Techno-Logics and Techno-Magics: Phantasmagoria in the Age of Electricity

Abstract:This article delves into the interaction between newly emerging technologies, sciences and a new theory of knowledge that the spectacles of the phantasmagoriawere calling up at the end of the 18th century. It claims that – having been established as a permanent attraction – these practices unfolded a specific energy, caused by the anachronistic mix 'between a science centre and an amusement arcade', between techno-logics (the scientific discourse on technics) and techno-magics (the experience of sensation, wonder and the supernatural caused by technical effects) in a context in which science – as a theory of nature and a theory of knowledge – drastically changed due to the emergence of new, modernizing kinds of machines, such as steam engines, batteries, electrical and atmospheric instruments.