Modern Occult Rhetoric: Mass Media and the Drama of Secrecy in the Twentieth Century (Rhetoric, Culture, and Social Critique Series) by Joshua Gunn

Abstract

Modern Occult Rhetoric: Mass Media and Drama of Secrecy in Twentieth Century (Rhetoric, Culture, and Social Critique Series) Joshua Gunn, Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2005. How many taboos can a scholar violate before being permanently assigned to publishing limbo? Judging from this book, quite a few! Joshua Gunn, assistant professor of communication studies at University of Texas-Austin, treats seldom analyzed (because disreputable) territory of occult, typically understood to include phenomena such as fortune telling, astrology, black magic, Satanism, and channeling dead spirits. He wishes to show how individuals use language ... secrets, creating groups of insiders and outsiders (xv). Gunn reveals that his investigation was launched by a smugly framed insult tossed at him in a graduate seminar; another student publicly chastised him for his ignorance of Lacan on desire (235). Perhaps reflecting emotional sting of that classroom humiliation, he risks offense to many respectable colleagues in a first chapter that begins with a babbling satire of French postmodern stars, Deleuze and Guattari. Such a ruse momentarily suggests his sympathy with Alan Sokal, who hoaxed journal Social Texts a decade ago with famously fashionable nonsense. But after this deliberate linking of occultism's with that of postmodern critical discourse, he goes on to offer a qualified apologia for both. While he does not defend truth claims of either, he argues instead for legitimacy of their shared purpose-to disclose previously unknown truths conveyed through language that is by necessity exploratory. As he works out parallels between popular and scholarly occult, Gunn develops a subtle, original analysis that helps us understand the poetics of obscurity and how it functions to create appreciative audiences. In addition to this philosophical strand focused on meaning, argument of book is framed historically, encompassing ancient origins of occult tradition, its suppression by early Christian church, its revival during Renaissance, and its period of greatest vitality in late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when church's social authority to forbid what it called magic declined. For American aspect of Gunn's analysis, principal figures covered are H. P. Blavatsky, Aleister Crowley, and Anton LaVey. And just as spiritual authority of church diminished, Gunn sees a downward path from a period of earnest seeking after secrets to a period of occult commodification dominated by scary images rather than esoteric language. Blavatsky was a world traveler from Ukraine who, in 1875, formed Theosophical Society in New York; she circulated as a spiritualist celebrity who commanded special insights and powers based upon her study of assorted world religions. The Society still exists today and her works such as his Unveiled (1877) and The Secret Doctrine (1888), although denounced by some of her contemporaries as rubbish, are still in print today, remaining important to theosophical strand of New Age religions. Her rhetorical style, which was repetitive, list-laden with citations, and filled with imported terms (especially from Sanskrit), helped Blavatsky cultivate aura of authority among her devoted, though often bemuddled followers. …