters of Marx (1994), Mark Fisher’s Ghosts of My Life (2014) or Gabriele Schwab’s Radioactive Ghosts (2020).

Questioning the linear temporality of past, present, and future, we identified haunting as useful for (post-)apocalyptic thinking because it troubles the temporalized idea of the post-apocalypse as a clean, new slate and as something that follows chronologically after the end (see James Berger’s After the End: Representations of Post-Apocalypse, 1999). Therefore, our discussions centered around the aftermath and the remainders of colonialism, imperialism, and nuclearism in order to explore how haunting complicates the post-apocalypse.

In addition, we observed the ghosts’ connection to the apocalypse through their potential for revelation: Ghosts have the uncanny capability of revealing what is hidden from sight, and, as Avery Gordon states, in Ghostly Matters, haunting is a mode in which “a repressed or unresolved social violence is making itself known” (2008, xvi).

Our discussions also encompassed haunting in the context of trauma studies, and we observed the use of a language of haunting in connection to psychoanalytic theories. The ghost as a figure of ‘the return of the repressed’ serves to explore how past catastrophes influence the present, and even the future, long after they have occurred: The “ghost is a symptom of historical trauma, the sign of its inevitable return and compulsive repetition” (Berger 1999, 52).

Nevertheless, according to Avery Gordon, trauma and haunting are not to be used as synonyms. The ghost demands some reaction, which is why “haunting, unlike trauma, is distinctive for producing a something-to-be-done” (Gordon 2008, xvi). Throughout our sessions, this idea of the “something to be done” lead us to change our focus to the quality of the ghosts that attends to notions of justice. Some of our readings suggested that ghosts couldn’t be laid to rest, and that the purpose of haunting was not to bring about the end but rather a demand for reparations or even revenge (see Tuck and Ree 2013).

These perspectives led us to ask the following key questions that guided our discussions:

• What and how do ghosts return and repeat?

• What are the cultural and material implications of haunting?

• As ghosts cannot be exorcised, is there a way to find closure ( or justice) with the past?

• What is the role of the uncanny, and of the uncanny figures we discussed, in conceptualizing the apocalypse and postapocalypse?

The Monster as Embodiment of Apocalyptic Hybridity in the Book of Daniel

Kate Cooper

The monster is a figure whose connection with apocalyptic literature has its roots in the Hellenistic period. In the second century BCE, the author of the Book of Daniel told the story of Daniel, a young Jewish noble who along with three companions was brought into the service of Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon after Nebuchadnezzar’s armies captured Jerusalem and razed the Temple in 587/586 BCE.  What is most striking in this text to a contemporary reader is its interest in displacement, distortion, and hybridity.

The Book of Daniel stands at the beginning what will become a rich tradition of apocalyptic literature in Hellenistic Judaism and later Christianity. Numerous other Jewish and Christian apocalyptic texts from the period build on the same themes; the most famous example is the early Christian Book of Revelation—written in the late first or early second century CE—which incorporates many of Daniel’s themes and motifs, including the monsters.

The core characteristic of this literature is apokalypsis: the unveiling of a divine message, often made available by a dream interpreter or other guide. The literal meaning of the Greek ‘apokalypsis’ is ‘unveiling’: the word combines the Greek ‘apo’ (‘away’) with ‘kalypsis’ (‘covering’). Later writers, however, fused the moral idea of apocalypse with another powerful idea, that of the eschaton or end-time. In some apocalyptic writings, the man on the throne will be re-purposed as God the Father, sitting in judgement on his Creation at the end of time as we know it. (Crucial here from a Christian point of view is the Apostle Paul’s eschatological warning, that individuals and communities should prepare themselves to meet their maker because “the appointed time has grown short [...] the world in its present form is passing away” (1 Corinthians 7: 29-31)).

Writing roughly four hundred years after the events described, the Book of Daniel’s author reminded his readers that when Daniel and his companions were taken captive, their loss of political standing threatened to result in the obliteration of their cultural identity. The writer calls attention to how the young men avoid eating the same food as their captors, believing that it will defile them. Nonetheless, in the first half of the book, Daniel quickly comes into favour with the King thanks to his gift in interpreting dreams. When another dynasty, the Medes, gain control of Babylon, Daniel retains his place as a favourite of Darius, the new king, but he is soon brought down by jealous palace officials, who cause him to be cast into a den of lions. Saved by a miracle, Daniel survives. The second half of the book records the prophetic dreams and visions which Daniel receives during his career as a Bablyonian holy man; they are told by Daniel himself in a series of first-person narratives.

Perhaps the most famous of these is Daniel’s first vision, in which he watches as four great beasts rise up out of the sea (Daniel 7:2-14). Here, the theme of anxiety about mixed identities comes to the fore. Each of the beasts is a hybrid figure: a lion and a four-headed leopard each have wings; a bear has a mouth like that of a whale; the fourth monster has ten horns—a number not seen in nature—with out-sized teeth made of iron. As Daniel watches, two other figures appear: one, named as ‘the Ancient of Days,’ sits on a wheeled throne which spews a river of fire. Meanwhile, a human being surrounded by clouds  is led into the presence of the throned patriarch, who grants him “authority, glory, and sovereign power” (Daniel 7:14). (Note: ‘human being’ is often translated into English here as ‘a son of man’, a phrase sometimes used in the New Testament to refer to Jesus.)

Daniel’s monsters are especially interesting when considered from a post-colonial perspective. Daniel Smith-Christopher has argued persuasively that the concern to preserve ancestral food restrictions which Daniel exhibits in the Palace of Nebuchadnezzar reflect an anxiety about the relationship of domination following the conquest of Jerusalem.

Building on R. S. Sugirtharajah’s work proposing a post-colonial frame for Biblical Studies, Smith-Christopher argues that the ‘mixed monster’ of apocalyptic literature reflects how Jewish writers under Neo-Babylonian, Seleucid, and Roman domination attempted to process their anxiety around the hybrid identities produced by conquest. Central here is an idea of the monster as a sign of something anticipating colonial hybridity on the part of literary elites in a society under conquest:

the impact of unequal power within societies of mixed backgrounds—the function of minorities, diaspora peoples, and transitory populations (refugees, nomads)—and how these peoples of differing status not only relate to the society they are participating in, but how they also shape themselves and others in that interaction from different positions of social power and privilege (Smith-Christopher 2014, 182).

Smith-Christopher builds also on the first and third of Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s seven theses about monster culture. He cites the first thesis and the beginning of the discussion which follows: “Thesis I: The Monster’s Body is a Cultural Body: The monstrous body is pure culture. A construct and a projection: the monster exists only to be read: monstrum is etymologically ‘that which reveals,’ ‘that which warns.’” Smith-Christopher then adds his own gloss: “Like a letter on the page, the monster signifies something other than itself” (Smith-Christopher 2014, 185, with Cohen 1996, 4).

Similar to the guides and dream interpreters of apocalyptic literature, the monster is a creature of revelation and warning. But there is a crucial difference, in that the monster embodies the threat of dangerous mixing which is so central to Jewish literature of the Exilic, Hellenistic, and Roman periods – the anxiety about identity and category confusion dwelt upon by writers who can control neither the integrity of their own bodies nor that of the body politic.

Thesis III: The Monster Is the Harbinger of Category Crisis: [...] This refusal to participate in the classificatory ‘order of things’ is true of monsters generally: they are disturbing hybrids whose externally incoherent bodies resist attempts to include them in any systematic structuration. And so the monster is dangerous, a form suspended between forms that threatens to smash distinctions (Cohen 1996, 6).

Distinction, purity, separation: these were all ideas which had been central to the legal tradition of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, and all ideas which were under threat in the context of conquest.

the mixed monsters are particularly indicative of the inward as well as outward struggles of Jewish religionists who turned to the apocalyptic genre to process their social, political, and indeed personal and spiritual, even psychological conflicts (Smith-Christopher 2014, 195-96).

What Smith-Christopher makes of all this is that the mixed-monster is a creature uniquely suited to embody the sense of unease felt by ancient Jewish writers living in exile and under colonial rule, in part because they felt that they themselves – and the society which their literature was trying to bolster during these centuries of displacement – were in danger of becoming monstrous.  

The Monster, Apocalypse, and Post-Apocalypse

Anais Maurer

It is impossible to imagine a future without children. And yet, miscarriages, stillbirths, and children born too irradiated to survive are rarely part of mainstream narratives about the apocalypse. Stillborn children and miscarriages are usually not counted in nuclear deaths tolls. These invisible deaths are eclipsed by more pyrotechnic violence and by clearly identifiable radiation-induced diseases such as cancer. But irradiated babies still haunt nuclear colonizers, silently accusing them of nuclear genocide: the massive death toll of nuclear-induced stillbirths recalls the forced sterilization of Indigenous women in North America and stands in the way of the possibility of imagining future generations. This should prompt the international community to move beyond the focus on intent to discuss genocide in international law, and to recognize that inaction and neglect is also genocidal.

In this section, our reading interrogates the figures of the monster as a trope which, like the ghost, troubles the linearity of a binary division between the apocalypse and a supposedly distinct post-apocalypse. Hauntings collapse the past and the future, particularly in nuclear contexts in which temporal timeframes collide due to the unique time-span of radioactive contamination (Stümer 2024). The figure of the irradiated child that haunts nuclearized contexts, the infant who has suffered physical and mental harm due to radioactivity, stands to accuse nuclear colonizers and contest the neat linear boundaries erected between a ‘nuclear testing period’ and a ‘post-nuclear’ time.

In Pacific nuclear colonies, military scientists were prompt to describe the irradiated fetuses and babies that could barely survive outside of their mother’s womb as “monsters” (Johnson and Barker, 2008). Yet the antinuclear art coming from the Pacific confronts this qualification, and asks who are the real monsters of this apocalypse. Looking in particular at two poems, “Monsters” (2017) by Marshallese poem Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner and “Yellow the cradle” (2017) by Mā’ohi novelist Chantal T. Spitz, helps to interrogate this nomenclature. As feminists have learned to shift the blame from rape victims to rapists, these poets shift the blame away from the newborn “monster” who is “more jellyfish than child,” away from their mothers haunted “with the feeling of horror that perhaps there was something wrong with them” (Jetñil-Kijiner, 2017). Rather, these poems incriminate directly the military men who destroyed the islands and contaminated their people for hundreds of thousands of years.

In these poems, the stillborn children haunting their mothers call for a provincializing of Western concepts of haunting. As C. Ree and Eve Tuck explain in their “glossary of haunting” (2013), in decolonial contexts, the haunting figure does not seek a solution or a reconciliation as in mainstream Hollywood narratives. “Haunting lies precisely in its refusal to stop. Alien (for settlers) and generative (for ghosts), this refusal to stop is its own form of resolving. For ghosts, the haunting is the resolution, it is not what needs to be resolved.” Pacific poets do not try to stop the haunting, but to name it, to share it, to shift it towards the colonizers.

In a nuclear context, the tragedies of irradiated babies blur the lines between life and death. Such a child’s birth is seen as a form of death, as birth brings the child into a world in which they cannot survive. Conversely, death is seen as a form of birth – a release from an existence of suffering. The irradiated child inhabits a post/apocalyptic space-time continuum and haunts the colonial neatly defined boundaries between the moment of the apocalypse and its supposedly distinct aftermath.

II Shedding Light

Memorialisation of Past Apocalypses

Jana Cattien

One issue raised by the topic of our working group ‘haunting’ was the question of memory politics—how the memorialization of past apocalypses configures the space of political possibility in the present. What does it mean to be haunted by the past? What are the ethical and political responsibilities that arise in the wake of these hauntings? How can we distinguish between reparations intended to put the past to rest, and those that allow the hauntings to continue to haunt the perpetrators? In our working group, we discussed these and other questions, linking them specifically to contemporary debates around German memory politics.

After the ruling by the International Court of Justice in The Hague, which deemed South Africa’s allegation that Israel was perpetrating genocide against Palestinians in Gaza to be ‘plausible,’ Germany announced that it would intervene in the ruling to side with Israel. A German government spokesman declared that “in light of Germany’s history and the crime of humanity—the Shoah—the federal government sees itself as particularly committed to the Genocide Convention.” The suggestion was that Germany, given its history, has a particular moral responsibility to uphold the Genocide Convention. While this seems in and of itself uncontroversial, the German government’s interpretation of this responsibility managed to convert moral responsibility—in the sense of being responsible to victims of genocide—into a claim of moral superiority. It is precisely because of Germany’s perpetrator status (not in spite of it) that Germany has superior expertise in adjudicating over the application of the Genocide Convention, even when its position is in explicit defiance of international law and the institutions charged with upholding it.

As the moral foundation of postwar Germany, the Holocaust is the apocalyptic event upon which Germany’s understanding of itself as a post-apocalyptic, post-fascist, liberal nation is based. Although Germany committed prior genocides in its history, including the genocide against the Herero and Nama in Namibia, only the Holocaust is accorded the status of an apocalyptic event in the sense of marking a radical rupture in German history. As many scholars, from Aimé Césaire, Hannah Arendt to Michael Rothberg and Juergen Zimmerer, have noted, severing the Holocaust in this way from the long history of German colonialism elides the ways in which, as Arendt put it, “European imperialism played a crucial role in the development of Nazi totalitarianism and associated genocides.” Today, this framing of history leads to an inability to recognise what is happening in Gaza as the apocalypse that it is.

In the piece that we read in the working group, Eyal Weizman, director of Forensic Architecture at Goldsmiths, describes visiting the sites where ancestral villages were destroyed during the Namibian genocide, including mass graves and concentration camps. Forensic Architecture was involved in collating evidence to be presented in support of Namibian claims for reparations and land restitution. Part of the struggle faced by survivors of the Namibian genocide is the fact that important historical sites commemorating the victims are largely unknown and unmarked. It is therefore easy for European tourists visiting Namibia to remain oblivious to the apocalypse that unfolded here at the beginning of the twentieth century, killing 65,000 Ovaherero, more than two-thirds of the population, and 10,000 Nama, around half the population.

As a concept describing a significant rupture in historical time, the apocalypse is a discursive battle ground for political claims concerning the recognition of collective trauma—whose collective trauma can be recognised as an apocalypse, and whose either remains unspeakable, or can only be spoken through the euphemistic language of ‘humanitarian disaster.’

When the apocalypse is mobilised by Western nation-states in their self-fashioning as benign and morally superior, the apocalypse becomes a reified signifier of national myth-making, eliding the historical and political links that connect different apocalypses through time. Conversely, when those whose collective trauma has been sidelined by hegemonic practices of memorilization invoke the apocalypse, they bring to light the critical potential of the concept. To name as an apocalypse what is not, in the current order of things, already recognised as one is to draw attention to the unequal grievability of lives.

Haunting and (Post-)Apocalypse in the Monstrocene

Michael Dunn

“It’s curious that ghosts, spectres, and spirits are often so depicted as transparent when no one is more opaque to the living than are the dead.” Mark Lawrence — The Book that Broke the World (2024, 51)

Apocalyptic unveiling, bringing to light with crystal clear clarity that which was hidden or veiled, plays an important role in hauntology, ghosting, or being ghosted. On various nuanced levels, be it sociological, culturally, or ecologically, the ghostly figure approaches out of the Sein in to the light of Dasein. The ghost always tells something even if it is just that we are being haunted or haunting. Fred Boting, who has worked most avidly on the Gothic, as well as more broadly speaking on the necessity for monsters in ‘modern’ society, recently published a chapter in the Minnesota published edited collection Dark Scenes from Damaged Earth: The Gothic Anthropocene, establishing the perhaps somewhat oxymoronic Monstrocene, in which deforming the sensual world is related to the allure of ghosts; that is, ghostly power beyond evident properties, a power of deep internal animation that seems to be demonic (of another realm, space, or time). Botting’s chapter on the Monstrocene deals specifically with ghosts, the undead, monsters and monstrosity, undark, etc. as well as some of the larger, perhaps more planetary issues of an age of incessant haunting (be it actual or imagined).

Although Botting, as many others, insists that the Anthropocene is “our era” quoting Bonneuil and Fressoz (2016, 11), it is with such an opening statement that the somewhat ironic exploration of Botting’s Monstrocene manifest. The Pandora’s box (or rather jar) that the Anthropocene announces, however, is, as Botting correctly concedes, although perhaps not “our era,” left up to all of us to sense our way through, beyond, and/or out of. However, as Botting’s overly simplified objection to the plurality of ‘cenes’ as mere distractions, polarizations, and deflections (or blame games) goes to show, the diverse Anthropocene discontents speak rather to the deep seated issues with the Anthropocene as an unjust, scarily universalistic, “psuedogelogical era” (Clark 2019) (one that he later actively critiques).

Botting suggests that being in the Anthropocene as being a subject of or to climate change, “undoes a humanist imaginary based on distance, mastery, and vision,” (2022) and speaks to the culture/nature divide instilled in Western philosophy since the Enlightenment. Anna Tsing (in her book The Mushroom at the End of the World) has equally suggested that “women and men from around the world have [rightly] clamoured to be included in the status once given to Man” (2015, vii). The “story of awakening,” as Botting calls it, “is a fable”: I.e. the moment of apocalypse, revelation, bringing to light that which was hidden, hasn’t happened (i.e. the Anthropocene does of course demand more complexity, plurality, and various modes and temporalities of thinking and storytelling) but nonetheless that those of us in the West live in the post-apocalyptic revelation presented by James Hansen in 1988, is ultimately undeniable. Perhaps then, the moment of awakening that Botting vilifies as not having happened, is an awakening of a groggy hangover rather than one of clarity and refreshing reanimation; a haunting we don’t know or want to know is happening.

Where Botting’s Monstrocene really shines (and sheds light) is in its understanding of ecological existence as being considered in terms of “ghosts, strangers, and specters” (2022); the Anthropocene as disclosing—in true apocalyptic fashion—“in its truly toxic and nightmare form” (ibid). I.e the sixth mass extinction amidst multiple species extinctions, i.e. what Lydia Pyne calls Endlings amongst others. While, what often more than not happens is, according to Botting, these toxic and nightmarish monsters are turned in to pets (i.e. climate change as a monstrosity that is appropriated in to the human hubris of anthropocentrism). As such, Anthropocene monsters don’t reveal difference and possibility but sameness and closed futurity. “Projecting terrors and horrors in to the future refuses to recognise the extent to which post apocalyptic scenarios are already playing themselves out,” says Botting (2022) alluding to those at the forefront of extreme weather events, wet bulb wastelands, and extractivist expansionism.

Whereas the multitude of monsters, especially in the Western Gothic tradition, offer up—in their liminality and abjection—a critique of normativity, various incessant colonial and imperial projects, and the silencing and segregation of women, members of the LGBTQIA+ community, and those with disabilities, the uncanny, as suggested by Botting, the horror of the Anthropocene, is only horrific to those of us amid a “‘blessed’ liberal world of abundant goods, freedoms, or leisure time” (2022). And although many raise their voices for a necessary complication that nonetheless appeals to clarity of the Anthropocene, among them Botting and Steve Mentz “more seas, more monsters, more art” (2019, ix) how does this complication sit with the feeling of being ecologically haunted which abounds almost everywhere that actually suggests: forget your ghosts, they live amongst us in a myriad of ecologically uncanny ways. While wistfully exploring the etymology of Wistman’s Wood—and its equally ghostly origins—Shrubsole, ecologist and activist, wholeheartedly asserts a shift in both the language and modes of thinking that environmentalists are experiencing today amongst accelerating ecological collapse:

there is also something else haunting about Wistman’s Wood and the barren moor that surrounds it—a nightmare that stalks the twenty-first century imagination far more than tales of ghost hounds and bogeymen. It is the spectre of ecological collapse. Forget the ghost stories: the real ghosts in Dartmoor’s landscape are the ones rising from the bones of the rainforests that we destroyed (2022, 26).

While employing, perhaps unintentionally the language of Derrida, Shrubsole, despite falling in to the trap of using the first-person pesky plural pronoun (he is by no means alone in his use of ‘we’ when discussing climate change which disregards climate justice, the role of various colonialisms, and panders to a universalistic anthropocentricism it seems to oppose), suggests that we are not only haunted by stories that suggest the woods are a dark, deep, and deadly expanse (a “heathen” place where druidic rituals took place) but that, on a broader level,  the loss of green land in Britain also doubly haunts its inhabitants. Suggesting a haunting by haunted spaces. “We are haunted,” says Shrubsole, “by a folk memory of the great Wildwood that once covered Britain, whose outlines occasionally resurface not just in our myths but also in pollen cores and fossil evidence” (2022, 20).

Equally, “[i]t seems the Anthropocene is not a nice place to sleep,” (2023, 4) says Nikolaj Schultz (Bruno Latour’s protege), as he attempts to get some rest amongst yet another Parisian heatwave, which are becoming regularly occurring events. His inability to sleep not only because of the heat but because of an overly busy mind amidst issues of climate culpability, violence, and enormous issues without outcomes. Most telling, however, is that he says “this part of my life too has become haunted” (4-5)

James Thomson who is perhaps most well known for his seasonal poetry, also offers us a similar suggestion as Fred Botting who says that we need to let ourselves be haunted, listen to the revelations of the revenants, and multiply the multitudes of monstrosity. Said suggestion comes to us in the 1874 poem The City of Dreadful Night which asks: why let these spectres soar through the night skies of our unbound and yet unfamiliar imaginations, and, as such, invariably invokes the inception of the malaise of modernity: a city of living death (undeath) where both the dream and reality of industrialisation began.

Yet why evoke the spectres of black night
    To blot the sunshine of exultant years? (lines 3-4)

Because a cold rage seizes one at whiles
    To show the bitter old and wrinkled truth (lines 8-9)

Visions of the End: Psychedelics, Haunting, and Apocalyptic revelations.

Emilia Roig

Haunting and Psychedelics

Psychedelics, such as LSD, psilocybin, and DMT, profoundly alter perception, often dissolving boundaries between the self and the external world. This dissolution can evoke experiences of transcendence, encounters with otherworldly entities, and heightened sensitivity to the numinous, or spiritual presence. These altered states of consciousness share striking similarities with traditional accounts of haunting and apocalyptic visions, where the veil between worlds thins, revealing the profound and the terrifying.

Psychedelics have long been used in shamanic rituals to communicate with spirits and gain insight into the nature of existence. In these altered states, users often report encounters with spectral beings, ancestors, or entities that seem to reside in a parallel dimension. Such experiences are akin to hauntings, where unseen forces intrude upon the material world, challenging our understanding of reality. The haunted house, a staple of horror fiction, serves as a metaphor for the mind under the influence of psychedelics: a familiar space rendered alien by the presence of unseen, often malevolent forces. The eerie sensation of being watched, of doors opening and closing on their own, mirrors the unpredictable and surreal nature of a psychedelic trip.

Moreover, the apocalyptic vision frequently accompanies intense psychedelic experiences. Users report visions of cosmic destruction, personal annihilation, and the end of time. These visions resonate with apocalyptic literature, which often depicts the end of the world as a moment of revelation, unveiling hidden truths about the human existence. Psychedelics can precipitate a similar unveiling, confronting individuals with the ultimate impermanence of life and the interconnectedness of all things. This can lead to a profound existential crisis or a sense of oneness with the cosmos, echoing apocalyptic themes of destruction and rebirth.

Hauntings and apocalyptic visions also share a symbolic language, representing the breakdown of established order and the eruption of the unknown into the familiar. In a haunted house, the past refuses to remain buried, manifesting as ghosts that disrupt the present. Similarly, apocalyptic scenarios often depict the collapse of societal structures and the return of chaos. Psychedelics can dissolve the boundaries between past, present, and future, leading to experiences where time appears fluid and the linear narrative of one's life disintegrates. This temporal dislocation can evoke a sense of living in an eternal now, where the past haunts the present and the future is a looming catastrophe.

Furthermore, the use of psychedelics to explore these themes reflects a deep-seated human desire to confront and understand the unknown. Both hauntings and apocalyptic visions are expressions of our collective anxiety about death, the afterlife, and the fate of humanity. Psychedelics offer a means to engage with these fears directly, providing a space to explore the mysteries of existence in a controlled, albeit unpredictable, manner. By breaking down the barriers between the conscious and unconscious mind, psychedelics can reveal the underlying fears and hopes that shape our perception of reality.

Haunting as a Colonial Legacy

Psychedelics have deep roots in indigenous cultures, where substances like ayahuasca, peyote, and psilocybin mushrooms have been used for millennia in sacred rituals and healing practices. Colonization disrupted these traditions, often criminalizing and demonizing these substances as part of broader efforts to suppress indigenous knowledge and spiritual practices. A decolonial perspective on psychedelics emphasizes reclaiming these practices and recognizing the wisdom embedded in them.

Incorporating indigenous perspectives, psychedelics are not merely tools for individual enlightenment but are integral to community healing and environmental stewardship. This worldview contrasts sharply with the Western, capitalist approach that often commodifies psychedelics for profit, stripping them of their cultural and spiritual significance. Decolonizing psychedelics involves respecting and restoring the sacred traditions from which they originate, ensuring that indigenous communities benefit from their revival.

From a decolonial standpoint, hauntings can be seen as manifestations of the unresolved traumas of colonization. The ghosts in haunted spaces may represent the spirits of indigenous peoples and enslaved individuals who suffered under colonial regimes. These spectral presences challenge the sanitized narratives of history, demanding recognition and reconciliation.

In this context, hauntings symbolize the persistent impact of colonial violence and the ongoing struggle for justice and decolonization. Addressing these hauntings involves acknowledging historical injustices, honoring the memories of those who suffered, and working towards restorative justice. Psychedelic experiences that evoke hauntings can thus serve as catalysts for confronting and healing from these deep-seated traumas, facilitating a process of collective memory and redemption.

Apocalypse and Anticapitalism

The apocalyptic visions often experienced during psychedelic trips can also be interpreted through an anticapitalist lens. Capitalism, with its relentless drive for growth, consumption, and exploitation, has brought the world to the brink of ecological collapse. Psychedelics reveal the unsustainability of this system, offering glimpses of alternative ways of living that prioritize ecological balance, communal well-being, and spiritual fulfillment over material accumulation.

An anticapitalist perspective on the apocalypse emphasizes the need for systemic change to avert disaster. It critiques the capitalist logic that commodifies nature, exploits labor, and perpetuates inequality. The apocalyptic imagery encountered in psychedelic experiences can serve as a stark warning of the consequences of continuing on this destructive path. At the same time, these experiences can inspire visions of a post-capitalist world, where human societies live in harmony with the planet and each other.

Collective transformation

Integrating psychedelics into a decolonial and anticapitalist framework involves using these substances not just for personal transformation but for collective action and societal change. Psychedelic experiences can awaken a profound sense of interconnectedness and responsibility towards others and the Earth. This awareness can fuel activism aimed at dismantling oppressive systems and building more just and sustainable communities.

For example, psychedelic-assisted therapies and ceremonies can be designed to foster community solidarity and environmental consciousness. Policies should ensure that the benefits of the burgeoning psychedelic industry are shared equitably, particularly with regards to the indigenous communities who have stewarded these medicines for generations. Advocacy for the decriminalization and ethical use of psychedelics must be coupled with efforts to address broader social and ecological injustices.

Viewing the link between psychedelics, haunting, and the apocalypse through decolonial and anticapitalist perspectives enriches our understanding of these phenomena. It highlights the need to honor indigenous traditions, address historical traumas, and challenge the destructive logic of capitalism. Psychedelics, when integrated into these frameworks, offer powerful tools for personal and collective transformation, envisioning a future rooted in justice, sustainability, and spiritual interconnectedness.

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