A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

simultaneously involving a kind of secular messianism, and articulate a series of central
understandings that will continue to inform the displaced utopian imaginary in the twentieth
century.
VITAL FORCE AND THE SOMNAMBULE
Spiritualism’s roots are disparate. To track its emergence, we must first examine the
movement’s pre-history. One clear precursor lies in the tradition of vitalism as pursued by such
practitioners as Franz Mesmer. While Mesmerism per se was not a spiritualist practice,
Mesmerism as a social force bore striking parallels to the later modern Spiritualist movement and
certain elements of its practice would recur in the later context of Spiritualism. Cultural critic
Stefan Zweig notes that "In a word the power evoked by Mesmer burst the boundaries of its
proper sphere, the sphere of medical science, and filled the whole of France with a dangerous
and infectious fluid. There was a sort of collective frenzy, or universal hysteria. Everyone
suffered from mesmeromania." 28
In Zweig's estimation, the public reception of Mesmerism
anticipated the later enthusiasm over Spiritualism. Mesmer's work also functioned as a kind of
leitmotif throughout nineteenth century thinking about the human body and vital force. His
conception of the body as a conductor of an electrical fluid informed the philosophy and
practices of the séance room as well as providing the basis of that most prevalent of Victorian
nervous maladies, neurasthenia. Daniel Pick points out a final parallel in his study of modern
enchantments, Svengali's Web. "Around the time of the French Revolution, the analogy drawn
between unhealthy blockages of fluid in the body and noxious effects of patronage and privilege
in society became strident… Unjust legislation was likened to a disruption of the atmosphere and
hence of human health; obstacles to social harmony were compared with the dangers of
obstructions to the circulation and equilibrium of magnetic forces." 29
As we shall see,
Spiritualism served as metaphor and bedfellow of the radical politics of its day as well.
28 Pick, 59.
29 Pick, 52.
27