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SUMMARY:Blood will tell? Constructions of the 'vampire problem' in the eig
 hteenth century - Ádám Mézes (Central European University\, Budapest)
DTSTART:20180122T130000Z
DTEND:20180122T140000Z
UID:TALK98572@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Sebestian Kroupa
DESCRIPTION:In 1732\, Habsburg military surgeons handed in an autopsy repo
 rt to the provincial administration\, in which they described several corp
 ses that local Serbian Orthodox villagers claimed to be vampires. The repo
 rt discussed an epidemic that disrupted the public order and resulted in d
 ozens of dead subjects\, many of whom (despite having been buried for up t
 o two months) apparently refused to decay properly. The report incited a s
 hort-lived\, but vigorous debate in the learned circles with contributors 
 from the ranks of theology\, natural philosophy\, medicine and law. The ph
 enomenon did not easily fit existing natural philosophical and demonologic
 al theories\, hence opening the room for various ideas\, such as vitalism\
 , sympathies\, astral influences\, chemical processes and demonic activity
  to be discussed alongside one another. Since the eighteenth century\, the
  debate has occupied a stable position in the narratives of disenchantment
  and enlightenment as a swift and complete victory of natural sciences ove
 r superstition.\n\nBased on a reconstruction of the channels through which
  the first-hand reports travelled\, the talk will argue that the learned d
 ebate started out at the provincial level in the form of appeals to the le
 arned elite for scientific clarification\, but it soon became a discourse 
 in its own right. Furthermore\, based on a comparative analysis of treatis
 es and first-hand reports\, the talk will try to show that the administrat
 ive and the learned discourses had different priorities and interests\, wh
 ich meant that in the end\, the learned conclusions could not be convincin
 gly applied at the grassroots level.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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