Over the years, my interest in the work of Cornelius Castoriadis has more than once led to a moment of conversational awkwardness, when it turned out that the other party had been quietly distracted by the effort to figure out what the anti-totalitarian left had to do with taking peyote.
With time I have learned to detect the signs of struggle early, and so make haste to point out that I don’t mean Carlos Castaneda, whose tales of cosmic shenanigans with Yaqui shaman Don Juan once played a big part in the counterculture.
Maybe they still do. I don’t keep up. But the books remain in print — even though it’s long since been been proven that Castaneda’s writings, while taken seriously as ethnography at one point, actually belong to the field of con-man studies.
Salon ran a long feature last week that extends the story beyond the debunking of Castaneda’s tales that took place by the early 1980s. Scholarly fraud and metaphysical kitsch were the least of it, really. It is a story that ends on a somewhat Heaven’s Gate-ish note.
There’s also a BBC documentary covering the same material called Tales from the Jungle, now available in six segments here. The portions reenacting scenes from Castaneda’s books are very cheesy — which is to say quite accurate, in their way. I remember reading one of them in junior high and giving up because it was all so silly. But the will to believe is a powerful force; and there’s always someone who will try to live on a diet of cheese during the quest to reach enlightenment.
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Alex Earl 04.22.07 at 9:05 pm
I remember picking up the first book in the Carlos Casteneda series a few years ago and getting a huge kick out of it. I do believe certain drugs can provide valuable life-altering experiences, and his book legitimized that for me in its own way.
At the same time, when he started talking about being connected to some seperate, self-sustained reality, any thought that he was a real anthropologist went out the window. Neurochemical explanations are sufficient for my purposes.
Walt 04.22.07 at 9:13 pm
You know, I never knew that the books were supposed to be true. I thought the “as told to” structure was just a narrative device. (Admittedly, I’ve never read them.)
Thomas 04.23.07 at 1:13 am
My friend’s husband is really into finding wisdom through natural chemicals.
Gravity is natural but a rock from the sky will still kill your ass.
r4d20 04.23.07 at 1:55 am
My friend’s husband is really into finding wisdom through natural chemicals. Gravity is natural but a rock from the sky will still kill your ass.
Lol. I remember a segment from the Daily Show many years back about some kids who died after taking too much Ephedra aka. “Herbal Extacy” at a Rave. J.S. quoted some of the friends of the deceased saying “It’s so unexpected. We thought it would be safe because the bottle said it was ‘All Natural'” and then added “…they said before quaffing a refreshing Hemlock Smoothie”.
I’m sure it loses something in my re-telling, but I remembering laughing my ass off and thinking it was a great way of illustrating the utter stupidity of those who naively equate “Natural” with “Good for you”.
josh 04.23.07 at 2:17 am
I have to admit that I too initial mixed up the two CCs (I forget which one I heard about first), and for I time I did think there was a guy who was associated both with the anti-totalitarian left and peyote. Which seemed like the coolest thing ever to my high-school self.
I'm Clean Mom 04.23.07 at 6:56 am
Re: “the effort to figure out what the anti-totalitarian left had to do with taking peyote.”
This takes effort?
Doug 04.23.07 at 10:58 am
That’s a lot of work by the Salon author, dedicated to debunking someone debunked more than a quarter century ago. And the author doesn’t seem particularly skeptical about sources who promote his point of view. Plus there’s that odd “gringo” dropped in about a third of the way through. Would Salon have published “wetback” just as casually? Somebody wake the copyeditor, please.
Richard 04.23.07 at 1:49 pm
when he started talking about being connected to some seperate, self-sustained reality, any thought that he was a real anthropologist went out the window
I have no idea what a real anthropologist is, these days.
tps12 04.23.07 at 4:26 pm
Chill out, whitey.
Alex Earl 04.23.07 at 7:29 pm
‘I have no idea what a real anthropologist is, these days.’
Touche. And, indeed.
Brock 04.23.07 at 8:49 pm
Sadly, an excerpt from Casteneda (the bit where he turns into a crow) was used in my Anthropology 101 textbook.
This convinced me that Anthropology (at least as taught at my alma mater) was, for the most part, bullsh*t.
e-tat 04.24.07 at 9:16 pm
This convinced me that Anthropology (at least as taught at my alma mater) was, for the most part, bullsh*t.
Because it accurately represents the object of study ?
bill the turk 04.25.07 at 1:38 pm
Over the years, my interest in the work of Cornelius Castoriadis has more than once led to a moment of conversational awkwardness, when it turned out that the other party had been quietly distracted by the effort to figure out what the anti-totalitarian left had to do with taking peyote.With time I have learned to detect the signs of struggle early…
You think you’ve got problems? Try writing a PhD dissertation on ‘I’ as an indexical term with special reference to the work of Hector-Neri Castaneda…
(Mind you, some of the literature on that topic looks as though it might have been written by someone on peyote.)
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