Och de hädangångnas andar skall nu vittna därom...

Sammanfattning: This essay examines how articles in the Swedish spiritualistic journal Efteråt? – which por- trayed the afterlife – were affected by imperialistic discourse and its associated power structures. The source material for the investigation is articles that were published between 1891- 1919 as channelized messages through mediums, and which depict what throughout the essay is referred to as ’the other side’: realms beyond death. Any inherent magical aspect of the channelling phenomenon has been removed and the essay treats the mediums as authors and the written messages as their textual productions. These have been assessed with a postcolonial perspective focused on eurocentrism, christocentrism, evolutionary theory, otherness and the idea of Western progress. Using Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis, the texts’ actual use of language, its discursive influences and its reflecting of imperialistic ideologies have also been assessed. The result shows that the imperialistic discourse that dominated the Western knowledge productions in the Victorian age, is directly mirrored in the way the articles in Efteråt? portrayed ’the other side’ and its inhabitants. Westernized conceptions are being treated as universal which shows in how ’the other side’ is structured around evolutionary principles that glorifies progress and development. ’Ethnic others’ are held as less developed, barbaric, stupid and in the need of help from Western experts. The texts also reflects the christocentric essence that places Western theology as the ultimate developed spirituality. And they portray hierarchical power structures and imperial dominance in a normalizing and moralizing way. Even if the Spiritualistic movement often is contextualized as a radical, progressive new spirituality and seen as the dawn of ’New Age’, this essay shows that the construction of ’the other side’, as it is narrated in the analyzed articles of Efteråt?, is merely a discursive cultural expression of the imperialistic ideologies that dominated the Western society at the time the articles where written and published. Key words: Spiritualism, Imperialism, Ideology, Postcolonial, Eurocentrism, Evolution, Channeling Nyckelord: Spiritualism, Imperialism, Ideologi, Postkolonialism, Eurocentrism, Evolution, Kanalisering