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...
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| Medienart: | Elektronisch Aufsatz |
| Sprache: | Englisch |
| Verfügbarkeit prüfen: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Lade...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Veröffentlicht: |
Sage
2021
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| In: |
Critical research on religion
Jahr: 2021, Band: 9, Heft: 2, Seiten: 126-141 |
| normierte Schlagwort(-folgen): | B
Mather, Cotton 1663-1728
/ Spinoza, Benedictus de 1632-1677
/ Bekker, Balthasar 1634-1698
/ Aufklärung
/ Geister
/ Hexe
/ Dämon
/ Existenz
/ Kontroverse
B Westliche Welt / Aufklärung / Helligkeit / Geister / Dämon / Hexe / Dunkelheit / Heidentum / Außereuropäische Kultur / Dunkle Haut |
| RelBib Classification: | AB Religionsphilosophie; Religionskritik; Atheismus AG Religiöses Leben; materielle Religion KBQ Nordamerika |
| weitere Schlagwörter: | B
Balthasar Bekker
B Light B European enlightenment B Cotton Mather B ghosts and spirits |
| Online Zugang: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Zusammenfassung: | 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 |
| Enthält: | Enthalten in: Critical research on religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1177/2050303220986971 |