Occult Communications: On Instrumentation, Esotericism, and Epistemology
Introduction
What can the occult, the obscure, and the incommunicable teach us about the history of communications and culture? Occult Communications: On Instrumentation, Esotericism, and Epistemology, examines how spiritualism, esotericism, and occultism have shaped the dominant cultures of reason in European and North American contexts from the seventeenth-century until today. Case studies in media archaeology and historical epistemology on issues such as spirit photography, horror films, exorcisms, stage magic, surrealism, and brains-in-vats examine so-called magical thinking and its operations at the heart of modern scientific and technological reason.
Introduction
- Bernard Geoghegen, "Occult Communications: On Instrumentation, Esotericism, and Epistemology"
Occcult Premotions
- Florian Sprenger, “Insensible and Inexplicable – On the Two Meanings of the Occult”
- Stephan Gregory, “Media in Action: From Exorcism to Mesmerism”
The Spirit of Scientific Inquiry
- Erhard Schüttpelz & Ehler Voss, “Fragile Balance: Human Mediums and Technical Media in Oliver Lodge’s Presidential Address of 1891”
- Christian Kassung, “Self-Writing Machines: Technology and the Question of the Self”
- Margarida Medeiros, “Facts and Photographs: Visualizing the Invisible with Spirit and Thought Photography”
- Jeffrey Sconce, “The Ghostularity”
The Spirit of Diversion
- Katharina Rein, “Mind Reading in Stage Magic: The “Second Sight” Illusion, Media, and Mediums”
- Petra Löffler, “Ghosts of the City: A Spectrology of Cinematic Spaces”
- Tessel M. Bauduin, “The ‘Continuing Misfortune’ of Automatism in Early Surrealism”
Transmedial Occultism
- Anthony Enns, “Spiritualist Writing Machines: Telegraphy, Typtology, Typewriting,”
- Simone Natale, “Spreading the Spirit Word: Print Media, Storytelling, and Popular Culture in Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism,”
- Laurence Rickels, “Integration: Understanding New Mediation via Innovations in Horror Cinema,”
Articles
Occult Communications: On Instrumentation, Esotericism, and Epistemology
Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan
Insensible and Inexplicable - On the Two Meanings of Occult
Florian Sprenger
Media in Action: From Exorcism to Mesmerism
Stephan Gregory
Fragile Balance: Human Mediums and Technical Media in Oliver Lodge's Presidential Address of 1891
Erhard Schuettpelz and Ehler Voss
Self-Writing Machines: Technology and the Question of the Self
Christian Kassung
Facts and Photographs: Visualizing the Invisible with Spirit and Thought Photography
Margarida Medeiros
The Ghostularity
Jeffrey Sconce
The ‘Continuing Misfortune’ of Automatism in Early Surrealism
Tessel M. Bauduin
Spreading the Spirit Word: Print Media, Storytelling, and Popular Culture in Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism
Simone Natale
Integration: Understanding New Mediation via Innovations in Horror Cinema
Laurence A. Rickels