Performing Magnetism

The cultural and scientific significance of animal magnetism as performance.

The long nineteenth century bears the mark of Anton Mesmer. In a burgeoning media landscape, and in an emerging entertainment culture that fashioned growing numbers of people into audiences, the performative qualities of Mesmer’s magnetic healing techniques came to define magnetism’s cultural power. Shaped by many performers, magnetism flowed into other practices – mentalist, somnambulist, spiritist, hypnotist, mystical, magical and medical. Examining mesmerism as a socially and theatrically embedded phenomenon, Performing Magnetism shows that it was not merely a medical or pseudoscientific practice but a performative and culturally situated one. Drawing on new case studies from Europe, Asia and Northern Africa, the book offers a transnational perspective on nineteenth-century epistemologies and explores how magnetic practices intersected with science, art, popular entertainment, and engagement with the occult. Its interdisciplinary scope will engage readers interested in the cultural history of performance, media, and knowledge.

Setting the stage
Eleonora Paklons, Kristof Smeyers, Kurt Vanhoutte, and Hannah Welslau

PART 1: POWER & PERSUASION

1 Performing therapeutic magnetism in mid-nineteenth-century Brussels
Kaat Wils
2 Performances and trajectories of magnetism in nineteenth-century Budapest
Kornélia Deres
3 Performing magnetism in mid-nineteenth-century Italy: The 1856 challenge between Francesco Guidi and Antonio Zanardelli
Gennaro Ambrosino
4 Under the sway of performance: The somnambulist stage of Prudence Bernard and Auguste Lassaigne
Kurt Vanhoutte

PART 2: BELIEF & COSMOLOGY

5 Magnetic musings: George Baldwin and the divine traveller in Egypt
Robert Rix
6 Mediums and magnetisers: The entanglement of spiritism and magnetism and its performative and religious effects in nineteenth-century Belgium
Hannah Welslau
7 Magnetism and spiritism in the Ottoman Empire (1850s–1870s)
Özgür Türesay
8 Magnetism, mysticism, and the devil
Kristof Smeyers

PART 3: IDENTITY & AFFECT

9 The embodied self: Automatism, power, and gendered autonomy
Stéphanie Peel
10 Entertaining, healing, and fighting death: Madame Plainchant’s magnetic diary, 1851–1854
Thibaut Rioult
11 Performing magnetism in Charles de Villers’ Le magnétiseur amoureux (1787)
Alessandra Aloisi

PART 4: MEDIA & THE SENSES

12 Music and magnetism from Mesmer to the rise of hypnosis
Olivier Verhaegen
13 Under the lantern’s spell: The use of the magic lantern within magnetism
Eleonora Paklons
14 The magnetic performances of Jules de Rovère: Between automata, prestidigitation, and scientific popularisation
Andrea Ceci

PART 5: THEATRICS & THE ARTS

15 “I am going to unwrap the secret of secrets”: Performing the trial of mesmeric and spiritualist authorship in Jean Cocteau’s Orphée
Zoë Ghyselinck
16 Svengali’s resurrection: Mesmerism, myth, and performance
Miranda Zent
17 Choreographing magnetism: The performance of knowledge in the ethereal field of forces
Julia Ostwald

Bibliography

Eleonora Paklons

Eleonora Paklons is a doctoral researcher working on magic lantern travelogues at the University of Antwerp. She is also co-editor of a volume on the history of the magic lantern and popular entertainment.

Kristof Smeyers

Kristof Smeyers is a senior research fellow at KU Leuven. He has written books on the history of religion and the supernatural, fauna, flora and folklore.

Kurt Vanhoutte

Kurt Vanhoutte is Full Professor and Chair of Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Antwerp. His research explores the intersections of media technology, performative culture, and illusionism since the nineteenth century.

Hannah Welslau

Hannah Welslau is a doctoral researcher at the University of Antwerp. Her work focuses on spiritism, performance, and popular entertainment in Belgium. Her research is funded by The Research Foundation Flanders.

Kaat Wils

Kaat Wils is gewoon hoogleraar aan de onderzoeksgroep Cultuurgeschiedenis vanaf 1750 en voorzitter van de Onderzoekseenheid Geschiedenis van de KU Leuven.

Kaat Wils is professor of European cultural history since 1750 at KU Leuven.

Kornélia Deres

Gennaro Ambrosino

Thibaut Rioult

Robert William Rix

Özgür Türesay

Stephanie Peel

Alessandra Aloisi

Olivier Verhaegen

Andrea Ceci

Zoë Ghyselinck

Miranda Zent

Julia Ostwald

Eleonora Paklons

Kristof Smeyers

Kurt Vanhoutte

Hannah Welslau