on ketamine.
even burroughs seems at one point to have gotten tired of his heroin addiction, and longed for a drug that "opens up, rather than narrows down" (or something similar - i'm citing from memory). he found this in yage, or ayahuasca. i believe to have found it in ketamine.
in the past the hypothesis has been uttered (and refuted) that the psychological activity induced by a dose of ketamine is comparable to the psychological activity registered in schizophrenics. therefore, it should come as no surprise that this drug has a clearly deleuzian feel to it - it deterritorialises our senses and perceptual apparatus, thereby offering new lines of flight, and opening us up (((in sharp contrast to the drugs that close us down, such as benzodiazepines, cocaine, alcohol, and in nearly all occasions, softdrugs))).
after taking ketamine, i (the singular is imperious here, for the problem with drugs remains the difficulty of establishing intersubjectivity - although this may only be a magnification of a problem that pervades all social sciences) - i, that is, may have the experience of looking at pure time, not time as an immanent concept pervading something else. more commonly, i lose all experience of my own body - my ego dissolves, having no stable ground to stand on, and is overwhelmed by something that can only be called pure (though distorted) perception, which substitutes itself for the i. (in the same way the ego of a child that has not yet gone through the mirror stage cannot be separated from its senses - i hope my use of lacan and deleuze in a single post is acceptable.) ketamine is less superficial than 2c-b, less bewildering than salvia, less visual than lsd - and for me, more philosophical than all of them.
sometimes, after a relatively large dose of ketamine, i may believe to be looking at the process of looking itself - and although this is clearly a mystification of my senses, i do believe this mystification may teach us a phenomenological lesson. i see structures that make the act of looking possible - and although these structures may be severely distorted (or better: deterritorialised), the knowledge of their (potential) existence opens up new lines of thinking about the process of perception in its common state. i leave consensual reality, but hesitate before calling the entered reality merely illusory - there are no hallucinations, no aberrative thought, no monomania - merely another way of being in the world.
after a k-hole, restratification takes place - but the shaking up of the patterns underlying our perception is not without consequences; by opening new ways of thinking, ketamine awakes me (us?) from my (our?) slumber.
ketamine does not lead to any ontological insights; no big revelations, it teaches nothing about the essence of life. (drugs don't teach these things.) however, it may induce an indirect insight into the process of perception by fundamentally altering it. by seeing how perception could function, we realise how it does not - hence, an entire field of potential and realised perceptual patterns is opened. when we learn 3 is not 2, we know more about the nature of both 2 and 3.
although one should resist ontology and beware of other traps that lead to a pompous and shamanic reading of a ketamine experience, i believe a further phenomenological investigation of this drug is warranted.
in the past the hypothesis has been uttered (and refuted) that the psychological activity induced by a dose of ketamine is comparable to the psychological activity registered in schizophrenics. therefore, it should come as no surprise that this drug has a clearly deleuzian feel to it - it deterritorialises our senses and perceptual apparatus, thereby offering new lines of flight, and opening us up (((in sharp contrast to the drugs that close us down, such as benzodiazepines, cocaine, alcohol, and in nearly all occasions, softdrugs))).
after taking ketamine, i (the singular is imperious here, for the problem with drugs remains the difficulty of establishing intersubjectivity - although this may only be a magnification of a problem that pervades all social sciences) - i, that is, may have the experience of looking at pure time, not time as an immanent concept pervading something else. more commonly, i lose all experience of my own body - my ego dissolves, having no stable ground to stand on, and is overwhelmed by something that can only be called pure (though distorted) perception, which substitutes itself for the i. (in the same way the ego of a child that has not yet gone through the mirror stage cannot be separated from its senses - i hope my use of lacan and deleuze in a single post is acceptable.) ketamine is less superficial than 2c-b, less bewildering than salvia, less visual than lsd - and for me, more philosophical than all of them.
sometimes, after a relatively large dose of ketamine, i may believe to be looking at the process of looking itself - and although this is clearly a mystification of my senses, i do believe this mystification may teach us a phenomenological lesson. i see structures that make the act of looking possible - and although these structures may be severely distorted (or better: deterritorialised), the knowledge of their (potential) existence opens up new lines of thinking about the process of perception in its common state. i leave consensual reality, but hesitate before calling the entered reality merely illusory - there are no hallucinations, no aberrative thought, no monomania - merely another way of being in the world.
after a k-hole, restratification takes place - but the shaking up of the patterns underlying our perception is not without consequences; by opening new ways of thinking, ketamine awakes me (us?) from my (our?) slumber.
ketamine does not lead to any ontological insights; no big revelations, it teaches nothing about the essence of life. (drugs don't teach these things.) however, it may induce an indirect insight into the process of perception by fundamentally altering it. by seeing how perception could function, we realise how it does not - hence, an entire field of potential and realised perceptual patterns is opened. when we learn 3 is not 2, we know more about the nature of both 2 and 3.
although one should resist ontology and beware of other traps that lead to a pompous and shamanic reading of a ketamine experience, i believe a further phenomenological investigation of this drug is warranted.
posted by dennis at
1:19 AM
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