A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

of Cockaigne, visions of paradise, all speak to this cessation of want. Implicit in this vision is a
return to a state that precedes the self, a return to the Real. Each of the moments discussed in the
ensuing chapters are concerned with this return. Spiritualism, Theosophy, and the various
American modalities of communication between the human and the Other that follow from those
two earlier moments all rearticulate matters of spirit in a fashion more amenable to the emergent
dominance of positivism. All do so in a way that summons forth visions of a society perfected.
And all do so in way that troubles the stability of self.
CHAPTERS
The first chapter treats Spiritualism and its formal precedents – Swedenborgianism, Mesmerism,
and the Shakers as well as examining Theosophy. Spiritualism, Theosophy and their precedents
collectively establish a set of understandings and practices concerning communication with the
radically Other. Through an examination of the links between these movements, this chapter
will enumerate and analyze the aforementioned precedents as well as provide an analysis of the
utopian visions that undergird each of the movements. In the cases of Spiritualism and
Theosophy (which are the clearest predecessors of the discourses of the extraterrestrial so central
to the twentieth century displaced utopian imaginary) the analysis will focus on a series of
concerns, each of which will be treated in turn by the antecedent chapters. The first of these is
the nature of the otherworldly interlocutors native to each movement: the dead in the case of
Spiritualism and the ascended masters in the case of Theosophy. The chapter examines how
these figures are imagined, what messages they convey and how both the former and the latter
mirror contemporary fears and desires concerning social change and basic questions of
communication.
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