Comment on 'Altered Vision: Ayahuasca shamanism and sensory individualism'

My comments will focus on the article’s discussions of the irony of indigenous technology-laden visions, the inalienability of visions, the individualism of New Age notions of “oneness,” and the primacy of sight. To begin, the authors note that local ayahuasca visions of outsiders’ technology are “ironic.” Yet the

wielding of Western technology forms part of a widely spread practice whereby indigenous origin stories and creation narratives (de Civrieux 1997 [1970]), discussions of heroic exemplars (Peluso 2014b), and other nonhallucinogen-induced visions of healing or diagnosis and dreams (Peluso 2003) meaningfully incorporate and reinterpret technology into local geographies (Guss 1989). I suggest that by bringing technology visions into the fold of indigenous power and creation, indigenous peoples are negating irony by removing technology from the zone of opposition that irony requires to be ironic. As I trust the authors agree, indigenous and local recastings of technology speak to power through indigenous agency. As such, from local perspectives, the use of technology is neither ironic nor a novel form of indigenous visuality unique to ayahuasca practices.