The Peyote Effect - by Alexander S Dawson (Paperback)

About the Book

"Banned by the Inquisition in 1620, peyote was implicated in over 80 religious trials during the colonial period. After four centuries of change, we have arrived at the beginning of the 21st century to a point where our laws concerning peyote resonate uncomfortably with the laws promulgated by the Spanish Inquisition. The justifications are different, and in part it seems like a quirk of history, this book pursues the question of whether laws the Mexican and US governments have created in the 20th and 21st centuries in some ways repeat a colonial tradition in which indigenous bodies were made incommensurable with non-indigenous bodies through the legal and social proscriptions enacted around peyote. The book seeks to understand how it was that peyote came to be so closely identified as an Indian thing even as other plants and animals native to the Americas lost their indigenous essence. In the final six chapters of the book we see how peyote was simultaneously embedded in four distinct phenomena: a taxonomic project concerned with making sense of psychedelic substances as drugs, a counter-cultural movement which saw in peyote an opportunity to embrace alternative forms of consciousness, a conservative movement that understood peyote as one of a number of existential threats to civilization, and burgeoning movements for indigenous self-determination that saw in peyote a powerful expression of indigenous alterity"--Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

The hallucinogenic and medicinal effects of peyote have a storied history that begins well before Europeans arrived in the Americas. While some have attempted to explain the cultural and religious significance of this cactus and drug, Alexander S. Dawson offers a completely new way of understanding the place of peyote in history. In this provocative new book, Dawson argues that peyote has marked the boundary between the Indian and the West since the Spanish Inquisition outlawed it in 1620. For nearly four centuries ecclesiastical, legal, scientific, and scholarly authorities have tried (unsuccessfully) to police that boundary to ensure that, while indigenous subjects might consume peyote, others could not. Moving back and forth across the U.S.-Mexico border, The Peyote Effect explores how battles over who might enjoy a right to consume peyote have unfolded in both countries, and how these conflicts have produced the racially exclusionary systems that characterizes modern drug regimes. Through this approach we see a surprising history of the racial thinking that binds these two countries more closely than we might otherwise imagine.

From the Back Cover

"Alexander S. Dawson follows the history of the 'most purely intellectual' of drugs across centuries and borders and also challenges our conceptions of authenticity and cultural appropriation. He shows how the study, consumption, and spiritual meanings of peyote have been central to the constructions of indigeneity and racial difference in both Mexico and the United States. This empirically rich book will challenge readers to think critically about connections and divergences in the history of Mexico and the United States."--Pablo Piccato, Columbia University

"The Peyote Effect is 'drug history' at its best in that it not only tells the story of a particular drug, but in doing so it makes an enormous contribution to our knowledge in other areas. The story Dawson tells--a comparative history of peyote in the United States and Mexico--is ultimately a history of modern orientalism and how Indians continue to play a primary role in defining what being 'American' or 'Mexican' cannot be. This is in many ways a quite brilliant book."--Isaac Peter Campos, author of Home Grown: Marijuana and the Origins of Mexico's War on Drugs

Review Quotes

"Alexander Dawson has produced a stellar piece ofcomparative scholarship on the history of peyote and its uses in both Mexico and the United States."-- "Hispanic American Historical Review"

"Deeply researched and conceptually rich, The Peyote Effect makes an important contribution to the history of drugs, history of race, history of medicine, Native American and Indigenous studies, borderlands history, and the history of the U.S. and Mexico."-- "Western Historical Quarterly"

"An eminently readable history of indigeneity and whiteness through the lens of a drug. . . . Provides a rich history of the interplay between hallucinogens and the politics of identity."-- "CHOICE" (3/1/2019 12:00:00 AM)

"Dawson's book departs from traditional peyote literature through outstanding coverage of the non-Indian organizations."--Benjamin R. Kracht "Reading Religion" (3/11/2019 12:00:00 AM)

About the Author

Alexander S. Dawson is Associate Professor of History at SUNY Albany. He is the author of Indian and Nation in Revolutionary Mexico, First World Dreams: Mexico Since 1989, and Latin America since Independence.