A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

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impossible is brought into the “light of day.” The realm of Spiritualism enlisted a similar triumvirate in its production of meaning. The mesmerist, medium and spirit anticipated the later assemblage of abductee, alien and hypnotherapist. The mesmerist induced the trance state that allowed the medium passage through the field of Otherness embodied by the spirit. Both triangles spoke to the coming together of rational and irrational as a way of freeing up the energies of spirit. The hypnotherapist and mesmerist stood in as representative of active, masculine force and consciously applied technique—the world of Positivism. The medium and abductee both represented passive, feminine force and received wisdom—the world of spirit as embodied in the world of matter. Both alien and spirit represented a reality that somehow superseded or escaped the world of strict rationality and the visible. All three components of the assemblage were marginal figures. The dead and the alien were marginal for obvious reasons, emerging as they did from realms beyond. The marginality of the spiritualist medium was discussed at great length in the first chapter of this dissertation –a figure moving between the worlds of the living and the dead, women acting in mannish modes, figures of great sensitivity and delicate constitution. The abductee evidenced a similar kind of sensitivity. What statistical skew does exist in terms of who gets abducted points to a number of qualities that recall the medium. One study suggests that abductees may be “alike in being of relative high intelligence with a richness of inner life and creativity… [with] a weak sense of identity—particularly sexual identity, they displayed a vulnerability in the interpersonal realm.” 274 All of these characteristics suggest that abductees, much like the classic media of Spiritualism, were and are border dwellers—in between in many senses—and thus more readily equipped to enter into spaces that are both/and, neither/nor. 274 David A. Johnson, “Personality Characteristics of UFO Abductees” in Alien Discussions: Proceedings of the Abduction Study Conference, ed. Pritchard et al. (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge Press, 1994) 317. 187
The mesmerist and hypnotherapist both operated in the borderlands of science—their procedures and effects articulated in the language of science but with always something of the taint of quackery attached to them. Hypnosis, the trope that most readily connects the alpha and omega of this dissertation, has suffered and continues to suffer from the taint of quackery. In its most maleficent incarnation, embodied in figures such as Svengali or Rasputin, the hypnotist is imagined as a figure of great will and presence of mind. As one character exclaims in Trilby, the novel in which the character of Svengali appeared, “He [Svengali] mesmerized you...They get you into their power, and just make you do any blessed thing they please - lie, murder, steal - anything! And kill yourself into the bargain when they’ve done with you!” 275 Or as Madame Blavatsky of Theosophical fame would have it: Do you not see the tremendous evils that lie concealed in hypnotism? Look at Charcot’s experiments at the Saltpetriére! He has shown that a quite innocent person can be made to perform actions quite against his or her will; can be made to commit crimes, even, by what he calls Suggestion. And the somnambule will forget all about it, while the victim can never identify the real criminal. Charcot is a benevolent man, and will never use his power to do harm. But all men are not benevolent. The world is full of cruel, greedy, and lustful people, who will defy detection and pass through the midst of us all unpunished. 276 Blavatsky went on to comment on the broader implications of this danger in a fashion that appears to bear as much upon the phenomenon of abduction as it does on hypnotism: “Yes, Sir! Witch tales in this enlightened age! And mark my words! You will have such witch tales as the Middle Ages never dreamt of. Whole nations will drift insensibly into black magic, with good intentions, no doubt, but paving the road to hell none the less for that!” 277 While the abduction, or post 1961, phase of contact discourse increasingly lacked a central, charismatic figure in the form of the classic contactee, the hypnotherapist, a much more 275 George Du Maurier, Trilby (London: Penguin Books, 1994) 48. 276 H.P. Blavatsky, Dynamics of the Psychic World: Comments by H.P. Blavatsky on Magic, Mediumship, Psychism and the Powers of the Spirit, ed. Lina Psaltis (Wheaton, Illinois: Theosophical Publishing House, 1972) 28. 277 Blavatsky, 28. 188
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The Extraterrestrial in US Culture
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The Extraterrestrial in US Culture
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III. Chapter 2: Contact…………
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oth in their rich and bizarre detai
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Fukuyama also describes the histori
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and belonging that are native to th
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modernity, Weber stressed over and
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While positivism would emerge as th
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figure that serves as a medium betw
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sources of Spiritualism, Swedenborg
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The series of moments and discourse
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estful comprehension. It straddles
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The second chapter examines the eme
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Ch.1 The Dead INTRODUCTION Since th
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sense this dream of perfected commu
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political registers as well. This c
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In the late eighteenth century, Mes
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inverted form) along which the unde
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consciousness that is highly mobile
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up the process of thinking”. 38 S
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umor - and irony - would have it, w
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sense that Swedenborg’s researche
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Spiritualist movement, whose medium
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minded, loves to roam in the woods
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etween humans and God as unthinkabl
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esearches was a tailor by the name
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concerns and from the fact that the
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simultaneously in the world of the
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which God has revealed to them and
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assessed the Fox sisters as the “
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each in turn Lockwood elaborated hi
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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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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
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_____. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan
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_____. Something about Soulcraft. N
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Streiber, Whitley and Anne, ed. The
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