Body and Soul: A Sympathetic History of American Spiritualism

by Robert S. Cox

Overview

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.

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813923901
Publisher:	University of Virginia Press
Publication date:	09/29/2003
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	296
File size:	1 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Robert S. Cox is Curator of Manuscripts at the American Philosophical Society.

What People are Saying About This

"Much of the strength of Body and Soul comes from its breadth of vision. It situates Spiritualist phenomena within wide social and intellectual frameworks; in particular, it makes a subtle case for the importance of sympathy as a social, moral, occult, and physiological construct that profoundly shapes the movement, its affinities and limits. The book is also strong in the details, many of which are startlingly revealing of the diverse political implications of Spiritualism." -- Leigh Eric SchmidtPrinceton University, author of Hearing Things: Religion, Illusion, and the American Enlightenment

Leigh Eric Schmidt

Much of the strength of Body and Soul comes from its breadth of vision. It situates Spiritualist phenomena within wide social and intellectual frameworks; in particular, it makes a subtle case for the importance of sympathy as a social, moral, occult, and physiological construct that profoundly shapes the movement, its affinities and limits. The book is also strong in the details, many of which are startlingly revealing of the diverse political implications of Spiritualism.

Leigh Eric SchmidtPrinceton University

Much of the strength of Body and Soul comes from its breadth of vision. It situates Spiritualist phenomena within wide social and intellectual frameworks; in particular, it makes a subtle case for the importance of sympathy as a social, moral, occult, and physiological construct that profoundly shapes the movement, its affinities and limits. The book is also strong in the details, many of which are startlingly revealing of the diverse political implications of Spiritualism.

Editorial Reviews

Cox (curator of manuscripts, American Philosophical Society) finds a key to understanding 19th-century Spiritualism-an American religious movement which asserted that spirits of the dead communicate with the living-within the 18th-century concept of sympathy. Defining sympathy as "that analogous feeling, which arises from an imaginary application to ourselves of the circumstances of him with whom we sympathize," the author uses the concept to examine such phenomena as spirit rappings, sleepwalking, sleep preaching, spirit photography, and even the raising of the famously deceased, such as George Washington and Thomas Paine. Through this study, Cox reveals both the commonalities and the differences within the movement. His analysis would have been more influential if his prose were not so convoluted and stilted. Consider the following: "It is the titration of authority and emotion in [William] Mumler's trial that provides the key to unlocking the cultural valence of spirit photography." While such rhetoric will not deter scholarly colleagues, it will put off undergraduate readers and others who would benefit from the author's efforts. As such, the work is recommended solely for graduate academic collections in American religious and social history.-Christopher Brennan, SUNY Coll. at Brockport Lib. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Much of the strength of Body and Soul comes from its breadth of vision. It situates Spiritualist phenomena within wide social and intellectual frameworks; in particular, it makes a subtle case for the importance of sympathy as a social, moral, occult, and physiological construct that profoundly shapes the movement, its affinities and limits. The book is also strong in the details, many of which are startlingly revealing of the diverse political implications of Spiritualism.

Leigh Eric Schmidt

"Much of the strength of Body and Soul comes from its breadth of vision. It situates Spiritualist phenomena within wide social and intellectual frameworks; in particular, it makes a subtle case for the importance of sympathy as a social, moral, occult, and physiological construct that profoundly shapes the movement, its affinities and limits. The book is also strong in the details, many of which are startlingly revealing of the diverse political implications of Spiritualism. "—Leigh Eric SchmidtPrinceton University, author of Hearing Things: Religion, Illusion, and the American Enlightenment

From the Publisher

Much of the strength of Body and Soul comes from its breadth of vision. It situates Spiritualist phenomena within wide social and intellectual frameworks; in particular, it makes a subtle case for the importance of sympathy as a social, moral, occult, and physiological construct that profoundly shapes the movement, its affinities and limits. The book is also strong in the details, many of which are startlingly revealing of the diverse political implications of Spiritualism.

Leigh Eric SchmidtPrinceton University