Offshoring the invisible world? American ghosts, witches, and demons in the early enlightenment
The fierce debate about the reality of spirits and the “Invisible World” which flared up in the 1690’s helped define the early Enlightenment. All sides in this debate—from Spinoza and Balthasar Bekker to John Beaumont and Cotton Mather—refashioned familiar metaphors of light and darkness and connect...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2021
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| In: |
Critical research on religion
Year: 2021, Volume: 9, Issue: 2, Pages: 126-141 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Mather, Cotton 1663-1728
/ Spinoza, Benedictus de 1632-1677
/ Bekker, Balthasar 1634-1698
/ Enlightenment
/ Spirits
/ Witch
/ Demon
/ Existence
/ Controversy
B Western world / Enlightenment / Brightness / Spirits / Demon / Witch / Darkness / Paganism / Non-European culture / Dark skin |
| IxTheo Classification: | AB Philosophy of religion; criticism of religion; atheism AG Religious life; material religion KBQ North America |
| Further subjects: | B
Balthasar Bekker
B Light B European enlightenment B Cotton Mather B ghosts and spirits |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | The fierce debate about the reality of spirits and the “Invisible World” which flared up in the 1690’s helped define the early Enlightenment. All sides in this debate—from Spinoza and Balthasar Bekker to John Beaumont and Cotton Mather—refashioned familiar metaphors of light and darkness and connected them with the world beyond Europe in surprising new ways. This article shows how this key controversy of the early Enlightenment was built upon references to darkness, light, and the benighted pagan peoples of the world. As new street lighting and improved domestic lighting nocturnalized daily life in the Netherlands, London, and Paris, the old denizens of the night - ghosts, spirits, and witches—were increasingly relegated to the extra-European world and used to articulate new categories of human difference based on civility, reason, and skin color. These new categories of human difference—new ways of seeing and ordering the world—were essential to the formation of early modern whiteness and the Enlightenment. |
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| ISSN: | 2050-3040 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Critical research on religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1177/2050303220986971 |