A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

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constitutes an extended exposure to the Real. The words of the abductee under hypnosis, the very act of description, comprise the stuff of the suture. The goal, in short, is to normalize an experience, the thrust of which is to shatter any commonplace sense of normality. The goal is to reconstruct the experience in such a way that “the je reemerges from its encounter with nihility, reinforced in its position as the center of its experience... [so that] the subjects sense of being a subject is heightened, not undone.” Through the process of hypnotic regression, the therapist attempts to reconvene the abductee’s sense of self as integrated subject. The reason this suturing cannot be entirely effective is that in accepting abduction as actual experience—a necessary step in integration—the world as it is understood by consensus reality is rendered fundamentally askew. As one abduction researcher has noted, “I…find that abductees usually want to believe anything else. The genuine abductee is constantly looking for other reasons, until they reach a point of acceptance.” 316 There can be no normalization of the abduction experience short of accepting a world where aliens exist, physical laws are subject to suspension, and time is so malleable as to be rendered merely conceptual. The experiential components of the abduction scenario tear at the screen, exposing the abductee to the naked Gaze. The broader discourse of alien presence and contact, upon close examination, shows a proliferation of the thematic of the Gaze. The version of the tale that places the origin of the human species in the hands of extraterrestrials imagines that human beings have been subject to the surveillance of alien intelligence for as long as humans have existed. In this scenario, the progress, or lack thereof, of humanity is of central importance to the “space brothers.” The grays enact the theme of the Gaze. In the context of abduction, humans, subject to intense scrutiny and examination, are reduced to the level of object. They are so 316 Patricia Shaw, “People with Unsubstantiated Claims of ET Contact” in Alien Discussions: Proceedings of the Abduction Study Conference, ed. Pritchard et al. (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge Press, 1994) 25. 217
educed not in the relatively benign fashion of Sartre’s watcher, merely by becoming an element in another’s visual field, but rather more intensely. The example of the watcher in the park nicely captures a kind of narcissism specific to a media-saturated culture. The watcher in the park observes a vista that has been arranged for his or her delectation—land rendered as a packaged experience. This was clearly the intent of such landscape designers as Frederick Law Olmstead—the building of environments that serve to generate a particular kind of experience, an experience wherein the watcher enjoys a sense of mastery. Things in the park are arranged in such a way that they have a clear meaning—readily accessible to the observer. This sense of pre-arranged meaning and illusion of mastery are central to contemporary media culture. The end user has access to experience via an ever-proliferating array of media, all of which place the user in a position both powerful and pampered. Powerful in that they assume an apparently panoptic perspective on the world around them and pampered in that a world is presented to them in a way that their pleasures and presuppositions are catered to. The moment in which Sartre’s watcher finds himself observed constitutes a crack in the narcissism promoted by the manufactured vista. The experience of abduction does so in a much more violent fashion. The other whose visual field the abductee passes into is not another like themselves, as in Sartre’s scenario, but an Other who is wholly strange. Some level of identification always tempers the paranoia that might follow a sense of being observed by another human. The potential motives of that other are tacitly understood. The abduction scenario presents little or no purchase for identification or meaning. As previously discussed, most contactees tended to report encounters with well-behaved, highly communicative beings who not only appeared in a clearly human form, but in forms that were highly appealing aesthetically—noble creatures with blond hair and high foreheads. Robust and beautiful, these beings were a far cry from the sickly 218
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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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the space brother narrative further
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Adamski—the UFO was effortlessly
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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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