Body and Soul
Subtitle: A Sympathetic History of American Spiritualism
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Published: October 2003
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 288
ISBN-13: 9780813922300
Subjects: American history; History of religion; Spirit communication & mediumship, spiritualism; Body, Mind & Spirit; Social History; History - U.S.; United States - 19th Century; History: American; USA; Spiritualism; Spiritualism - General; History; Americas (North Central South West Indies); 19th century; Race relations; United States
First sentence: WENDELL NEWHALL knew his feelings, having been introduced to them by an old friend.
Description: "In Body and Soul, Robert S. 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 seance 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 the crusade against slavery."

"From the beginning, however, Spiritualist political and social expression was far more diverse than has previously been recognized, encompassing distinctive proslavery and antiegalitarian strains, and in the wake of racial and political adjustments following the Civil War, the movement began to fracture. Cox traces the eventual dissolution of Spiritualism through the contradictions of its various regional and racial factions and through their increasingly circumscribed responses to a changing world. In the end, he concludes, the history of Spiritualism was written in the limits of sympathy, and not its limitless potential."--Jacket.