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Ghosts and Things

Aviva Briefel

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Description:Ghosts and Things argues that Victorians turned to the dead to understand the material culture of their present. With the rise of spiritualism in Britain in the early 1850s, séances invited participants to contact ghosts using material things, from ordinary household furniture to specialized technologies invented to register the presence of spirits. In its supernatural object lessons, Victorian spiritualism was not just a mystical movement centered on the dead but also a practical resource for learning how to negotiate the uncanniness of life under capitalism. Aviva Briefel explores how spiritualism compelled séance participants to speculate on the manufacture of spectral clothing; ponder the hidden histories and energies of parlor furniture; confront the humiliations of consumerism as summoned spirits pelted them with exotic fruits; and comprehend modes of mechanical reproduction, like photography and electrotyping, that had the power to shape identities. Briefel argues that spiritualist practices and the objects they employed offered both believers and skeptics unexpected frameworks for grappling with the often-invisible forces of labor, consumption, exploitation, and exchange that haunted their everyday lives. Ghosts and Things reveals how spiritualism's explorations of the borderland between life and death, matter and spirit, produced a strange and seductive combination of wonder and discomfort that allowed participants to experience the possibilities and precarities of industrial modernity in novel ways.We have made it easy for you to find a PDF Ebooks without any digging. And by having access to our ebooks online or by storing it on your computer, you have convenient answers with Ghosts and Things. To get started finding Ghosts and Things, you are right to find our website which has a comprehensive collection of manuals listed.
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Pages: 365

Format: PDF, EPUB & Kindle Edition

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Release: 2025

ISBN: 9781501780271

Description: Ghosts and Things argues that Victorians turned to the dead to understand the material culture of their present. With the rise of spiritualism in Britain in the early 1850s, séances invited participants to contact ghosts using material things, from ordinary household furniture to specialized technologies invented to register the presence of spirits. In its supernatural object lessons, Victorian spiritualism was not just a mystical movement centered on the dead but also a practical resource for learning how to negotiate the uncanniness of life under capitalism. Aviva Briefel explores how spiritualism compelled séance participants to speculate on the manufacture of spectral clothing; ponder the hidden histories and energies of parlor furniture; confront the humiliations of consumerism as summoned spirits pelted them with exotic fruits; and comprehend modes of mechanical reproduction, like photography and electrotyping, that had the power to shape identities. Briefel argues that spiritualist practices and the objects they employed offered both believers and skeptics unexpected frameworks for grappling with the often-invisible forces of labor, consumption, exploitation, and exchange that haunted their everyday lives. Ghosts and Things reveals how spiritualism's explorations of the borderland between life and death, matter and spirit, produced a strange and seductive combination of wonder and discomfort that allowed participants to experience the possibilities and precarities of industrial modernity in novel ways.We have made it easy for you to find a PDF Ebooks without any digging. And by having access to our ebooks online or by storing it on your computer, you have convenient answers with Ghosts and Things. To get started finding Ghosts and Things, you are right to find our website which has a comprehensive collection of manuals listed.
Our library is the biggest of these that have literally hundreds of thousands of different products represented.

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Ghosts and Things

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