Mesmeric Performativity: Neo-Magneticists, Hypnotic Bodies and “l’art inconscient”

Amidst the flourishing of Neo - Magnetism during Jean Martin Charcot's reign at Salpêtrière and Hippolyte Bernheim’s at the Hôpital de Nancy, French alienists, neurologists, psychophysiologists, parapsychologists, occultists and Rosicrucians explored the potency of imagistic suggestion and sensory activation alongside the vibrator y power of magnetic emanations to unleash the unconscious and generate creativity. In states that Pierre Janet called “automatisme psychologique,” Jules Janet called “somnambulisme magnétique,” and Albert de Rochas called “psychic theosophy,” the sensory s ubjectivity of magnetized subjects was considered so heightened that without any training, they could create art. So prevalent did these explorations become that while mesmeric states were being induced by sensory bombardment and images of hypnotic bodies at the Salon de la Rose+Croix, the parapsychologists Rochas and Émile Magnin were experimenting with ways in which their magnetized subjects, particularly the artist models, Lina and Magdaleine G., were able to perform plays, operas and dance. Regarded as impossible to attain in “modern oppressive civilization,” the playwright with a PhD in superconsciousness, Jules Bois, explained that these states could only be attained “by hypnosis, by that artificial sleep that dips the soul into delicious oblivion and brings back the natural being, magnetic and rhythmically responsive.” By focusing upon the hypnotic bodies and mesmeric performativity of Lina and Magdaleine G., as well as at the Salon de la Rose - Croix, this paper will explore how and why they appeared as an authentic attainment of what Bois called “l'art inconscient.