In the 1920s and ’30s, people gathered in darkened rooms to explore
the paranormal through seances. Science of the Seance resurrects the
story of a select transnational group and their quest for objective
knowledge of the supernatural world, casting new light on empiricism
and its relationship to gender, sexuality, and the body in this era.
Drawing on publications, correspondence, seance notes, and photographs
from Canada, the UK, and the US, Beth A. Robertson draws back the
curtain to reveal a world inhabited by researchers, spirits, and
spiritual mediums, including the notorious Mina “Margery” Crandon.
Representing themselves as masters of the senses, untainted by the
effeminized subjectivity of the body, psychical researchers believed
that machines and empirical methods could transform the seance from an
isolated spiritual encounter into a transnational empirical project.
The laboratory of the spirits that they created, however, opened up a
space where mediums and ghostly subjects could and did challenge their
claims to exclusive scientific expertise and authority. This
innovative reassessment of paranormal investigation and the
transatlantic ties of the seance reveals how science, metaphysics, and
the senses collided to inform gendered norms in the interwar era.
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Transnational Networks and Gendered Bodies in the Study of Psychic Phenomena, 1918-40
Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780774833516
Publisert
2021
Utgave
1. utgave
Utgiver
University of British Columbia Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter