A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture
A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture
A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture
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assessed <strong>the</strong> Fox sisters as <strong>the</strong> “Nemeses <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> pulpit.” 72<br />
Spiritualism was fur<strong>the</strong>r disparaged as<br />
a debasement and literalization <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> spiritual world, what Emerson referred to as “<strong>the</strong> rat hole<br />
<strong>of</strong> revelation.” 73<br />
The New York Times condemned Spiritualism for its “subversion <strong>of</strong> all respect<br />
and devotion to <strong>the</strong> only true faith,” while Wash<strong>in</strong>gton’s National Intelligencer said <strong>of</strong> it that<br />
However absurd and despicable it may appear to men <strong>of</strong> sound reason and resolute<br />
conviction, it is spread<strong>in</strong>g itself like a pestilence through our borders, carry<strong>in</strong>g with it <strong>the</strong><br />
madness <strong>of</strong> <strong>in</strong>fidelity [Spiritualism was <strong>of</strong>ten associated and even equated with Free<br />
Love], <strong>of</strong> sensuous materialism if not actual a<strong>the</strong>ism, and distract<strong>in</strong>g <strong>the</strong> m<strong>in</strong>ds <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong><br />
nervous, <strong>the</strong> feeble-witted, and <strong>the</strong> timid <strong>in</strong>to actual <strong>in</strong>sanity. 74<br />
Note <strong>the</strong> language <strong>of</strong> dissipation, boundary cross<strong>in</strong>g and madness, all po<strong>in</strong>t<strong>in</strong>g to Spiritualism as<br />
a force <strong>of</strong> dis<strong>in</strong>tegration. We see here aga<strong>in</strong> <strong>the</strong> fundamental tension <strong>of</strong> Spiritualist practice. At<br />
<strong>the</strong> same time as it promises a new <strong>in</strong>tegration—<strong>of</strong> science and religion, <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> dead and <strong>the</strong><br />
liv<strong>in</strong>g, <strong>of</strong> past and future—it threatens dissipation by that very <strong>in</strong>tegration <strong>of</strong> mutually exclusive<br />
spheres.<br />
In Ghostwrit<strong>in</strong>g Modernity, Helen Sword writes <strong>of</strong> ways “<strong>in</strong> which mediums and<br />
communicat<strong>in</strong>g spirits unsettle seem<strong>in</strong>gly stable ontological—or, as Jacques Derrida would have<br />
it, ‘hauntological’—boundaries between self and o<strong>the</strong>r, absence and presence, materiality and<br />
spirituality, life and death.” 75<br />
Sword’s basic argument is that one can see <strong>the</strong> seeds <strong>of</strong> a<br />
postmodern/poststructural sensibility <strong>in</strong> <strong>the</strong> communication between humans and spirits—what<br />
Basham refers to as “<strong>the</strong>se Victorian psychic puzzles, with <strong>the</strong>ir <strong>in</strong>tricate clues and endless<br />
mirror<strong>in</strong>gs.” 76<br />
This is ano<strong>the</strong>r way <strong>of</strong> imag<strong>in</strong><strong>in</strong>g <strong>the</strong> fundamental tension or dialectic present<br />
throughout <strong>the</strong> genealogy drawn by this project. The ascendancy <strong>of</strong> positivism and its efforts to<br />
72 Oliver Wendell Holmes, “The Pr<strong>of</strong>essor at <strong>the</strong> Breakfast Table” Atlantic Monthly 3 (January 1859): 90.<br />
73 Helen Sword, Ghostwrit<strong>in</strong>g Modernism (Ithaca: Cornell University, 2000) 5.<br />
74 Moore, 28.<br />
75 Sword, xi.<br />
76 Diana Basham, The Trial <strong>of</strong> Women: Fem<strong>in</strong>ism and <strong>the</strong> Occult Sciences <strong>in</strong> Victorian Literature and Society (New<br />
York: New York University, 1992) 119.<br />
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