Maziyar Ghiabi - The epistemology of the intoxicated: some thoughts from the Islamicate world

Maziyar Ghiabi explores the historical and cultural significance of intoxication within the Islamicate world to challenge modern, western-centric drug policies. Through the lens of epistemology, the presentation examines how poetry and everyday social life integrated substances like cannabis and wine, presenting a more nuanced reality than the simplistic narrative of prohibition. Ghiabi argues that renaming these diverse historical practices under a single, modern label like 'drugs' constitutes an epistemic violence that erases local knowledge and cultural depth. Highlighting the figure of the 'Rend' from Persian literature, Ghiabi demonstrates an ethical counter-cultural archetype that embraces intoxication to confront social conventions and power. By re-examining these figures, scholarship can recover indigenous frameworks for understanding altered states of consciousness. This perspective aims to move beyond current binary classification systems, suggesting that cognitive justice requires centering non-western historical experiences when debating global drug policy.