From Radicals and Raps to Clairvoyants in Cabinets: The Failed Promise of the Spiritualist Movement

Abstract

Although frequently seen as outlandish radicals, the Spiritualist movement in its first half a century bore a striking resemblance to mainstream social mores, and especially to the mass-produced death culture of mid to late nineteenth-century America. Spiritualists shaped themselves in reaction to socially accepted attitudes towards death, and in so doing expressed many of the same beliefs and feelings, rearticulated to set themselves apart. Were it completely separated from the pervading forms of Nineteenth-century death culture, Spiritualism would have had nothing to shape itself in relation to and would likely have lacked much of its power to endure. Spiritualism owes its rise and endurance, in large part, to the death culture it so loudly decried. Without an elaborate culture of death and dying, there could be no place for Spiritualists in nineteenth-century America.