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Libra Esoterica

Dumbstruck

by Steven Connor

  • First published:
  • 20th century
  • Language: English

Description

Description from OpenAlex (opens in a new tab)

Abstract Why can none of us hear our own recorded voice without wincing? Why is the telephone still full of such spookiness and erotic possibility? Why does the metaphor of ventriloquism, the art of ‘seeming to speak where one is not’, speak so resonantly to our contemporary technological condition? These are the kind of questions which impel this inquisitive history of ventriloquism and the disembodied voice. This book tracks the subject from its first recorded beginnings in ancient Israel and Greece, through the fulminations of early Christian writers against the unholy (and, they believed, obscenely produced) practices of pagan divination, the aberrations of the voice in mysticism, witchcraft and possession, and the strange obsession with the vagrant figure of the ventriloquist, newly conceived as male rather than female, during the Enlightenment. It retrieves the stories of some of the most popular and versatile ventriloquists and polyphonists of the 19th century, and investigates the survival of ventriloquial delusions and desires in spiritualism and the ‘vocalic uncanny’ of technologies like telephone, radio, film, and internet.

Provenance

Why this book is in the catalog

Included because retained bibliographic metadata links this work to Consciousness, mysticism, and metaphysics, Demonology, angelology, and possession, Divination and oracles, Ritual magic and grimoires, Spiritualism, mediumship, and channeling, and Witchcraft and folk magic.

  • Ritual magic and grimoires

    Retained metadata contains “Magic” in the subject metadata.

    • “Magic”· in subject
  • Witchcraft and folk magic

    Retained metadata contains “Witchcraft” in the description.

    • “Witchcraft”· in description
  • Divination and oracles

    Retained metadata contains “Divination” in the description and “Divination” in the subject metadata.

    • “Divination”· in description
    • “Divination”· in subject
  • Demonology, angelology, and possession

    Retained metadata contains “possession” in the description and “possession” in the subject metadata.

    • “possession”· in description
    • “possession”· in subject
  • Spiritualism, mediumship, and channeling

    Controlled discovery queries from openalex matched “spiritualism”. Retained metadata contains “Spiritualism” in the description and “Spiritualism” in the subject metadata.

    • “spiritualism”· via OpenAlex
    • “Spiritualism”· in description
    • “Spiritualism”· in subject
  • Consciousness, mysticism, and metaphysics

    Retained metadata contains “Mysticism” in the description and “Mysticism” in the subject metadata.

    • “Mysticism”· in description
    • “Mysticism”· in subject

Membership records how this book met the catalog’s discovery criteria — relevance to a tradition, not a judgment of the book’s claims.

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Editions

One edition cataloged here.

OpenAlex scholarly book record

2000-10-26Oxford University Press; Oxford University Press eBooksEnglish—Unknown

Subjects

17 subject headings

Identifiers & provenance

How this record was assembled, and the authority identifiers it carries.

Cataloged from

Catalog id
openalex:W4241896133
Edition coverage
Openalex source record
Retrieved