A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

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object of desire, the modes of explanation available veered increasingly into the nether regions of the rationally possible. The displaced utopian imaginary’s engagement with the flying saucer, both in the case of ufology and that of the space brothers, was oddly marked by a dynamic of absence and disappearance. In the case of ufology, the constant tug-of-war between agnosticism and outright skepticism constantly threatened the UFO’s erasure. Even among researchers sympathetic to the possibility of the UFO’s existence, the object of study was always already a residuum, a remnant. It was only the cases that survived attempts at quotidian explanation that were rendered suitable for analysis. In treating a phenomenon that seemed about proliferation and divergence, that profligate energy was apparently put in service of explanations to the contrary. UFO’s were swamp gas, errant celestial bodies, temperature inversions, willful deception. It was ironic that the ostensibly centripetal forces of rational inquiry seemed bent on such dissolution, as if infected by its object of study. Even the cases that made it through the vetting process were so beset by skeptical interpretation that their significance was all but canceled out. For obvious reasons such remaindered cases were perhaps the targets of the most energetic of skeptical attacks. The game of skeptical ufology recalled the zero sum logic of the octoroon. If the case was not all the way true (white) then it was all the way false (black). In its struggle to rescue the integrity of a fully rational view of the world, this stark sense of the true or false binary did nothing to approximate the both/and logic of the phenomenon. In the case of the space brothers, the saucer did a different but no less notable disappearing act. In the case of the so-called contactee mainstream, saucers were absent because unneeded. Communication between human and Other using traditional occult means—telepathy, astral travel, automatic writing—required no physical vehicle. In the case of contactees such as 163
Adamski—the UFO was effortlessly subsumed. While it provided a mode of transport and thus had functionality, in terms of the space brother narrative it was merely a flourish or element of texture. Thus the UFO—which seemed to offer such a marked increase in the physicality of communication between humans and Others, and in turn seemed to move such communication into the realm of proper consideration for rational inquiry—was instead marked in turn by disappearance, absence and superfluity. 164
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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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Page 123 and 124: Ch. 3 The Saucer INTRODUCTION The t
Page 125 and 126: The arrival of the saucer promised
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Page 145 and 146: DOROTHY MARTIN While ufology began
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Page 159 and 160: other myth. You will recall that in
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Page 163 and 164: ecome small, self-sufficient commun
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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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