A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

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irrational, and the emergence of a new kind of irrationalism--are problematic. The former is problematic in that the irrational never really went away—it was simply dethroned. The latter is problematic for more complex reasons, which I will now elaborate. In telling the story of rationalization, it is tempting to proceed, following the tendencies of traditional historiography, both with the understanding that the positivist mode of science was somehow pre-destined to triumph and with the misapprehension that it fully embodied the tenor and tendency of scientific endeavor in the nineteenth century. Positivism or logical positivism is, strictly speaking, native to the first half of the twentieth century and the work of the Vienna Circle. 13 But the principles codified by logical positivism had long been operative. One commonly accepted locus in the formation of these principles that dates back to the beginnings of the previous century is the work of sociologist August Comte. Positivism at its heart is a philosophy of science that dictates certain standards of evidence. In a positivist framework, the data used to support a theory must be verifiable and/or falsifiable—ideally through direct observation or experience. Evidence that fails such a standard is a priori inadmissible. Thus matters of spirit, in that they are largely based on faith, intuition and other non-empirical faculties, fall outside the realm of serious consideration. In the extreme case of what is sometimes called verificationism statements concerning the empirically unverifiable would be denied even the status of meaningful utterance. 14 With the aforementioned understanding that positivism can somehow be equated with scientific practice in the nineteenth century, it is easy to argue that a “new” sacred worldview arises (neo-enchantment) to meet the challenge of a system of thought—positivism—that seeks to remove the sacred from any serious consideration. 13 Richard A. Fumerton, “Logical Positivism” in The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, ed. Robert Audi (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1995) 445-446. 14 Gordon Marshall, “Vienna Circle” in The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Sociology, ed. Gordon Marshall, (New York: Oxford University, 1994) 556. 9
While positivism would emerge as the dominant mode of scientific thought, and for that matter as the dominant mode of thought in jurisprudence, policy and most other arenas of public importance, it did not and does not exhaust the possibilities or actualities of scientific thought at that time. Science coming into the nineteenth century still had a variety of ties to mysticism and a magical worldview, whether through the echoes of alchemical practice or through the ideas of Romantic Natural Science. Positivism was one among a set of competing strands that included a “transcendental trend influenced by Kant, and a more speculative trend shaped by Schelling and Hegel.” 15 Links between science and the world of spirit were still present in the scientific discourses of the nineteenth century, and indeed are still present today. So to speak of attempts to align the world of science and the world of spirit as a “new” endeavor is in some ways misleading. Be that as it may, it is reasonable to argue that over the latter half of the nineteenth century positivism as a worldview was in ascendancy and discourses concerning the world of spirit were increasingly articulated in a fashion that recognized this ascendancy. Thus we return to the dialectic promised at the close of the previous section. On the one hand we have a worldview in ascendancy that has no place for metaphysics. On the other we have a tendency to “materialize the ethereal”—attempting to frame spiritual matters in such a way that they could maintain a presence within the emergent worldview of positivism. This tendency, as we shall see, recurs throughout the cases discussed within this dissertation. Positivism, while at its core a philosophy of science, was also a broader social and intellectual current. I noted earlier that the work of August Comte is a generally acknowledged source of the positivist tradition. Comte was centrally concerned with questions of social engineering. The understanding was that the rules of evidence and theory building as applicable 15 Dietrich von Englhardt, “Natural Science in the Age of Romanticism” in Modern Esoteric Spirituality, ed. Antoine Faivre and Jacob Needleman (New York: Crossroad, 1995) 101. 10
Page 1 and 2: The Extraterrestrial in US Culture
Page 3 and 4: The Extraterrestrial in US Culture
Page 5 and 6: III. Chapter 2: Contact…………
Page 7 and 8: oth in their rich and bizarre detai
Page 9 and 10: Fukuyama also describes the histori
Page 11 and 12: and belonging that are native to th
Page 13: modernity, Weber stressed over and
Page 17 and 18: figure that serves as a medium betw
Page 19 and 20: sources of Spiritualism, Swedenborg
Page 21 and 22: The series of moments and discourse
Page 23 and 24: estful comprehension. It straddles
Page 25 and 26: The second chapter examines the eme
Page 27 and 28: Ch.1 The Dead INTRODUCTION Since th
Page 29 and 30: sense this dream of perfected commu
Page 31 and 32: political registers as well. This c
Page 33 and 34: In the late eighteenth century, Mes
Page 35 and 36: inverted form) along which the unde
Page 37 and 38: consciousness that is highly mobile
Page 39 and 40: up the process of thinking”. 38 S
Page 41 and 42: umor - and irony - would have it, w
Page 43 and 44: sense that Swedenborg’s researche
Page 45 and 46: Spiritualist movement, whose medium
Page 47 and 48: minded, loves to roam in the woods
Page 49 and 50: etween humans and God as unthinkabl
Page 51 and 52: esearches was a tailor by the name
Page 53 and 54: concerns and from the fact that the
Page 55 and 56: simultaneously in the world of the
Page 57 and 58: which God has revealed to them and
Page 59 and 60: assessed the Fox sisters as the “
Page 61 and 62: each in turn Lockwood elaborated hi
Page 63 and 64: as miraculous or supernatural? 85 T
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hearts of men to help their brother
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the corrupting influence of the wor
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All manner of proscribed activities
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dawn of a new era, and you must not
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qualities the coarser and heavier t
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full of mischief as any child in th
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keynote in public (and much of the
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masculine traits), the figure of th
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The first was that all world religi
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space brother religion, The Great I
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and the menopauses.” 141 A genera
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Ch.2 Contact INTRODUCTION Contact w
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as spiritual aspirations embodied.
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magazine, the latter edited by icon
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featured female characters who were
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keeping with the recurring integrat
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harmony with the universe (“if yo
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world were still struggling to asce
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hermetic credo as above, so below,
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insistence on the survival of the i
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evolutionary nomenclature of the co
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Pelley exhibited a variety of trait
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Chelas, which in the Hindu traditio
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the Theosophical Society along with
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Ballard was told during his initial
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Masters. Members of the I Am Ascend
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operative in most later “space-br
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promises of evolutionary progress h
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such as St. Germain could make thei
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Ch. 3 The Saucer INTRODUCTION The t
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The arrival of the saucer promised
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salvation through the union of oppo
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potential public responses to the f
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as rationally comprehensible and a
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attached to cultivating a following
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percentage of unidentifieds to the
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extraterrestrial communicant suppli
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perpetrators of willful deception i
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signing.” 210 Gill’s amused res
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practicing theoretical astrophysici
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DOROTHY MARTIN While ufology began
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attention. Without knowing why, I p
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One message from an assistant of Sa
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Dr. Laughead first encountered Doro
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In the case of Dorothy Martin and h
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II space brother religions to large
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he could think of to obtain permiss
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other myth. You will recall that in
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and a Saturnian named “Ramu.” 2
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ecome small, self-sufficient commun
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paranoia in another context but in
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the space brother narrative further
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Adamski—the UFO was effortlessly
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communism. The connection between t
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The shift from contact to abduction
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science. 256 The Hill case was the
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abduction scenario in a variety of
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In September of 1963, some two year
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car and gone into a field with bino
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The cadences of Barney’s recollec
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And he said it was a pregnancy test
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motif also speaks to a relationship
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on a human is smooth and rounded. S
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seems to have suggested that humans
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The mesmerist and hypnotherapist bo
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communiqués emerge not from the la
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David E. Mack, a Harvard trained an
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dystopian, or in the language of No
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In the space brother scenario, the
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Everything is now. The past is now;
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effectively cut off from that possi
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eaching our innate potential. The h
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It is in this desire for dissolutio
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abductees feeling like guinea pigs.
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attack. Nietzsche writes of the blo
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Hill. Barney recalled his first gli
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The Gaze as philosophical and psych
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constituted modes of visuality. To
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traum or dream further indicates th
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educed not in the relatively benign
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will of the abductee—all speak to
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esultant exposure to the Real. The
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understood moorings, left to drift
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desired utopian state. The Others c
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were, more or less, ascended master
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Reports back from the spirit realm
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generally silent, but when they do
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to narrative structural positionali
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sensibilities, though one that woul
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of full transparency between interl
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Aber, W.W. “A Guide
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_____. “Adamski, George (1891-196
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_____. Discipline and Punish: the B
Page 251 and 252:
_____. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan
Page 253 and 254:
_____. Something about Soulcraft. N
Page 255:
Streiber, Whitley and Anne, ed. The
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