{"title":"Violence Against Consciousness Creates Spectral Presences That Warp Perception","authors":"Christian Frenopoulo","doi":"10.1111/anoc.70036","DOIUrl":"10.1111/anoc.70036","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42514,"journal":{"name":"ANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS","volume":"37 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147653164","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Haunted Care: Engaging Health Hauntology to Understand Health Citizenship in Evolving Welfare States","authors":"Anna Horton","doi":"10.1111/anoc.70017","DOIUrl":"10.1111/anoc.70017","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper applies a hauntological framework to explore how health citizenship in the UK is shaped by the spectral presence of neoliberal policies, particularly through increased use of Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) in the United Kingdom's National Health Service (NHS). The NHS is considered a keystone of national identity in the UK on account of its core socialist and humanitarian principles. However, decades of neoliberal policies, and particularly the growing implementation of PPPs, have created increased dissonance between the NHS as ideation and the NHS as a material, place-based health service. I explore how these changes manifest in my father's experiences of a Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM), considering the <i>spectral significance</i> of the systemic relationships, care pathways, collective imaginaries, and vital functions that are folded into this object, and by extension my father's health citizenship. Assembling hauntological concepts and healthcare experiences, I explore how the CGM mediates between life, care, and industry to illuminate evolving forms of health citizenship in contemporary welfare health systems.</p>","PeriodicalId":42514,"journal":{"name":"ANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS","volume":"37 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/anoc.70017","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147653315","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“The Persistent Monster.” Coronavirus Nightmares and Capitalist Crisis in New York City","authors":"Sergio Palencia Frener","doi":"10.1111/anoc.70021","DOIUrl":"10.1111/anoc.70021","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>In March–May 2020, New York City's college students suffered sudden lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic and a mandatory transition from in-person classes to virtual meetings. Unexpectedly, my introductory course to anthropology transformed into a collective space to share experiences of the city in times of crisis. This article examines in-class conversations on nightmares and the variety of contemporary hauntological experiences in the context of a global pandemic. Through students' conversations and written reports, personal journal entries, and photos, this article discusses COVID-19-related nightmares that depict phantasmagoric spaces, globalized dream narratives, bad omens, media oneiric compositions, and struggles against neighborhood monsters. I argue that the COVID-19 pandemic magnified experiences of fear, isolation, and loneliness in everyday life under capitalism. The article presents oneiric phenomena characterized by a global exchange of COVID-19-related dreams and nightmares. Smartphones allowed international students to exchange dream interpretations with their kinship networks in other continents. While nightmares show the increasing penetration of capitalist relationships and media in students' dreams, this article contends that dream narratives contain anti-capitalist images as well, a subterranean “specter” that potentially questions “capitalist realism”.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":42514,"journal":{"name":"ANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS","volume":"37 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147653345","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"","authors":"","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42514,"journal":{"name":"ANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS","volume":"37 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148072961","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Epistemic Injustice and Indigenous Epistemology","authors":"V. Hari Narayanan","doi":"10.1111/anoc.70033","DOIUrl":"10.1111/anoc.70033","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>The article argues that current discussions on epistemic injustice, centered around the distinction between testimonial and hermeneutic types of injustice, cannot adequately deal with the injustice done to Indigenous epistemology. This happens primarily because of the significant difference in the way phenomena like self, mind, and knowledge are understood in Indigenous life. After discussing the salient features of Indigenous life, the article points out how the understanding of self, mind, and knowledge is interdependent in both Indigenous and Modern ways. Indigenous epistemology is primarily a matter of knowing and oriented towards a process rather than knowledge as a product. Treating knowing rather than knowledge as the basic epistemological category is not something that the Modern consciousness can do easily, given its tendency to find identity and satisfaction in the accumulation of knowledge. Thus, the article attempts to bring out the formidable difficulty in doing justice to the Indigenous ways of knowing by drawing attention to the need to employ a radically different kind of attention and embrace a reality different from the usual one.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":42514,"journal":{"name":"ANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS","volume":"37 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147626375","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Unlocking the Tyranny of Modern Thinking: Keys From Anthropology, Psychology, Neuroscience, and Buddhism","authors":"Barbara Carter","doi":"10.1111/anoc.70023","DOIUrl":"10.1111/anoc.70023","url":null,"abstract":"<p>One barrier to mental health and a common focus of psychotherapy is the tendency to identify with relentless, often self-critical thinking that searches for faults, becomes easily distracted, and pulls individuals away from the present moment. Identifying with such thinking distances people from each other, the external world, and important aspects of internal experiences that have been pushed out of awareness and relegated to the unconscious. This paper explores some origins of this tendency, drawing on anthropological research of isolated peoples who adopted this way of thinking after being colonized by modern cultures, alongside contemporary psychoanalytic and developmental theories. These sources illuminate the role of trauma and the dependence on language as a filter for reality and a mechanism of repression. Mindfulness meditation is proposed as a method to untangle over-identification with thinking and facilitate a more direct, embodied experience of the present moment. The neuroscience explaining the underlying mechanisms of these effects is also included. Additional support for these concepts is drawn from the author's experiences as a Peace Corps Volunteer, clinical psychologist, and meditation instructor, as well as reports from graduate students beginning a meditation practice.</p>","PeriodicalId":42514,"journal":{"name":"ANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS","volume":"37 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/anoc.70023","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147649462","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A “Christ-Haunted” Music: Spectral Timbres and Spirituality in Trap Music","authors":"Rachel Bomalaski","doi":"10.1111/anoc.70018","DOIUrl":"10.1111/anoc.70018","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>This interdisciplinary rumination explores the confluence of spectral timbres and spiritual expression in Trap music. As an heir to the Blues with its intrinsic Gothic traits, Trap music employs hauntological elements to create ritualistic spaces that juxtapose the sacred and the uncanny. The multifaceted analysis of four songs, utilizing the concept of metaphysical musical space, unveils a picture of Trap spirituality that is diverse, dynamic, and unorthodox. The songs are read as texts loaded with traces: timbre reveals material spatial cues that create fantastical ritual spaces, while lyrics contain overt or sublimated theological commentaries. In contrast to the ideology of Christian respectability politics that stifles heretical expression, Trap demonstrates the potential to liberate repressed spiritualities and further the work of mourning the South's many ghosts, particularly the revenant presence of religious and racial violence.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":42514,"journal":{"name":"ANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS","volume":"37 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147653317","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Reframing the Chipped Edge: Combining Materiality, Ontology, and Embodiment to Rethink Stone Tool-Making and Human Conscious Behavior in the Paleolithic Past","authors":"Bar Efrati","doi":"10.1111/anoc.70016","DOIUrl":"10.1111/anoc.70016","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Combining different theoretical frameworks can lead to new insights into the role of material things in shaping human experience in the Paleolithic period. This paper first presents a historical review of three theoretical approaches in archaeology, anthropology, and the philosophy of mind: Material culture and materiality studies, the <i>ontological turn</i>, as it relates to the study of cognition in prehistory, and the application of embodiment theories to mind and perception, with a focus on early human consciousness. These theories then serve as a framework for the discussion of a Late Acheulean handaxe from Late Lower Paleolithic Jaljulia, Israel, with the aim of exploring the connection between objects, worldviews, and perceptions in early prehistoric times.</p>","PeriodicalId":42514,"journal":{"name":"ANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS","volume":"37 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/anoc.70016","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147631848","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Ghosts of Ayahuasca: Conceptual Limits and Spectral Residues","authors":"Jacob W. Glazier, S. Jo O'Donnell","doi":"10.1111/anoc.70013","DOIUrl":"10.1111/anoc.70013","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>This essay explores the conceptual and philosophical complexities surrounding ayahuasca use, focusing on its ability to reveal ghosts through the lens of hauntology. Ayahuasca, a psychoactive brew traditionally used in shamanic rituals, is known to evoke profound experiences involving spirits, mystical entities, and transformative states of consciousness. The brew's active compound, dimethyltryptamine (DMT), is notable for its dual nature as both an endogenous neurotransmitter and an exogenous psychedelic. This duality unsettles the boundary between what is natural to the human body and what is external, inviting a reconsideration of anthropocentric and biomedical assumptions. Furthermore, encounters with discarnate beings during ayahuasca journeys blur the lines between corporeality and incorporeality, suggesting that these entities—while phenomenologically real—defy categorization within traditional ontological frameworks. Ultimately, we argue that ayahuasca's spectral residues disrupt materialist understandings of reality, leaving traces that haunt these models and invite broader reflections on consciousness, interconnection, death, and metaphysical limits. By listening to these ghosts, both as conceptual provocations and as subjective experiences, we can challenge and expand our understanding of reality while embracing the transformative and scary possibilities ayahuasca presents.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":42514,"journal":{"name":"ANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS","volume":"37 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147649412","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Misinformation, Magic, and Mendacity: Peeking Behind the Curtain to Explore the World of Deception","authors":"Paul W. Draper, Joseph P. Zompetti","doi":"10.1111/anoc.70025","DOIUrl":"10.1111/anoc.70025","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>With disinformation rising at alarming rates, we are experiencing a crisis of truth. Our commodified culture, political establishment, and media industries generate and disseminate false information in myriad ways, creating a world where it is difficult to ascertain what is actually real. Interestingly, many of us desire and are delighted by deception when it occurs as theatrical magic. In this paper, we examine various deception techniques used by tricksters in the realm of disinformation and magical entertainment. While many similarities exist, we note the manner and context of deception techniques—and the symbolic meanings they create—provide a clear contrast between the way deception is operationalized. To that end, we argue that a thorough understanding of deceptive practices can improve our digital literacy as well as enhance our ability to enjoy moments of enchantment and wonder.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":42514,"journal":{"name":"ANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS","volume":"37 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147626343","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}