Holistic spiritualities and distrust in pandemic times. The public movement for “alternative evidence” in Argentina

NICOLAS VIOTTI

Laussane

Simposio; Contemporary Spiritualities: a new soft power?; 2021

Universidad Federal de Río de Janeiro (Brasil), Universidad Laussane (Suiza) y la Universidad de Montreal (Canadá)

As many analysts of contemporary spirituality have pointed out, the renewed public presence of non-denominational alternative spirituality, usually identified with those who define it as “spiritual, but non-religious”, is a process that forces us to rethink the most classical relationships between religion, the public sphere and politics (Carozzi 2006, Bender & Klassen 2010, Bender & McRoberts 2012, van der Veer 2009 and 2013, Wood 2009). In this context, the COVID-19 pandemic showed how holistic lifestyles play a relevant role in the definitions of health and wellbeing as well as in the general interpretations about the sanitary and social crisis.Cultural grammars inspired by holism and alternative spirituality go through a zone of scientific distrust movements, which question public health policy (mass vaccination, the existence of coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, etc.) and that in their more extreme cases mobilize conspiracy theories (aspect that Ward and Voas defined as "conspirituality") about the origin of the health disaster, blaming the WHO or the "New World Order". Likewise, those same grammars inspire the use of scientifically controversial alternative therapies. In Latin America, for example, the most prominent controversies were raised by the use of chloroquine or paracetamol as medicines to treat COVID-19.In this paper I discuss in detail the relationships between holistic lifestyles and spiritualties in relation to the public distrust towards COVID-19 in Argentina. For this purpose, I rely on public statements of the main referents of those who question expert knowledge, records of participation in discussion forums and on in-depth interviews with adherents to the official scientific mistrust and the policy based on experts. The strong presence of discourses and practices related to therapeutic holism in the trajectories and in the arguments of distrust regarding the official policy of experts will allow us to establish a relationship little analyzed and quite unexpected in the studies on the politicization of contemporary spirituality.A central aspect of my analysis is based on how those who adhere to or get involved in movements or spaces for questioning the politics of experts mobilize grammars of public action based on two main features: accusations to distant and abstract external causes (Bill Gates, the WHO, the New World Order) and close and intimate evidence. On the one hand, they utilize justification models that prioritize mistrust and suspicion over official evidence from experts who are far from the "truth." To do this, they exchange and frequent a large amount of written material on social media that works as a stabilization network of reality in its own terms. At the same time, they legitimize their positions based on criteria of "alternative evidence": emotional experience based on personal autonomy and "inner states" as well as close and daily relationships.Based on all this, our intention is to point out how ways of life and holistic spirituality come out into the public space to dispute meanings, questioning the most classic and conventional images of New Age spirituality as typical of a depoliticized and narcissistic world (Bellah). On the other hand, it is also my intention to describe some central grammars of these modes of public action, recognizing the political productivity that the principles of mistrust and personal experience have, generally disregarded as infra-social elements. In this case, I will use the analysis of the public questioning that holistic lifestyles display about official scientific expertise during the pandemic as a case where mistrust and personal experience become vehicles of biosociality and collective action.