[Linganth] Matt Tomlinson's new book, Speaking with the Dead

[Ilana Gershon]

Dear Colleagues,
Today on the blog Kristina Wirtz interviews Matt Tomlinson about his new
book, *Speaking with the Dead: An Ethnography of Extrahuman Experience.  *And
finally, we have an interview with an author publishing a book with
open-access Punctum Books.

campanthropology.org

Best,
Ilana

Press blurb: If you tried speaking with a dead person and they gave you a
clear response, how would you react? Mediums develop their minds and bodies
to communicate messages from the deceased to their living loved ones,
and in* Speaking
with the Dead,* anthropologist Matt Tomlinson describes his experiences
training as a medium with a Spiritualist congregation in Canberra,
Australia. The book is written in a first-person narrative style that
brings “extrahuman” relationships to life, showing what it is like to learn
and practice mediumship: the strategic suspension of skepticism; the wobbly
first attempts; the embarrassing failures; and the moments, both unsettling
and enthralling, when someone tells you that yes indeed, you’ve just
described her grandfather who died in 1978.

*Speaking with the Dead* brims with stories of talented mediums and
Tomlinson is not interested in proving or disproving mediumship, preferring
instead to illustrate how mediums bring their practices to life. In
contrast to the popular image of mediums as shameless frauds, Tomlinson
describes earnest and committed seekers from a wide range of backgrounds
who often struggle to understand their own experiences. Their profits are
therapeutic rather than financial. And they worry about endings as much as
anyone else: the passing of physical lives, the closure of beloved
churches. *Speaking with the Dead* is ultimately a book about the lively
side of death, grounded in Spiritualists’ conviction that life is eternal
and your social network extends to the astral plane. It is a close
examination of how mediumship works culturally, which is to say, how
mediums and audiences work together to create senses of transcendent
connection.
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