A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

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the dross of base metals to reveal the gold underneath. Abduction, much more so than earlier iterations of the displaced utopian imaginary, captured the panic and violence of mystical experience—an experience defined, in Jung’s terms as an encounter with the wholly Other. Barney went on to remember leaving his car. “I am thinking of getting out of the car, and I had not thought that these men when they helped me out of the car [sic] - I could not feel them. And I only became aware that I could not feel them when we were going up an incline. And then I felt that I could not feel them. My arms were in the position of being supported. But I was not walking.” Abductees often describe the sensation of floating. The difficulty Barney showed in describing being lifted and carried but feeling no contact with the creatures carrying him approximated the confusion of this sensation. The loss of control and volition implied by such a sensation is central to the overall terror of the abduction experience. “And I want to peek. I want to look. I want to look... I opened my eyes... I saw a hospital operating room. It was pale blue. Sky blue. And I closed my eyes.” 262 That is the last that Barney recalled visually. The rest of his recall was based upon memories drawn from other senses—a harbinger of the fact that the abduction scenario is primarily based not around visual recognition but around sensation. I was lying on a table, and I thought someone was putting a cup around my groin, and then it stopped...I thought how funny. If I kept real quiet and real still, I won’t be harmed...And it will be over. And I will just stay here and pretend that I am anywhere and think of God and think of Jesus and think that I am not afraid. And I am getting off the table, and I’ve got a big grin on my face, and I am greatly relieved. And I am walking, and I am being guided. And my eyes are closed, and I open my eyes, and that is the car. And the lights are off, and the motor is not running. And Delsey is under the seat. And I reached under and touched her, and she is in a tight ball under the seat, and I sit back. And I see Betty is coming down the road, and she gets into the car, and I am grinning at her and she is grinning back at me. And we both seem so elated and we are really happy. And I’m thinking it isn’t too bad. How funny, I had no reason to fear. And we look and I see a bright moon. And I laugh and say, ‘Well there it goes.’ And I’m happy.” 263 262 Fuller, 126. 263 Fuller, 127-128. 177
The cadences of Barney’s recollection, with its repeated opening (and…and…and), recall both oracular speech and the child’s shaggy dog tale. It is, of course a bit of both. Barney was doubly infantilized/rendered passive by his initial experience and by his vulnerability under hypnosis. The wildly implausible content of the tale recalled childhood’s fabulist modalities. The modes of communication discussed in the preceding chapters all lent themselves to oracular speech and all required a “receptivity” that was feminizing if not outright infantilizing. They all involved a surrender of self as an act of will. Abduction works its dissipation against the will. Barney’s recitation rendered a narrative that offered a strangely occluded vision of the human future. While the preceding modes of the displaced utopian imaginary offered clear visions of the recognizably human in an achieved utopian context, abduction offered visions of a future no longer recognizably human. It was with the next visit on the seventh of March that Betty’s recall began. Betty remembered two groups of “men” approaching the car, three on either side. In recalling these events, despite Dr. Simon’s constant reassurance, Betty was clearly frightened and her speech was punctuated by sobs. Seeing Barney behind her, she called out to him. He seemed to be sleepwalking and would not respond. She balked at entering the craft and was reassured by one of the figures. “Only one spoke, the one who was on my left...He had sort of a foreign accent...but he was, you know, very business like.” 264 Said figure is repeated across iterations of the abduction narrative. Dubbed “the doctor” or “the leader” by abductees, the figure is generally closer to average human height than its lieutenants and often has skin closer to a Caucasian hue (versus the ashen pallor of the rest). Both in its marginally increased resemblance to the human and in its willingness to “speak,” the doctor stands as an exception to the overall 264 Fuller, 158. 178
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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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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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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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