A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

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understood itself not as running counter to the currents of its day but rather as wholly in keeping with them. SPIRITUALIST UTOPIA AND THE NEW WOMAN In his “molecular hypothesis,” Lockwood envisions the emergence of a “higher mental civilization” as the end result of rational progress. The vision of perfect human brotherhood that would ostensibly accompany such mental advances was a central concern of Spiritualism. Of course the notion of progress engaged more short-term concerns as well and it is in the shortterm that we find the links between Spiritualism and reform, links that were often ones of affiliation. Before the Civil War, spiritualists gained their most influential defenders from men and women who managed to support the rappers with the same enthusiasm they supported Fourierism, temperance, antislavery, health reform, and women’s rights. Horace Greeley’s Tribune, viewed by many as a radical newspaper, quite appropriately gave the Fox sisters their first big publicity break. Concurrently, almost all the prominent abolitionists fell under the spell of Spiritualism. William Lloyd Garrison, Joshua Giddings, Benjamin Wade, Henry Wright, and Thomas Wentworth Higginson probably held more common ground on the subject of spirit rappings than on the tactics of combating slavery. Lydia Maria Child, Robert Dale Owen, Adin Ballou, Lorenzo Fowler, and John Edmonds were only some of the other public figures associated with various other causes who saw a clear relationship between Spiritualism and the cause of “practical” reform. 86 Gary Ward notes that, “Many within Spiritualism became known, not only for advocating fair treatment of Indians, but also for advocating prison reform, abolition of capital punishment, higher wages for workers, trade unions, and equality of the sexes.” 87 The overall tenor of Spiritualism speaks to a coming social order in which “the lion and the lamb shall lie down together, trusting that the one God who opened the heavens for rain, who is daily opening the 86 Moore, 71. 87 Gary Ward, “Introduction,” in Spiritualism I: Spiritualist Thought, ed. Gary L. Ward (New York: Garland Press, 1990) 4. 59
hearts of men to help their brothers, will lighten their minds so that the giants of ignorance and self-aggrandizement will be slain, and over their graves will be placed the words, “Light and Love.” 88 The spirits themselves were champions of reform. One of the most popular Spiritualist texts of mid-century, Judge John Worth Edmonds’ and George Dexter’s Spiritualism, was largely made up of “long didactic messages from Bacon and Swedenborg on the subject of progress.” 89 The displaced utopian imaginary was ultimately less concerned with concrete political movements than it is with the utopian per se. In the end, it depended upon the power of some Other and/or the transformative power of death to bring about its looked for utopian ends. However, to take form, it must draw upon the political understandings of its day, thus we see Spiritualism’s affiliations with the various modalities through which radical change was imagined at the time. One wing of progressive reform that Spiritualism evinced a special connection to was feminism. As Jeffrey Sconce notes, Spiritualism “provided one of the first and most important forums for women’s voices to enter the public sphere... While in a state of mediumistic trance, these women were able to comment (through the ‘telegraphic’ voices of the dead) on a variety of contemporary social issues of concern to women, including marital equality, reproductive rights, and universal suffrage.” 90 The idea that they merely spoke at the spirits’ behest allowed for a freedom of expression generally forbidden to women of the time. In a very real sense, the voices from beyond that sought to guide America were the voices of the American woman. Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Frances Willard were all interested in Spiritualism, but never publicly identified themselves as adherents. 91 Spiritualists 88 Milburn, 4. 89 Moore, 22. 90 Sconce, 12. 91 Moore. 60
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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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Page 27 and 28: Ch.1 The Dead INTRODUCTION Since th
Page 29 and 30: sense this dream of perfected commu
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Page 61 and 62: each in turn Lockwood elaborated hi
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Page 91 and 92: magazine, the latter edited by icon
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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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communism. The connection between t
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The shift from contact to abduction
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science. 256 The Hill case was the
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abduction scenario in a variety of
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In September of 1963, some two year
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car and gone into a field with bino
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The cadences of Barney’s recollec
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And he said it was a pregnancy test
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motif also speaks to a relationship
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on a human is smooth and rounded. S
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seems to have suggested that humans
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The mesmerist and hypnotherapist bo
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communiqués emerge not from the la
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David E. Mack, a Harvard trained an
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dystopian, or in the language of No
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In the space brother scenario, the
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Everything is now. The past is now;
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effectively cut off from that possi
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eaching our innate potential. The h
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It is in this desire for dissolutio
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abductees feeling like guinea pigs.
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attack. Nietzsche writes of the blo
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Hill. Barney recalled his first gli
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The Gaze as philosophical and psych
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constituted modes of visuality. To
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traum or dream further indicates th
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educed not in the relatively benign
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will of the abductee—all speak to
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esultant exposure to the Real. The
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understood moorings, left to drift
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desired utopian state. The Others c
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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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