A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

Summary and Conclusions
Now that, with the preceding discussion of alien abduction, we have reached more-or-less
the present day, I will offer some concluding remarks. I will first briefly revisit the themes that
have consistently informed what, by way of shorthand, I have been calling the displaced utopian
imaginary. The latter term, rather than proscribing some stable referent, gestures instead at a
thread of utopian thought and practice that runs through modern American culture—a thread
woven of both terrestrial and otherworldly concerns and sensibilities but neither wholly religious
nor wholly secular. After discussing the themes that consistently inform this line of thought and
practice, I will address the elements of the displaced utopian imaginary that lend it its dynamism.
Along with a relatively stable set of themes, the displaced utopian imaginary also consists of
dynamic and shifting narrative structures. The discussion of these dynamic elements will lead to
a final discussion of the implications of the narrative shifts brought about by the emergence of
the UFO and alien abduction in the second half of the twentieth century.
The passage of the displaced utopian imaginary over the latter half of the nineteenth and
the whole of the twentieth centuries reveals both a set of consistent tropes and a series of
dynamics that enact broader structural shifts over time. The displaced utopian imaginary is both
consistent and dynamic. To reiterate, the displaced utopian imaginary concerns itself primarily
with imagining the dramatic transformation of social reality—a transformation bringing about a
utopia. The potential utopia is enfigured by a series of Others who have already achieved the
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