Spiritualist Signal and Theosophical Noise

Abstract

Recent media studies research on 19th‐century Spiritualism has foregrounded the technological metaphors that suffuse Spiritualist models of the séance. However, this article shows that the actual phatic channels proposed by Spiritualism consisted almost entirely of mediating chains of human spirits who stood between the bereaved séance guests and the spirits of the dear departed called “strangers.” While the “strangers” were, like the séance guests, departed white people, the authoritative “control spirits” were frequently exotic others such as “Indians” from the American imaginary of the Frontier. Beginning in 1875, the apparent transparency of the Spiritualist séance became the object of critique of an emerging occultist movement of Theosophy, which sought to undermine the authoritative human spirits of Spiritualism by turning the human spirits of the Spiritualist séance wholesale into disruptive non‐human mediators called “Diakkas,” “Bhuts,” and “Elementals,” and replacing Spiritualism's authoritative “Indian” control spirits drawn from the imaginary of the American frontier with Tibetan “Mahatmas” drawn from the orientalist imaginary of the Empire. These elementals initially represented noisy non‐human “parasites” of Spiritualist channels, but later these parasites take over the channel and become the channel themselves in the form of what came to be called the “elemental essence.”

Becoming Muslims with a “Queer Voice”: Indexical Disjuncture in the Talk of LGBT Members of the Progressive Muslim Community

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Spectral technologies, sonic motility, and the paranormal in Chile

“…Spiritualism essentially gave notions of “discorporative electronic liberation” (Sconce, 2000: 27) a free reign. Spiritualist séances were highly democratic affairs, thought of as “transparent” to all spirits, but the “channels” through which contact was established, “the mere existence of the channel permitting contact with other worlds, was more interesting than the message content ” (Manning, 2018: 68). Mediums themselves were conceptualized as “radios” of sorts.…”

“…EVP, voices from the void and sonic atmospheres "Noise," in paranormal investigation, can be compared as a concept to the spiritualist "ether" of the 19th century, the "channel" or medium through which spirits found their voices (Manning, 2018). This entire era seems permeated with concerns for the powers of communications through what was thought of as invisible fluids.…”

Animating Relations: Digitally Mediated Intimacies between the Living and the Dead

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