Mattering the Invisible: Technologies, Bodies, and the Realm of the Spectral ed. by Diana Espírito Santo and Jack Hunter

Abstract

Reviewed by: Mattering the Invisible: Technologies, Bodies, and the Realm of the Spectral ed. by Diana Espírito Santo and Jack Hunter Claire Fanger diana espírito santo and jack hunter, eds. Mattering the Invisible: Technologies, Bodies, and the Realm of the Spectral. New York: Berghahn Books, 2021. Pp. 329. This book focuses on the way matter and material technologies are involved in making paranormal experiences possible. The word "paranormal" is not used in the title but appears in the first sentence and recurs frequently thereafter. The book shares a basic theoretical framework with other work that has been done on material religion, the introduction citing sources starting with Alfred Gell leading to Karen Barad with nods at Bruno Latour in the middle—a familiar theoretical pantheon. The editors argue that in these accounts, we need to think not about "the meanings of messages" (11)—that is, not about what the dead or other discarnate entities may communicate within such experiences, but rather about how these experiences convey presence—they are all at least in part about a sense of contact with a numinous reality. For this reader it was something of a problem that the word "paranormal" was not defined anywhere, not in the introduction, the conclusion, nor in the essays. A large array of very different sorts of materials seems to be subsumed under the heading in this book, which nevertheless offers some very interesting reading. Many if not most of the chapters concern things that might elsewhere be categorized as "anthropology of religion." But how does "religion" intersect with the "paranormal?" What is the advantage of using the word "paranormal" here? I will return to these questions later. One reason I wanted to review this book is that I know Diana Espírito Santo is good at writing about the paranormal. In her work, the idea of what constitutes the "paranormal" is somehow transparent in a way that seems connected with the kinds of stories she tells: she can stun readers with marvels and lure them into the human dimension of stories that challenge credibility and yet escape disproof. Her chapter in this book is no exception. The rest of the book is a bit of a mixed bag inasmuch as not all the chapters constitute stories of clearly paranormal experiences as far as I can see—neither in its ordinary colloquial sense of something that is "above or beyond normal," nor in the storyteller's way that Espírito Santo does (if those are in fact distinct). The book comprises ten chapters, with an introduction and conclusion. I will summarize the chapters before returning to the issues of definition. In Chapter 1, "Organicism and Psychical Research: Where Mediums and Mushrooms Meet," Jack Hunter begins by describing how, in his work with mediums of the Bristol Spirit Lodge, instruments are used to coax the [End Page 459] reluctant spirits into speech—a slow halting process which "does not seem to be so much a case of turning the medium on like a radio receiver and then tuning in with a dial but rather is more like a process of nurturing—a participatory process of encouragement and growth, gradually enabling the spirit to manifest" and "is perhaps better understood using an organic rather than technological metaphor" (38). This is interesting and feels useful, though most of chapter is theoretical, in fact concerned with the superiority of organic to machine metaphors for a general idea of what the world is about, which I found dry and in spots implausible. Chapter 2, by Miguel M. Algranti, "Semantics of the Suffering: Torture Technologies and Mediumship in Buenos Aires," gives a brief history of Esoteric and Spiritist groups in Argentina ending with a group among whom the author conducted fieldwork: the Basilio Scientific School Association (BSSA). He discusses how Martha, his informant in this context, channels a young man who says that his spirit was broken when he was tortured with a cattle prod; he gave away information that he should have kept to himself. The point of Martha's channeling is to offer healing to the spirit of this dead youth through Martha's replication of the physical condition of his...