A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

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abductee reports that during her experience—which involved observing “a ‘man’ and a ‘horse’ engage in sexual contact” and being anally penetrated by an alien figure—“she was given to believe…that the aliens were carefully monitoring her feelings of shame, guilt and humiliation.” 310 The sense of shame as central to the abduction scenario is also attested to by the centrality of the genitals, and later anus, to the abduction narrative. This focus on two classical loci of Freudian drives offers yet another suggestive link between abduction and psychoanalysis. Abduction constitutes an exposure to what Lacan refers to as the Real—“the realm of raw, unrepresentable fullness prior to the organization of the drives.” 311 Given that the anal and genital are two primary seats of that very organization, their shameful and terrifying recurrence in the abduction scenario points to an encounter that reverberates at the most basic levels of being. The account offered by Lacan to describe what he means by the Gaze does not hinge upon the subject being cast into opacity by entering into the field of vision of another subject. In Lacan’s account, it is not another human being that casts his own position of mastery into doubt— it is a sardine can. As recounted in Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, Lacan was in Brittany, out to sea with local fishermen. Referring to a sardine can floating nearby, one of the men exclaimed, “You see that can? Do you see it? Well it doesn't see you!” 312 Lacan believed that, in some ways, the man’s statement was fundamentally untrue—that the object does stare back. Lacan’s insight was basically that to see the can as “sardine can” or even as “can” or “container” or “metal” was to “see” it through a semiotic veil. This moment of clarity experientially revealed to Lacan the gap between the physiology of vision and the socially 310 David M. Jacobs, “Subsequent Procedures” in Alien Discussions: Proceedings of the Abduction Study Conference, ed. Pritchard et al. (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge Press, 1994) 65. 311 Jay, 350. 312 Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-analysis (New York: W.W.Norton, 1978) 95. 213
constituted modes of visuality. To recognize the can as such was to filter the act of vision through a habituated set of perceptual practices and understandings. Without these understood practices and understandings, the visual field would remain flat; the can would remain indistinguishable from the larger visual field of which it was part. The other key realization experienced by Lacan was that the object itself existed outside the network of meanings that Lacan refers to as the “Screen.” As Bryson explains, “Between the subject and the world is inserted the entire sum of discourses that make up visuality, that culturally construct and make visuality different from vision, the notion of unmediated visual experience. Between retina and world is inserted a screen of signs, a screen consisting of all the multiple discourses on vision built into the social arena.” 313 I would add further that it is not only discourses on vision that form the screen, but discourse per se, as a way of ordering raw perception, that constitutes the screen. The notion of screen is important both in that the manifestation of the e.t. is in some ways a rupture of the screen and also in that the screen informs and shapes the form the alien takes. To see, for a moment, that “can” as a thing that exists outside of the screen of socially convened and naturalized codes of meaning, was experienced by Lacan as a moment of radical decentering. The moment in which the can is perceived as thing-in-itself is a moment in which the knowing subject is paralyzed. The can is no longer can, it becomes incomprehensible. As it passes outside the realm of possible knowing, it ceases to be object. As it passes outside the field of mastery, the object stares back. The moment in which the can ceases to be object is a moment in which the screen is ruptured and the Real floods through. The experience of elements of the visual field or of the visual field as a whole as unanchored by understood systems of meaning 313 Bryson, 91-92. 214
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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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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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Page 191 and 192: seems to have suggested that humans
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Page 201 and 202: In the space brother scenario, the
Page 203 and 204: Everything is now. The past is now;
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Page 217: The Gaze as philosophical and psych
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Page 235 and 236: Reports back from the spirit realm
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Page 245 and 246: BIBLIOGRAPHY Aber, W.W. “A Guide
Page 247 and 248: _____. “Adamski, George (1891-196
Page 249 and 250: _____. Discipline and Punish: the B
Page 251 and 252: _____. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan
Page 253 and 254: _____. Something about Soulcraft. N
Page 255: Streiber, Whitley and Anne, ed. The
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