Mattering the Invisible

Technologies, Bodies, and the Realm of the Spectral
1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-1-80073-066-3
Verlag: Berghahn Books

Buch, Englisch, 272 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 554 g

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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Santo, Diana Espírito

Hunter, Jack

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Wissenssoziologie, Wissenschaftssoziologie, Techniksoziologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Mediensoziologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaften Medienwissenschaften

Inhaltsverzeichnis

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 Hüwelmeier

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 Espírito 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 Espírito Santo & Jack Hunter

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Santo, Diana Espírito
Diana Espírito Santo currently works as Associate Professor at Pontificia Universidad Católica 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.

Hunter, Jack
Jack Hunter is an Honorary Research Fellow with the Religious Experience Research Centre and a tutor with the Sophia Centre, both at University of Wales Trinity Saint David. He is the author of Spirits, Gods and Magic (2020, August Night Press) and Engaging the Anomalous (2018, August Night Press).

Diana Espírito Santo currently works as Associate Professor at Pontificia Universidad Católica 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.