David Dupuis’s ethnographic study examines Western seekers traveling to Peruvian Amazonia to experience ayahuasca, a psychoactive plant brew. Conducted over years at Takiwasi, a hybrid center blending Amazonian rituals with psychotherapeutic practice founded by French physician Jacques Mabit, the research distinguishes three traveler archetypes: therapeutic (seeking relief beyond conventional medicine), spiritual (seeking enchantment), and practitioner (pursuing non-conventional knowledge). Dupuis analyzes how participants attribute maternal presence, intentionality, and agency to ayahuasca itself—an imaginary potentially constructed by shamanic tourism entrepreneurs rather than indigenous traditions. The work interrogates visibility/invisibility relationships and reparative trajectories of suffering subjects navigating globalized spiritual consumption, touching on therapeutic culture and the commodification of indigenous practices.
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