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Matter’S “Dark” Powers: Performing Objects And Racialization In Nineteenth-Century American Spiritualism, Hazel Rickards

Representing Alterity through Puppetry and Performing Objects

In this article, I analyze performing objects that were attributed to the agency of Black spirits within the 19th-century American spiritualist movement, exposing how white, female spirit mediums supported and tested a racial metaphysics that assumed white transcendence and Black materiality.