A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

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valorized rational progress and empirical proofs, of a widely shared set of beliefs and practices that center on communication with the dead? The obvious response is to class the movement as an atavistic response to the increasingly dominant tenets of positivism. Daniel Pick addresses a parallel interpretation in his study of mesmerism. "Mesmerism has long raised an interpretive dilemma for historians: is it best seen as a late-flourishing example from a vanishing world of 'folk' credulity? Is it convincing to argue that, in so far as mesmerism endured into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it has been as a 'survival' of some primitive or at least premodern 'mentality'?" 25 In this chapter I will argue that far from constituting a merely atavistic reaction to the scientific ethos, Spiritualism was in many ways in communication with that ethos. As a movement and discourse, it took the mission of rational progress to its utopian limits. 26 In terms of the linkages between the alpha and omega of this dissertation, Spiritualism and alien abduction, the varied grotesques of the abduction mythos do not emerge from a vacuum. The narrative structures and group dynamics that encode the extraterrestrial as a figure of utopian potential often stem from nineteenth century precedent. As we shall see in later chapters, nineteenth century American religious movements play a central role in structuring the ethos and mythos of twentieth century saucer culture. Spiritualism and Theosophy, in particular, provide both structure and content for contactee culture (the subject of the ensuing chapter) and the latter's later elaboration in the form of alien abduction. An examination of these movements not only provides a cultural and semiotic context for the rise of the extraterrestrial in America but also is of interest in its own right. The movements in question function as loci of the displaced utopian imaginary — loci that draw upon the cosmos as a source of utopian potential. In short, such movements function as illustrations of the utopian imaginary in the mythic register. As we shall see, said moments shade over, in ways both direct and indirect, into more traditional 25 Daniel Pick, Svengali’s Web: The Alien Enchanter in Modern Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000) 51. 26 See John Durham Peters, Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). Jeffrey Sconce, Haunted Media: Electronic Presence from Telegraphy to Television (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000). 25
political registers as well. This chapter will first treat the emergence of Spiritualism from the earlier precedents of vitalism, hypnotism, Swedenborgianism and the Shakers, the latter two of which are centrally concerned with communing with spiritual intelligences. These are the most obvious formal precedents for Spiritualism, though of course there are other earlier instances of the communing of humans with the spirit world. Spiritualism “has a nebulous ancestry of magnetic somnambules, witch ridden children, and ecstatic nuns.” 27 While the chapter does directly address the first element of this list in its discussion of Mesmerism, it does not address the latter two. Podmore’s characterization of Spiritualism’s ancestry as nebulous captures a recurring characteristic of all of the movements examined in this project. The word nebulous derives from the astronomical term for a cluster of stars that when seen from a distance has the appearance of a cloud or mist—defying articulation. At any given historical point there are myriad ways that one might trace the antecedents and consequents of Mesmerism or Spiritualism or Space Brother religions. The roots and fruits of communication between humans and Otherworldly beings are in a word, over determined. Any narrative that attempts to track the course of this line of communication over time will be by necessity partial and in most ways a function of the story that the writer wishes to tell. After examining some of the precedents of Spiritualism, the chapter will then examine the rise of Spiritualism proper and the interface between the contemporary politics of reform and Spiritualism, both in general and in the specific case of feminism. The final section on the movement will interrogate the ways in which the dead are imagined as actors in the discourse of Spiritualism. Lastly, I will briefly discuss the rise of the so-called “western guru” in Theosophy and the advent of the “ascended master” as a central trope in the nexus of alien-human communication. Through this series of investigations, we will both observe the emergence of a peculiar sort of utopian politics, one that exhibits desires consonant with rational reform while 27 Frank Podmore, Modern Spiritualism: A History and a Criticism (New York: Charles Scribner’s, 1902) 361. 26
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 and 16: While positivism would emerge as th
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: sense this dream of perfected commu
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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Page 69 and 70: All manner of proscribed activities
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Page 73 and 74: qualities the coarser and heavier t
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Page 79 and 80: 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
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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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