A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

More documents

Recommendations

Info

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 225
desired utopian state. The Others communicate their wisdom via particular interlocutors who are characterized by heightened levels of sensitivity and often ambiguous gender identity. Said interlocutors generally enter into some kind of trance state in order to receive communications from the Others. The Others, with the exception of the “grays” of alien abduction, present themselves in a recognizably human form. They impart a message pointing out the shortcomings of current social reality and offering a vision of achieved perfection. While the Others are recognizably human, their humanity is tempered by its transcendence of animal being. Their proffered utopian vision often evidences a certain Gnostic disgust for the human body—leaving behind not only social imperfection but gross bodily need. In these visions, the utopian future will be free not only of inequity and need but also the body and its animal functions. The explanations offered for this ongoing series of transmissions has been consistently framed in “scientific” terms. Spiritualists received transmissions from the other side via spiritual telegraph. Communication with the dead was understood by the faithful as in keeping with ongoing scientific advances. The emergent capacity to commune with the departed was viewed as further evidence of reason’s march to mastery. The emergence of the space brother religions maintained this sense of imminent mastery and added new devices to the technical armory of the displaced utopian imaginary—Pelley’s mental radio, the Ballards’ light and sound ray, and the surveillance described by Adamski’s contacts. All of the above spoke to the desire to materialize the spiritual, imagining a material technological bridge between the worlds of reason and spirit. The appearance of the UFO added an apparently mechanical transport that allowed the Other’s passage to Earth and provided a vehicle for the earthling contactee’s journeys to utopian possibility. Abduction constituted a sort of reversal, with technical expedients brought to bear on 226
Page 1 and 2:
The Extraterrestrial in US Culture
Page 3 and 4:
The Extraterrestrial in US Culture
Page 5 and 6:
III. Chapter 2: Contact…………
Page 7 and 8:
oth in their rich and bizarre detai
Page 9 and 10:
Fukuyama also describes the histori
Page 11 and 12:
and belonging that are native to th
Page 13 and 14:
modernity, Weber stressed over and
Page 15 and 16:
While positivism would emerge as th
Page 17 and 18:
figure that serves as a medium betw
Page 19 and 20:
sources of Spiritualism, Swedenborg
Page 21 and 22:
The series of moments and discourse
Page 23 and 24:
estful comprehension. It straddles
Page 25 and 26:
The second chapter examines the eme
Page 27 and 28:
Ch.1 The Dead INTRODUCTION Since th
Page 29 and 30:
sense this dream of perfected commu
Page 31 and 32:
political registers as well. This c
Page 33 and 34:
In the late eighteenth century, Mes
Page 35 and 36:
inverted form) along which the unde
Page 37 and 38:
consciousness that is highly mobile
Page 39 and 40:
up the process of thinking”. 38 S
Page 41 and 42:
umor - and irony - would have it, w
Page 43 and 44:
sense that Swedenborg’s researche
Page 45 and 46:
Spiritualist movement, whose medium
Page 47 and 48:
minded, loves to roam in the woods
Page 49 and 50:
etween humans and God as unthinkabl
Page 51 and 52:
esearches was a tailor by the name
Page 53 and 54:
concerns and from the fact that the
Page 55 and 56:
simultaneously in the world of the
Page 57 and 58:
which God has revealed to them and
Page 59 and 60:
assessed the Fox sisters as the “
Page 61 and 62:
each in turn Lockwood elaborated hi
Page 63 and 64:
as miraculous or supernatural? 85 T
Page 65 and 66:
hearts of men to help their brother
Page 67 and 68:
the corrupting influence of the wor
Page 69 and 70:
All manner of proscribed activities
Page 71 and 72:
dawn of a new era, and you must not
Page 73 and 74:
qualities the coarser and heavier t
Page 75 and 76:
full of mischief as any child in th
Page 77 and 78:
keynote in public (and much of the
Page 79 and 80:
masculine traits), the figure of th
Page 81 and 82:
The first was that all world religi
Page 83 and 84:
space brother religion, The Great I
Page 85 and 86:
and the menopauses.” 141 A genera
Page 87 and 88:
Ch.2 Contact INTRODUCTION Contact w
Page 89 and 90:
as spiritual aspirations embodied.
Page 91 and 92:
magazine, the latter edited by icon
Page 93 and 94:
featured female characters who were
Page 95 and 96:
keeping with the recurring integrat
Page 97 and 98:
harmony with the universe (“if yo
Page 99 and 100:
world were still struggling to asce
Page 101 and 102:
hermetic credo as above, so below,
Page 103 and 104:
insistence on the survival of the i
Page 105 and 106:
evolutionary nomenclature of the co
Page 107 and 108:
Pelley exhibited a variety of trait
Page 109 and 110:
Chelas, which in the Hindu traditio
Page 111 and 112:
the Theosophical Society along with
Page 113 and 114:
Ballard was told during his initial
Page 115 and 116:
Masters. Members of the I Am Ascend
Page 117 and 118:
operative in most later “space-br
Page 119 and 120:
promises of evolutionary progress h
Page 121 and 122:
such as St. Germain could make thei
Page 123 and 124:
Ch. 3 The Saucer INTRODUCTION The t
Page 125 and 126:
The arrival of the saucer promised
Page 127 and 128:
salvation through the union of oppo
Page 129 and 130:
potential public responses to the f
Page 131 and 132:
as rationally comprehensible and a
Page 133 and 134:
attached to cultivating a following
Page 135 and 136:
percentage of unidentifieds to the
Page 137 and 138:
extraterrestrial communicant suppli
Page 139 and 140:
perpetrators of willful deception i
Page 141 and 142:
signing.” 210 Gill’s amused res
Page 143 and 144:
practicing theoretical astrophysici
Page 145 and 146:
DOROTHY MARTIN While ufology began
Page 147 and 148:
attention. Without knowing why, I p
Page 149 and 150:
One message from an assistant of Sa
Page 151 and 152:
Dr. Laughead first encountered Doro
Page 153 and 154:
In the case of Dorothy Martin and h
Page 155 and 156:
II space brother religions to large
Page 157 and 158:
he could think of to obtain permiss
Page 159 and 160:
other myth. You will recall that in
Page 161 and 162:
and a Saturnian named “Ramu.” 2
Page 163 and 164:
ecome small, self-sufficient commun
Page 165 and 166:
paranoia in another context but in
Page 167 and 168:
the space brother narrative further
Page 169 and 170:
Adamski—the UFO was effortlessly
Page 171 and 172:
communism. The connection between t
Page 173 and 174:
The shift from contact to abduction
Page 175 and 176:
science. 256 The Hill case was the
Page 177 and 178:
abduction scenario in a variety of
Page 179 and 180: In September of 1963, some two year
Page 181 and 182: car and gone into a field with bino
Page 183 and 184: The cadences of Barney’s recollec
Page 185 and 186: And he said it was a pregnancy test
Page 187 and 188: motif also speaks to a relationship
Page 189 and 190: on a human is smooth and rounded. S
Page 191 and 192: seems to have suggested that humans
Page 193 and 194: The mesmerist and hypnotherapist bo
Page 195 and 196: communiqués emerge not from the la
Page 197 and 198: David E. Mack, a Harvard trained an
Page 199 and 200: dystopian, or in the language of No
Page 201 and 202: In the space brother scenario, the
Page 203 and 204: Everything is now. The past is now;
Page 205 and 206: effectively cut off from that possi
Page 207 and 208: eaching our innate potential. The h
Page 209 and 210: It is in this desire for dissolutio
Page 211 and 212: abductees feeling like guinea pigs.
Page 213 and 214: attack. Nietzsche writes of the blo
Page 215 and 216: Hill. Barney recalled his first gli
Page 217 and 218: The Gaze as philosophical and psych
Page 219 and 220: constituted modes of visuality. To
Page 221 and 222: traum or dream further indicates th
Page 223 and 224: educed not in the relatively benign
Page 225 and 226: will of the abductee—all speak to
Page 227 and 228: esultant exposure to the Real. The
Page 229: understood moorings, left to drift
Page 233 and 234: were, more or less, ascended master
Page 235 and 236: Reports back from the spirit realm
Page 237 and 238: generally silent, but when they do
Page 239 and 240: to narrative structural positionali
Page 241 and 242: sensibilities, though one that woul
Page 243 and 244: of full transparency between interl
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
show all

A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?