Voice and agency in Spiritualist mediumship: or, who speaks when spirits speak?
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute November 5, 2025 Matt Tomlinson
Spiritualist mediums simultaneously claim and disclaim responsibility for their actions by foregrounding and backgrounding their own agency and that of spirits. They take credit for producing words, healings, writings, and paintings, yet attribute these expressions to sources in the spirit world. This dual pattern has persisted historically, even as mediums' voices shifted from imitating spirit speakers to a casual, non-imitative conversational style. Examining how agency moves metaphorically in relation to mediums' expressive actions reveals how they cultivate in audiences the sense that they are not truly the speakers, yet no one else could speak as they do.