A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

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in the world of matter were also equally applicable in the social world. Thus social realities could be observed, mapped, analyzed and corrected. Here we see positivism align with another key modality of nineteenth century thought, the ideal of illimitable social progress. The sense that a social utopia, given the correct application of tools and efforts, was all but inevitable was an abiding myth of the epoch. It is the vision of utopia that constitutes the third leitmotif of this dissertation and it is to it that we now turn. THE INAPPROPRIATE/D OTHER Frederic Jameson points out in his essay “The Seeds of Time” that in order to truly envision the utopian one must summon the capacity to imagine humans as something radically different than what they are at present. 16 His point is that our shared understandings of what it means to be human are in many ways constitutive of the very social structures that the utopian impulse wishes to transform. To radically re-imagine society is to radically re-imagine the human. In her essay “The Promise of Monsters,” Donna Haraway draws the reader’s attention to the importance of “inappropriate/ d others” in imagining what she describes as a post-human future; "To be inappropriate/ d is not to fit in the taxon, to be dislocated from the available maps specifying kinds of actors and kinds of narratives." 17 Haraway argues that in order to envision a future that constitutes a radical departure from the present, it is crucial to both shift the perception of what counts as an agent and to seek out narrative structures that take us "elsewhere." This dissertation explores a particular history of radical alterity in American culture—a history that emerges over time at the confluence of the utopian imaginary and ideologies of communication. Each of the moments and movements examined coalesce around some spectral 16 Frederic Jameson, The Seeds of Time (New York: Columbia University, 1994). 17 Donna Haraway, “The Promise of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others" in Cultural Studies, ed. Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula A. Treichler (New York: Routledge, 1992) 299. 11
figure that serves as a medium between the present and some vision of a world transformed: the dead, the so-called “ascended master,” and the extraterrestrial. While each of the aforementioned figures carry with them a more or less religious discourse they are each understood as occupying a physical plane. Each serves as a secular omen of millennium. The first moment I examine is American Spiritualism in the mid nineteenth century. The Spiritualist movement presented a range of “dislocated” actors and narratives, actors and narratives that fell outside of available taxonomies. The central figure of alterity in Spiritualist discourse exhibits obvious links to Haraway’s post-human Other. The dead are literally post-human. They are what we become when we shed our human forms. Their systematic entry into communication with the living troubles the clear taxonomic distinction between living and dead. Spiritualism also transgressed established boundaries in the case of gender. While women in the movement remained inside the domestic sphere in the sense that the séance took place in the parlor, Spiritualism afforded women positions of power outside the domestic sphere as well. Through engagement in national and international movements, public performance and lectures, women were able to take on public roles in a culture that consistently relegated them to the domestic sphere. Further cleaving to Haraway’s vision of the monstrous, the narrative structures that emerge from Spiritualism do indeed take us “elsewhere” – the elsewhere in question being the afterlife. Spiritualism is but the first example of a series of movements to be discussed, all of which offer a vision of the post-human. That said this first entry into my genealogy of radical alterity in American culture is perhaps the least troubling in terms of taxonomy. While communicating directly with the dead ran against some prevailing notions of the nineteenth century, the dead themselves had been long known as potential interlocutors. While they were post-human, they still had clear links to the 12
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 and 14: modernity, Weber stressed over and
Page 15: While positivism would emerge as th
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
Page 65 and 66: 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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