A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

The second chapter examines the emergence of displaced utopian dreams that position
extraterrestrials as key interlocutors from 1930-1960. The space brothers take the place of the
dead and ascended masters as central figure of alterity in the movements examined in this
chapter. So-called space brother religions extend the understandings and practices of the
nineteenth century movements previously discussed into the twentieth century. The messages
carried by the space brothers are initially very similar to those carried by their spectral
predecessors; what changes is the form of the messenger. The chapter examines the implications
of this shift, addressing what, aside from the obvious appeal of novelty, other significance there
is in the turn toward outer space as point of origin for privileged figures of alterity. The chapter
proceeds via an examination of some of the key “contactees,” their interstellar tutors, and their
followers.
Chapter three examines the arrival of the flying saucer in the years following Kenneth
Arnold’s famed 1947 sighting. Of particular interest in this chapter is the emergence of what
becomes known as “ufology.” An examination of this “science” in the offing constitutes the
center of the chapter. In terms of the ongoing tension between the positivist hegemony and the
process of neo-enchantment, ufology constitutes a moment where the latter attempts to wholly
adopt the standards of the former. The arrival of the unidentified flying object on the scene both
provided the occasion for an adoption of strictly empirical standards and marked a moment of
exhaustion in the modern attempt to materialize the ethereal.
Chapter four examines the emergence of abduction. With the change to abduction as
primary mode of contact between human and extraterrestrial, we see both a shift in the central
figure of alterity (with a movement toward the contemporary “gray” aliens as key interlocutor)
and the mode of communication. While contactees generally communicated with their
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