Magnetic Minds

Credulity: A Cultural History of US Mesmerism is a study of American "animal magnetism" in the early nineteenth century. Emily Ogden, a professor of English at the University of Virginia, argues that US Mesmerism is the story of modernity digesting science as the new religion. The book maps ruptures between belief and proof that are exploded by American snake oil salesmen. From the 1830s up to the Civil War, Ogden reads credulity through capitalist exploitation, woman's liberation, entertainment, religion, and the frontiers of science where testability ends, and pseudoscience begins.

Ogden's book, published by The University of Chicago Press, attempts to shoot the gap between an academic audience and a general readership. The academic side is most prominent up front with the first sections of the book devoted to the entomology of "credulity" and a larger, affect-based, argument made for defining credulity versus alternative academized words like "enchantment" or "belief." This represents about 20 percent of the content in the book, and I had a difficult time parsing this overall argument. I'm interested in affect theory, like Sianne Ngai's Ugly Feelings (2007), but found credulity hard to conceptualize in the way I think Professor Ogden wanted her readers to walk away with. Granted, I also had a difficult time with other affect theory books like Cruel Optimism (2011) by Lauren Berlant, but as opposed to Berland, Ogden meets her readers with more accessible prose.

I found the biographical sections of Credulity on historical figures like Stanley Grimes (the "skeptic" who also dabbled in pseudo-science phrenology) and Lurena Brackett (the blind girl who could see after she'd been magnetized by doctors) gripping stories filled with interesting psychological and philosophic ground that Ogden beautifully develops. Those sections are well-worth slogging through some of the academic angles. Specifically, chapters two, three, and four were fascinating, well-researched, arguments that drew me into a new understanding how pseudo-science interacted with larger forces like slavery, labor, and secularism in the nineteenth century. The reading of Moby Dick (1851) in the Coda was extremely fascinating—especially the distinction of Queequeg as an idol worshipper who doesn't take his totem all that seriously. Ogden's reading of the Blithedale Romance (1852) has convinced me that I have to tackle Hawthorne's novel so I can return to that second of Credulity and enrich my understanding of both books.

For me personally, how often I can return to a non-fiction book for supplemental readings determines if it's a good buy—I will definitely return to Credulity.

In chapter one where the author outlines credulity in a theoretical sense, I found myself forty pages deep and wanting to hurry on to the historical PT Barnham con men. In chapter five, which focuses on Benjamin Franklin's celebrity skepticism, and his dabbling in electricity, I found the material less compelling and a deep hatred of Franklin (who comes off as bourgeois and hypocritical) manifested itself alongside the difficulty I found in mapping the larger credulity argument.

Professor Ogden's research is impeccable, her writing is beautiful, and I am very interested in the subjects of each chapter. But, the credulity argument felt shoehorned at places. For example, Ogden has just finished discussing one of the most interesting characters, Lurena Brackett: a blind girl who, when magnetized, manipulated parlor audiences into the belief that she could psychically travel to quasi-distant places like Providence, Rhode Island. Brackett did this largely through storytelling, and Professor Ogden's theory that Brackett was only partially blind seems convincing. However, Ogden writes,

Magnetism gave Brackett an audience expecting she might be able to fly to New York, rather than one convinced she could not find her way around a parlor. She lived for a time in a wider world because they—and she—found a way to be open to these possibilities. That openness was what went under the name "credulity."

In this...