Stefan Andriopoulos Book order

Drawing together literature, media, and philosophy, 'Ghostly apparitions' provides a new model for media archaeology. Stefan Andriopoulos examines the relationships between new media technologies and distinct cultural realms, tracing connections between Kant's philosophy and the magic lantern's phantasmagoria, the Gothic novel and print culture, and spiritualist research and the invention of television. As Kant was writing about the possibility of spiritual apparitions, the emerging medium of the phantasmagoria used hidden magic lanterns to terrify audiences with ghostly projections. Andriopoulos juxtaposes the philosophical arguments of German idealism with contemporaneous occultism and ghost shows. In close readings of Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer, he traces the diverging ways in which these authors appropriate optical media effects and spiritualist notions. The spectral apparitions from this period also intersect with an exploding print market and the rise of immersive reading practices

Silent cinema and contemporaneous literature delved into themes of mesmerism, possession, and the unsettling influence of corporate entities that overshadowed individual identities. Critics argued that film itself had a hypnotic effect on audiences. Stefan Andriopoulos reveals that concerns about being controlled by external forces were widespread in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He examines this anxiety through films, legal, medical, and literary texts of the period, focusing on the chilling idea of murder committed against one’s will. This era saw medical researchers describing hypnotized individuals as mediums capable of executing violent acts, while films like *The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari* and *Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler* depicted the hypnotist's formidable power. By comparing these medicolegal and cinematic narratives with modernist fiction, Andriopoulos offers a fresh interpretation of Kafka’s works, which explore the fusion of human and corporate identities. Combining theoretical depth with meticulous archival research and film analysis, this study enriches our understanding of contemporary anxieties regarding the pervasive influence of visual media and the encroaching power of corporations that seem to absorb our identities.