In Neşe Devenot’s paper, “TESCREAL hallucinations: Psychedelic and AI hype as inequality engines,” they argue that the hype behind the AI and psychedelics industries are interconnected. Based on rhetorical analysis, Devenot presents evidence that these parallel hypes are driven by a cluster of colonial ideologies that justify accelerating inequality. Despite promises to fix the world’s ills, leading figures in these industries are justifying the rapid expansion of both fields by claiming to offer solutions to the precise harms that their nascent systems are designed to actively perpetuate (namely: political polarization, the rise of fascism, environmental degradation, and increasing rates of mental illness—all of which are associated with rising inequality in society).

Devenot cites Indigenous perspectives on ethics and relationality to emphasize the colonial orientations of major initiatives in both fields, which contrast with democratic and prosocial alternatives. From a writing studies perspective, they end by theorizing the field-building potentials of critical scholarship along these lines.