Imagination, Sensation and the Education of Attention Among Cuban Spirit Mediums

Abstract

This article attempts to come to terms with the phenomenology of learning in the popular Cuban spirit mediumship practice of espiritismo. Espiritistas' talents derive from the unique relationships they construct with their muertos (the protective dead), allowing them to receive, discern, and interpret valuable information for others. Learning here does not result from explicit knowledge transmission but from a guided expansion of consciousness, where the neophyte learns to attend to the particulars of the spirit world through his or her imagination and sensation. I associate this process with what Ingold has described as the ‘education of attention’, and use his concept of ‘entanglement’ to propose that learning mediumship be conceptualized as implying the development of a particular kind of person. I have further used Latour's definition of ‘acquiring a body’ as ‘learning to be affected’ to better understand the mutual constitution of the spiritual landscape and the self.