A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

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one prior affiliate of the spiritualist creed, Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. Spiritualism and Theosophy in turn provided the seedbed for the emergence of the space brother religions. In the ensuing chapter, we will attend to the rise of the space brother as presiding Other in the ongoing communication between humans and their visions of alterity. The relationship between such communication and visions of social perfection continue, albeit along lines quite dissimilar to the preceding. We will examine, in turn, the strange career of proto-fascist William Dudley Pelley and the emergence of the Great I AM from the ashes of the Pelley organization. The latter of the two movements will set the precedent of embodied encounters between human and Other and bring us to the brink of a major shift in the mythos of the displaced utopian imaginary, the arrival of the flying saucer, or the UFO. 81
Ch.2 Contact INTRODUCTION Contact with extraterrestrials was far from unknown prior to the twentieth century. As discussed in the previous chapter, one of the seminal figures of American Spiritualism, Emmanuel Swedenborg, claimed to have traveled throughout the solar system and observed life on the various planets. Swedenborg’s visits to other planets and meetings with their representative populations took place in the same way that the vast majority of such meetings did prior to WWII, which was via astral travel, with the contactee functioning as a medium. 142 The séance room was no stranger to extraterrestrials. In fact most pre-twentieth century contact took place in a spiritualist context. Extraterrestrials were merely angels of another sort. Messengers from the beyond, presenting themselves as historical luminaries, unnamed natives or beloved relations had cavorted in parlors across the nation, revealing the perfection that lay beyond the veil. Extraterrestrials, beings from other planets, were counted among this spectral parade. They too bore witness to the perfectibility of society and individual. In an era when space travel was mere fancy, the vast reaches of outer space were understood as somehow equivalent to the world of the hereafter—angels, aliens and the dead all of a piece. As the twentieth century progressed, beings from other planets would assume pre-eminence among those Others seeking to impart wisdom to terrestrial humans. The elision of angel and alien and the transfer of sovereignty from 142 J. Gordon Melton, “The Contactees: A Survey” in The Gods Have Landed: New Religions from Other Worlds, ed. James R. Lewis (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995) 1-13. 82
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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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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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