Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines how popular mystical culture answers liberal theory by negotiating between discrete and yet related systems of possession. Mystical visions provide a highly subjective and pervasive cultural technology of envisioning the state through imaginative creation and exploration of "extra spheres" visible to the inner eye. Many influential Victorians were possessed. This spirit possession, in turn, revises the definition of the liberal individual. The book addresses the philosophical structure of possessed individualism through a consideration of George Eliot's final novel, Daniel Deronda. It begins with an analysis of a walking and talking seance table named Mary Jane. Mary Jane, who behaves as a subject, provides an interesting inversion of the theory of commodity fetishism: Rather than being a commodity with an exchange value, she is a commodity who values exchanges.