Capturing Phantasmatic Bodies: Magnetistic Photography and Marcel Duchamp’s Hauntological Metarealism

While the early Modernism of Marcel Duchamp has been linked with the new sciences, rarely has it been contextualized within the scientistic occultisms of Paris when the existence of invisible realms appeared to be scientifically proven. This was epitomized by the experimentation undertaken at the French School of Magnetism by Hector Durville to unleash “la force vitale”. Not only did Durville plumb all eight levels of deep magnetism to release the Etheric and Astral body, as defined by Annie Besant, but he also photographed their emanations in luminous phantoms. Amidst its sensationalization, particularly by the Society for Psychical Research, Duchamp embarked upon an occulture of hauntological “metarealism” and the representation of phantasmatic bodies that uncannily dovetailed with Durville’s phantasmatic doubles. This entailed what Duchamp subsequently identified as his “subconscious preoccupations toward a metarealism”. By focusing upon the uncanny affinities between Durville’s magnetism photography and Duchamp’s phantasmatic body paintings, including his series, Nu descendant un escalier, this paper will explore how this Modernist “metarealist” and scientistic magnetist endeavoured to negotiate, if not illuminate, invisible forces, luminous emanations and phantasmatic doubles. Life does not evolve mechanically and rationally, as Henri Bergson stipulated in L’Évolution créatice, but proceeds by « dédoublement ».