'The Black Art’ of Brainwashing: A Cold War Maleficium

This paper will explore the religious dynamics of the Cold War geo-political construction of “brainwashing.” Its analysis centers on two cultural texts—one public, one classified—whose juxtaposition suggests an underexplored religious dimension in apparently secular sites of American geo-political strategy during the Cold War. This paper will examine journalist Edward Hunter’s highly influential exposé, Brain-Washing in Red China (1951) alongside a previously classified script of a CIA training film on hypnosis entitled The Black Art (1953). These two cultural texts rely on Orientalist tropes to articulate mind-control as a secret, mysterious technique of enemy influence akin to malevolent magic. Comparing these two texts thus presents an opportunity to redeploy the ancient concept of maleficium, the magic art of “evil-doing,” as an analytical framework. In so doing, I will argue that reconceptualizing brainwashing as a Cold War maleficium reveals unexamined religious dimensions animating the enduring image of mind-control.