Pranksters and Intersubjectivity the Concept of Intersubjectivity

Pranksters and Intersubjectivity The Concept of Intersubjectivity in the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters were led by a kind of nouveau-culture that had sprung out of the Beat movement like Athena out of the head of Zeus when struck by a hammer. The hammer that struck the Beat poets, of course, was LSD -- better known as acid -- an integral (and legal) ingredient in the search for intersubjectivity.

Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is a chronicle of the Pranksters' attempt at intersubjective transcendence -- the melding of all minds into one, through drug-induced states.

Wolfe's narrative style is an attempt to put into words the exact experience of the Pranksters' intersubjectivity -- yet, Wolfe, himself a master stylist and satirist, uses the narrative not only to chronicle but also to expose the absurdity at the core of the "transcendent" effort of this infamous group of "hippies." This paper will take one passage from Wolfe's Test to show exactly how the author satirizes Intersubjectivity by developing a narrative that explores the gaping holes in this drug-induced transcendence.

The moment that the Pranksters are looking for (while dropping acid) is the moment when all of their minds become as one. Kesey had previously experienced this sort of phenomenon -- for example, when one member of the group rose to open a window across the room someone nearer would get up and do it first. Intersubjectivity was the explanation for such happenings -- and it was also an excuse to take lots of drugs.

Wolfe is perfectly aware of the culture and its ideology, and he sets to mimicking it in his punctuation-less paragraphs and frenzied descriptions that build and build into a stoner's climax that hilariously reveals itself to be -- not a climax -- but an anti-epiphany anti-climax: CLOUD.

The fact that the Pranksters are stoned out of their minds is bluntly pointed out by Wolfe: their moment of Intersubjectivity is nothing more than a movie-inspired moment signaled by the screeching breaks and the coincidental sun shining off a large glass front building. The brakes squeal, the Pranksters look up -- and behold their epiphany: a cloud. The cloud is symbolic. It represents the muddled, hazy thinking that makes up the Pranksters' ethos.

It also represents the ethereal, ephemeral nature of their dream: they are children chasing after a fantasy. Their entire journey (in a kind of Mystery Machine-type van) timed to the music of the Beatles, with offerings of mystical eastern philosophy thrown into the mix, not to mention the drugs, is little more than a quest of self-abandon. Self-abandon is at the core of their Intersubjectivity acid tests -- transcendence is merely a label haphazardly applied.

Wolfe recognizes the delusional quest for what it is -- a mindless, disordered, Alice-in-Wonderland-type journey down the rabbit hole of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. CLOUD is the most climactic moment of their Intersubjectivity quest -- but not of their.