Episode 217 – Books, Spirits, and Hysteria, with Asti Hustvedt
Summary
Hosts Phil Ford and J.F. Martell interview researcher Asti Hustvet about her work on 19th-century spirit mediums and hysteria. They explore how reading functions as a form of mediumship, where readers think thoughts that are not their own, drawing parallels to hysterical automatism and spirit possession. The discussion covers the medical history of hysteria, the influence of Jean-Martin Charcot, and the porous boundary between the self and external ideas.
Topics discussed
Welcome and introduction to guest Asti
Hysteria, reading, and the intimacy of the dead
Lillydale Symposium recap and course announcements
Reading as mediumship and the thoughts of others
Hysteria as diagnosis and the wandering cause
Charcot, the uterus, and the stigma of hysteria
Freud, Janet, and the unconscious as source
The wandering cause and the inside/outside dualism
Freud, psychical research, and 19th-century science
Women, power, and the medical celebrity of hysteria
Reading, meditation, and the blurring of subject/object
Paul Auster, literary theory, and the joy of reading
Deleuze, physical malady, and poetic appositeness
The ego of academia vs. the love of books
Mediumship, dogma, and the professionalization of reading
Sociality, friendship with the dead, and critical posturing
Books as haunted houses and the restless spirit of text
Conclusion: vulnerability, friendly ghosts, and open-hearted reading
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