Força (power) and Ayahuasca Ontological Multiplicity

How do substances come into being through their different human and non-human entanglements? Through what sorts of social practices are they stabilized as medicines, narcotic or animated, agential beings? Can a substance that is considered as singular and fixed from a material perspective exist as many different things for different groups – or even for the same person?

The focus of the research project implemented by Zuzanna Sadowska is to investigate the relations through which different forms of substance existence emerge. The project is grounded in a 9-month multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Brazil regarding the use of a herbal psychoactive brew typically prepared from the combination of two plants: Banisteriopsis Caapi and Psychotria Viridis. This brew is known under many names (Daime, Uni, Nixi Pae, Ayahuasca, Vegetal…) and is consumed within various social contexts, including the healing practices of indigenous groups inhabiting the Amazon; religious rituals of Santo Daime, União do Vegetal, and Barquinha; New Age neo-shamanic ceremonies; and in therapies for treating addiction, depression, and anxiety disorders.

In scientific, legal, and biomedical discourses, this brew is usually defined through its material propensities, with its effect on the human body mostly linked to its core psychoactive component, N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT). DMT is classified within international drug conventions as a Schedule-1 substance, meaning a controlled hallucinogenic drug with currently no recognized medical value and a high risk of abuse, the consumption of which is penalized (with the exception of certain countries that allow the religious use of plants containing DMT). Within these discourses, the brew is commonly known by the Quechua-derived name “ayahuasca” and is treated – regardless of the various social contexts of its consumption – as a “singular” substance.

However, as Zuzanna Sadowska noticed during her fieldwork, in the observed social realities, there is no such thing as “one singular ayahuasca” – a brew is not considered to possess a certain essence stemming from its material propensities. Instead, each brew consumed within different social practices is treated and experienced as an ontologically different being that emerges through various human and more-than-human relations.

Various relational, situated ontologies of a brew are linked to the experiences of diverse interacting forças (forces/powers) of a brew, as well as the forças of different beings with which a brew enables communication. Forças can be broadly understood as agencies of diverse forms of existence acting in the Universe – including humans, spirits, plants, animals, and astral beings – which are felt by a person consuming a brew through embodied sensations. Força is both a way in which entities manifest their presence and a way they interact with the surrounding reality and establish relationships with others.

The aim of the project is to examine, based on the methodology of Ontological Turn and the theoretical framework of posthumanism, the complex ontologies of a brew. The analysis of the collected ethnographic material also serves as a starting point for reflecting on how concepts related to the use of psychoactive substances, such as illness, (self)-control, addiction, medicine, or narcotics, change in different social contexts. The researcher is also interested in how various social worlds situate, delineate, and stabilize the boundaries between beings.

The research was conducted in the addiction treatment center located in Rio Branco, Acre, and in one of the oldest Santo Daime communities, as well as in the city of Alto Paraíso situated in central Brazil (state of Goiás).

The project is funded by the National Science Centre.