03537nam 2200565Ia 450 991097304780332120251117092417.00-8139-2390-5(CKB)2670000000275931(EBL)3444073(SSID)ssj0000798381(PQKBManifestationID)11957455(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000798381(PQKBWorkID)10742328(PQKB)10966510(MiAaPQ)EBC3444073(OCoLC)820011284(MdBmJHUP)muse24406(Au-PeEL)EBL3444073(CaPaEBR)ebr10614785(BIP)33842691(BIP)8287114(EXLCZ)99267000000027593120030129d2003 uy 0engur|n|---|||||txtccrBody and soul a sympathetic history of American spiritualism /Robert S. Cox1st ed.Charlottesville University of Virginia Pressc20031 online resource (288 p.)Description based upon print version of record.0-8139-2230-5 Includes bibliographical references (p. [237]-282) and index.Sleepwalking and sympathy -- Celestial symptoms -- Transparent spirits -- Angels' language -- Vox populi -- Invisible world -- Shades.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.SpiritualismUnited StatesHistory19th centuryUnited StatesRace relationsHistory19th centurySpiritualismHistory133.9/0973Cox Robert S.1958-1863212MiAaPQMiAaPQMiAaPQBOOK9910973047803321Body and soul4469720UNINA