Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Body and Soul: A Sympathetic History of American Spiritualism

Body and Soul: A Sympathetic History of American Spiritualism

Cox, Robert S.

Paperback

Occult19th Century United States HistoryGeneral World History

ISBN10: 0813940729
ISBN13: 9780813940724
Publisher: Univ Of Virginia Pr
Published: Oct 27 2017
Pages: 296
Weight: 0.97
Height: 0.67 Width: 5.98 Depth: 9.02
Language: English

A product of the spiritual hothouse of the Second Great Awakening, Spiritualism became the fastest growing religion in the nation during the 1850s, and one of the principal responses to the widespread perception that American society was descending into atomistic particularity.

In Body and Soul, Robert Cox shows how Spiritualism sought to transform sympathy into social practice, arguing that each individual, living and dead, was poised within a nexus of affect, and through the active propagation of these sympathetic bonds, a new and coherent society would emerge. Phenomena such as spontaneous somnambulism and sympathetic communion with the dead--whether through séance or spirit photography--were ways of transcending the barriers dissecting the American body politic, including the ultimate barrier, death. Drawing equally upon social, occult, and physiological registers, Spiritualism created a unique social physiology in which mind was integrated into body and body into society, leading Spiritualists into earthly social reforms, such as women's rights and anti-slavery.

Also in

19th Century United States History

View All