Angels and Animals: Posthumanism and ‘cosmic consciousness’ in psychedelic ‘expanded’ cinema

Abstract

Focusing on two ‘expanded’ films - Bruce Conner’s Looking for Mushrooms (1959-65) and Stan Brakhage’s Eye Myth (1967) - this paper stages an encounter between psychedelic ‘expanded’ cinema, the writings of Alan Watts, and the field of posthuman philosophy. Drawing special attention to the materiality of film and its relation to the experience of altered states of consciousness, this paper will critically connect the art and ideas of the Californian counter-culture in the 1960s to a wider network of transnational anti- and posthumanism. Beginning with Watts’ dualism between the ‘angel and animal’ elements of human subjectivity, this paper then considers the inherent tension between the transcendentalism of the psychedelic ‘cosmic consciousness’ and materialist posthumanism centred on ‘embodied and embedded’ experience. Whilst these areas are not usually considered alongside one another, exploring their potential resonances can help to situate Watts’ philosophy within awider genealogy of posthumanist thought, and shed light on the ways in which ‘expanded’ cinema engaged with complicated questions concerning altered experiences. Finally, by highlighting the tensions between materiality and transcendental experience at play in Conner and Brakhage’s films, this paper will demonstrate how film stages a complex intervention into debates around human and posthuman subjectivity. In doing so, this paper offers a radical and alternative perspective on both psychedelic ‘expanded’ cinema, and the intellectual history of transnational anti-humanist philosophy.