A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

and the menopauses.” 141
A general elision existed between mediumship and personality
disintegration. To open oneself to spirit communication was to court madness. Media straddled
a series of ostensibly irreconcilable opposites—asleep/awake, man/woman/, self/other—all basic
coordinates of being. So we see the forces of History—the centripetal drive toward integration,
narratives of ascendant mastery—entangled with the centrifugal forces of genealogy—
multiplicity, disintegration and fractured narrative. The dynamic suggests nothing so much as
the figure of the ourobouros, the snake eating its own tail. As always the question remains,
what’s left behind?
The relationship with the spirit world enacted by the movements previously discussed, a
relationship that claimed compatibility with the worlds of science and reason, arguably began
with the works of Emmanuel Swedenborg. Swedenborg's works supplied much of the
philosophical and/or theological underpinnings of American Spiritualism. But the Swede’s
celestial peregrinations depended upon his ability to place himself in a trance state. American
Spiritualism required the imported figure of the mesmerist to tap into the abilities of its native
seers. One such seer, who first exhibited his powers while in magnetic trance, was Andrew
Jackson Davis, the so-called John the Baptist of Spiritualism. Davis’ writings and his public
performances were key in turning Spiritualism into a national movement. As a national
movement, Spiritualism aligned itself with much of the progressive political movements of its
day—with spirits espousing support for the abolition of slavery and women’s suffrage.
Spiritualism dogma hoped for and expected the arrival of a terrestrial utopia—a utopia presaged
and abetted by the open communication between the living and the dead. As the century wore
on, the ranks of Spiritualism were diminished and Theosophy emerged through the writings of
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