{"product_id":"ghosts-and-things-aviva-briefel-9781501780264","title":"Ghosts and Things: The Material Culture of Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eGhosts and Things\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e argues that Victorians turned to the dead to understand the material culture of their present. \u003c\/b\u003eWith the rise of spiritualism in Britain in the early 1850s, s?ances invited participants to contact ghosts using material things, from ordinary household furniture to specialized technologies invented to register the presence of spirits. In its supernatural object lessons, Victorian spiritualism was not just a mystical movement centered on the dead but also a practical resource for learning how to negotiate the uncanniness of life under capitalism. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAviva Briefel explores how spiritualism compelled s?ance participants to speculate on the manufacture of spectral clothing, ponder the hidden histories and energies of parlor furniture, confront the humiliations of consumerism as summoned spirits pelted them with exotic fruits, and comprehend modes of mechanical reproduction, like photography and electrotyping, that had the power to shape identities. Briefel argues that spiritualist practices and the objects they employed offered both believers and skeptics unexpected frameworks for grappling with the often-invisible forces of labor, consumption, exploitation, and exchange that haunted their everyday lives. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eGhosts and Things \u003c\/i\u003ereveals how spiritualism's explorations of the borderland between life and death, matter and spirit, produced a strange and seductive combination of wonder and discomfort that allowed participants to experience the possibilities and precarities of industrial modernity in novel ways.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Aviva Briefel\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 1501780263\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781501780264\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Cornell University Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 04\/15\/2025\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 270\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 2.00lbs","brand":"Aviva Briefel","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":46383835676927,"sku":"9781501780264","price":53.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_4cb3dc90-28ac-4cd3-abdb-ee793eee850a.jpg?v=1733281823","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/ghosts-and-things-aviva-briefel-9781501780264","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}