Overview

Exploring how technological apparatuses capture invisible worlds, this book looks at how spirits, UFOs, discarnate entities, spectral energies, atmospheric forces and particles are mattered into existence by human minds. Technological and scientific discourse has always been central to the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century spiritualist quest for legitimacy, but as this book shows, machines, people, and invisible beings are much more ontologically entangled in their definitions and constitution than we would expect. The book shows this entanglement through a series of contemporary case studies where the realm of the invisible arises through technological engagement, and where the paranormal intertwines with modern technology.

Full Product Details

Author:   Diana Espirito Santo ,  Jack Hunter
Publisher:   Berghahn Books
Imprint:   Berghahn Books
ISBN:  

9781800730663

ISBN 10:   1800730667
Pages:   272
Publication Date:   14 May 2021
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

List of Figures Acknowledgements Introduction: On the Materiality of Unseen Things Diana Espirito Santo and Jack Hunter PART I: BODILY SEMANTICS, METAPHOR & MEDIATION Chapter 1. Organicism and Mechanism in Psychical Research: Reflections on the Mattering of Spirit Mediumship Jack Hunter Chapter 2. Semantics of the Suffering: Torture Technologies and Mediumship in Buenos Aires Miguel Algranti Chapter 3. New Media Technologies and the Otherworld in Postsocialist Vietnam Gertrud Huwelmeier Chapter 4. Broken Words: Tools of Oracular Articulacy in Afro-Cuban Divination Anastasios Panagiotopoulos PART II: ORDERS OF SOUND, SIGHT, & MEASUREMENT Chapter 5. Radioaficionados and UFOs: The Social Life of Radios in Chile Diana Espirito Santo Chapter 6. Hospitality and Proof: Human Mediums, Technical Media, and Controversial Knowledge in Ghost Hunting in the United States Ehler Voss Chapter 7. Picturing the Unseen: The Role of Polaroid Media in the Remystification of the Western World Andrea Lathrop Ligueros PART III: MATTERING INVISIBLE POWERS Chapter 8. Specters of Climate and the Construction of Ghostly Realities in Brazil Renzo Taddei Chapter 9. Iktomi's Realm: Reanimating the Inanimate in Western Science Anne Dippel Chapter 10. Phantom Power: Prophecy, Triangulation and Materialization in Angola Ruy Blanes Conclusion: Mediation and Variable Communications Diana Espirito Santo & Jack Hunter Index

Reviews

The volume brings together a heterogenous and international group of scholars who present a wealth of information of different practices of mattering the invisible... makes a significant contribution to anthropology, and offers innovative contributions to those interested in media studies, materiality, science and technology studies. - Marcelo Moura Mello, Federal University of Bahia

The volume brings together a heterogenous and international group of scholars who present a wealth of information of different practices of mattering the invisible... makes a significant contribution to anthropology, and offers innovative contributions to those interested in media studies, materiality, science and technology studies. * Marcelo Moura Mello, Federal University of Bahia

Author Information

Diana Espirito Santo currently works as Associate Professor at Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile. She has published many articles and has co-edited four volumes, including The Social Life of Spirits (2013, University of Chicago Press) with Ruy Blanes.

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