What Spirit Photography can tell us about the Science behind Spiritualism and the Act of Mourning
[Unidentified elderly woman seated, three “spirits” in the background]; William H. Mumler (American, 1832 – 1884); 1862–1875; Albumen silver print; The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.
Three images encapsulate two entwined structures of feeling that emerged in the United States during the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, the presence of the facemask and the presence of absence [1]. The direction and future of these structures of feeling—and the pandemic—is unknown. However, these structures of feeling can help us unpack the meaning of the pandemic as we move forward to whatever the future may bring.
The pandemic has politicized the facemask, transforming an effective, traditional tool in health and medicine into a political statement. One form of the politicization of the facemask has already been exhaustively covered in the daily news cycle and social media; antimaskers place individual autonomy dis-engaged from community responsibility over the health of the nation, genuine civic engagement, and scientific evidence. However, wearing the facemask is more than a political statement on responsibility, science, and health, as its political symbology has also been integrated into protest and activism against police brutality:
A couple wears masks that read “I Can’t Breathe” during a demonstration in Minneapolis on Saturday. Jim Urquhart for NPR
Title page of one of the surviving 1682 editions of Mary Rowlandson’s captivity narrative.
This image of the title page is from one of the surviving 1682 editions of A True History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson. Mrs. Rowlandson was taken captive during a raid on Lancaster, Massachusetts during King Philip’s War; a war initiated by Metacom (Philip was his english name), sachem of the Wampanoag tribe, over strained relationships with New English settlers and encroachments on their lands and sovereignty. Other regional tribes joined as allies of Metacom or independently as enemies of the New English settlers. Mrs. Rowlandson and about twenty other survivors, mostly women and young children, were taken in what Native cultures called a Mourning War, in which captives were taken from neighboring or hostile people and gradually incorporated into the captors tribal unit to replace loved ones and replenish the population. The bloody nature of the Lancaster raid can be attributed to deep seated hostilities between the Invasive and Native populations. Many English captives were returned; those that were not had been assimilated or died. Most Native captives were not so lucky. Most were killed before they could be taken, others fled to neighboring tribes; those that were not dead and could not flee were sold into regional or foreign slavery, usually to the Caribbean sugar islands. Christian Indians, Native people who had adopted Protestantism and the English language, were usually exiled to Praying towns or reservations.
Giovanni Boccaccio wrote the Decameron in the mid-fourteenth century as a collection of stories that detail experiences of Florentines during an outbreak of the Black Death. He relayed these stories within the narrative framework of a party of young women and men, known as the brigata, who told the stories to each other after fleeing to the countryside to avoid the plague. The women narrators of the brigata outnumber the men seven to three. The brigata are depicted in the John William Waterhouse painting, A Tale From the Decameron, painted over 400 years after Boccaccio wrote the Decameron.
This form is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
© 2024 Crisis and Catharsis
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑
