The adverse report of the Academy of Sciences, published in 1784, failed to put an end to the proselytism of Mesmer's early followers, nor did it scale down their ambitions to gain scientific recognition. The allure of mystery, the taste for wonders and the call of the unknown prevailed, and throughout that century numerous clashes occurred between the scientific establishment and those demanding its recognition. Their demand was founded not so much on a theoretical construct as on people's personal experiences (...) as actors or witnesses, which were perceived to be true simply because they were nearly always profoundly disturbing. The fact is that, despite the observations of scientists such as Faraday, anyone could put questions to an ecstatic in a state of trance, have a medium summon the dead, or communicate with the “other world” by table-turning. Insofar as it rejected the validity of the most commonly accepted “research programmes”, the challenge to the institutions that were the guarantors of received knowledge was a major one. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Dune(s)Michel Pierssens, co-founder of SubStance (bio)Any great work of art, be it literary or otherwise, is made of intricate enigmas that admit infinite solutions, indifferent to their content, true or false, since no one holds the key (or Occam style razor) to judge, not even its author. In the best of cases, indeed, the author has produced his œuvre precisely to confront the unknown and face the deadly monsters (...) that make the labyrinths worth exploring in the first place. The reader of the work, or watcher of the painting or film, cannot escape the perilous attraction of the cognitive maelstrom he, hesitantly or trustfully, enters at his own risk. Every word or stroke on canvas or chord or instant shutter of the camera or unending gros plan may hide unexpected doors to impossible worlds, each of them possible nonetheless. Love, hate, crime, lust, power, etc.: every facet of human experience can become scary or exciting forces to be faced, for just an instant or for an inconclusive lifelong struggle. Time is possibly the most intractable of those forces as only unconceivable gods can make of it their plaything. Similar to the desert planet of Frank Herbert's Dune, it harbors unpredictable monsters that destroy anything that moves—unless one learns to dance in an equally unpredictable fashion, winning a reprieve only to end up inescapably a fatality, having met the unavoidable fatum.SubStance has been travelling a much populated and cacophonic desert for fifty years, maintaining, despite the times' ubuesque twists and turns, its acrobatic démarche and tracing its empirical path through the intellectual dunes of two or three generations, collecting as it went many stimulating spices that it shared, avoiding its sale to the highest academic bidder. Editing a journal cannot be compared to the creation of a work of art, but it partakes in its aspiration to question the Known and face the Unknown, with the support of an army of minds devoted to the intriguing study of any cognitive coup de dés. [End Page 13]Michel Pierssens Michel Pierssens is co-founder of SubStance, with Sydney Lévy, and co-founder of the journal Histoires littéraires. He is Emeritus Professor of French literature, Université de Montréal.Copyright © 2023 Johns Hopkins University Press and SubStance, Inc.... (shrink)

Mallarmes madness * You think I'm mad? Someday I'll explain to you that my madness lies elsewhere. Mallarme to H. Cazalis, Mallarme inaugurates: the first ...