Experts On The Ineffable: How Competing Notions of Psychedelic Expertise Shape Boundaries in a Discipline

Abstract

Psychedelics as a class of substances are experiencing a resurgence or “renaissance” in American culture as more research emerges attesting to their utility to treat mental health problems and other ailments. These powerful substances, however, have been part of the fabric of American society since the early 19th and 20th centuries; and have been integral to Indigenous cultural and religious practices for centuries. Due to this long and storied history, what constitutes expertise on these substances is dependent on the community and context from which the individual expert arises, and what audience they are addressing. Within the broader psychedelic resurgence movement, three stakeholder groups—institutional science, Indigenous communities, and recreational users—each have distinct concepts of expertise that rhetorically emerge from the unique context and history of the group respectively. This thesis analyzes and attends to those conceptions of expertise as they emerge in the public statements and texts of representatives from those communities. The negotiations within and between these subgroups about the preference of some versions of expertise over others is a rhetorical negotiation about the boundaries between science and non-science, between legitimate and illegitimate substance use, and between voices the public finds credible or not-credible. This rhetorical negotiation is the product of different stakeholder groups preferring either a). personal authenticity or experiential knowledge; b.) expressions professional authenticity, or c). a synthesis of the two. Ultimately, expertise on psychedelics is “bounded” or constrained by how the resource-dominant stakeholder group, institutional science, defines itself and how rhetors from that group rhetorically construct and claim expertise.