From: "Terry W. Colvin" 
Subject: IUFO: FWD: (SK) Stein on Dean, _Aliens in America_
Date: 30 Mar 1999 01:44:02 -0500
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>Date: Mon, 29 Mar 1999 18:06:34 -0500
>From: H-Net Reviews 
>Subject: Stein on Dean, _Aliens in America_
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>H-NET BOOK REVIEW
>Published by H-PCAACA@h-net.msu.edu (March, 1999)
>
>Jodi Dean.  _Aliens in America:  Conspiracy Cultures from Outerspace
>to Cyberspace_.  Ithaca and London:  Cornell University Press, 1998.
>xii + 242 pp.  Bibliographical references and index.  $39.95
>(cloth), ISBN 0-8014-3463-7; $16.95 (paper), ISBN 0-8014-8468-5.
>
>Reviewed for H-PCAACA by Atara Stein, California State University,
>Fullerton
>
>As Jodi Dean indicates in _Aliens in America_, aliens are ubiquitous
>in contemporary American culture, appearing in mainstream newspapers
>as well as tabloids, in films and on television, in books and
>advertising, and on the Internet.  Her book traces accounts of alien
>abduction and UFOs as well as "changes in the metaphor of outerspace
>that accompany the shift from outerspace to cyberspace" (p. 5) and
>draws parallels between America's space program and accounts of UFOs
>and alien abduction to examine the politics of such claims, arguing
>that they serve as a means of contesting the status quo (p. 6).  She
>argues that "the aliens infiltrating American popular cultures
>provide icons through which to access the new conditions of
>democratic politics at the millennium" (p. 7) and that, "because of
>the pervasiveness of UFO belief and the ubiquity of alien imagery,
>ufology is an especially revealing window into current American
>paranoia and distrust" (p. 10).
>
>Dean's argument hinges on the notion that "we have moved from
>consensus reality to virtual reality" (p. 8), and that, due to the
>proliferation of communications media such as the Internet, it has
>become increasingly difficult to determine what is the "truth."
>Thus, stories of alien abduction comprise part of an increasing
>"skepticism toward experts, authorities, and a technology that has
>made virtuality part of everyday life" (p. 8).  Abductees and their
>supporters have access to means of communication that allow them to
>network and to challenge scientific dismissals of their experiences.
>As Dean notes, evidence, such as photographs, can be doctored.  Dean
>sees "cultural patterns of suspicion, conspiracy, and mistrust" (p.
>17) as pervasive in American culture, and suggests that examining
>ufology and abduction narratives, as well as the media that disperse
>them, can be used as a means to "theorize the conditions of
>contemporary democracy in a technological, globalized, corporatized,
>entertainment- and media-driven society" (p. 18).  Thus, she aims to
>"complicate theories of American culture and politics" by revealing
>the ways in which UFO belief challenges mainstream, consensus
>reality.
>
>The first chapter, "Fugitive Alien Truth," discusses the pursuit of
>"the truth" in UFO discourse, noting that the belief in alien
>abduction is shared by many Americans.  Dean argues that the alien
>embodies "fears of invasion, violation, mutation" and "serves as the
>ubiquitous reminder of uncertainty, doubt, suspicion, of the
>fugitivity of truth" (p. 31).  She connects fears of the alien with
>millennium anxieties.  The concern about the reality of UFOs was only
>heightened by attempts by the U.S. government and military to deny
>the existence of UFOs--such attempts suggested that they were only
>hiding a truth, that is "out there."  The TV series _The X-Files_ is
>a leitmotif of Dean's book, in that it is emblematic of the quest
>for an elusive but believed-in "truth."  Countering official
>skepticism about UFO's, UFO researchers offered their own evidence,
>insisting on the credibility of witnesses and, thus, challenging
>"official notions of what counts as true, of whose words are
>credible" (p. 39).  Dean describes the typical abduction experience
>as well as research tools, such as hypnosis, which are used to
>access the "truth" and to help the abductees cope with their
>experiences.  UFO discourse aims at establishing legitimacy and
>credibility, Dean suggests, using the same scientific tools used to
>discredit it.  At the same time, the stigmatization and
>marginalization of UFO research by the scientific community and the
>government grants it a "transgressive" quality that has affinities
>with both the recovery movement and with "racial, sexual, ethnic,
>and economic minorities" (p. 61), according to Dean, but I don't
>find this connection entirely convincing.
>
>The second chapter, "Space Programs," examines the televisuality of
>the NASA space program, arguing that space travel, by the 1990's,
>has become mundane, as the focus shifts from the active "agency of
>the astronaut" to "the passivity of the audience" (p. 68).  Dean
>examines the constructed image of astronauts projected by NASA and
>ways in which the space program's imperatives were shaped by a
>"theatrics of space" aimed at television viewers.  She claims that
>the Internet encourages this passivity, as we can explore space
>without ever leaving our homes.  Dean asks, "Why risk an unsafe and
>alien environment, when you can blast off into cyberspace?"  (pp.
>68-69).  This opposition strikes me as a bit too facile, but Dean
>provides a compelling analysis of televised images of the astronaut
>and makes a convincing case that the space "program was made to be
>watched"  (p. 69).  She analyzes the politics of the image of the
>straight, white, male astronaut, as well as the focus on the
>astronauts' families, who represent the constructed middle-class
>television audience, passively watching and reacting to the
>astronauts' experiences.  The very publicity of the space program
>served as a contrast to Soviet secrecy and as "proof" of "the
>superiority of the American way" (p. 84).  Eventually, however, the
>astronaut could not adequately represent the diversity of the
>American public, and as space travel became routinized, it ceased to
>compel the interest of viewers, as "cruising cyberspace, expanding
>cyberspace, is much more exciting than watching a rocket launch on
>television" (p. 97).  Again, Dean posits cyberspace as a replacement
>of the official versions of events offered on television, but she
>fails to account for the fact that web access is still considerably
>less available to large numbers of the American public than
>television.
>
>In the third chapter, "Virtually Credible," Dean elaborates on the
>increasing ordinariness of space travel in the minds of public,
>discussing Christa McAuliffe, the teacher-in-space who died in the
>Challenger disaster, as a feminization, and thus a domestication, of
>space.  The disaster, however, challenged the credibility of the
>government and, Dean suggests, provided another reason to stay home,
>shifting from outerspace to cyberspace.  She argues that McAuliffe's
>death "created a strong link in popular culture between ordinary
>women and the horrors of outerspace" (p. 101), thus furthering the
>popularity of the theme of alien abduction.  In going public,
>particularly on television talk shows, abductees apparently take the
>place of astronauts in providing a televised spectacle of space.
>Dean again connects the abductees' insistence on the "truth" of
>their experiences with the decline in consensus reality, suggesting
>that we cannot make judgments about the truth of others' experiences
>if we lack a common basis of shared knowledge.  She argues that "we
>don't know what's real" and, as a result, "we lack ... the capacity
>to discern and distinguish, to use and deploy, to judge and evaluate
>the knowledges we need for ethical decisions and responsible
>political action" (p. 109).  While the space program in the sixties
>and seventies celebrated technology and its promises of progress,
>Dean notes that abductees' descriptions of alien technology parallel
>our own distrust of a seemingly alien and unreliable technology.  In
>fact, abductees report inexplicable technological
>glitches--malfunctioning security systems, power failures, equipment
>that turns itself on and off whether plugged in or not.  Again, Dean
>notes the distrust of government in abductee narratives, several of
>which figure the government as either a conspirator with the aliens
>themselves or, at least, as concealers of a known truth.  Abductee
>stories distill our sense of passivity, helplessness, uncertainty,
>and lack of control, what Dean describes as "the confused passivity
>accompanying the collapse of the real" (p. 123).
>
>The fourth chapter, "I Want to Believe," discusses the way abductees
>present their stories as "part of a more populist technoculture of
>globally networked PCs" (p. 132).  Abductees interact in a networked
>culture of abduction researchers and other abductees, sharing their
>experiences and analyses in books, on television talk shows, and on
>the Internet.  Dean draws a parallel between the "instability of
>reality in abduction" with cyberspace.  She argues that debunkers of
>the Internet insist on a nonexistent "commonality of truth" (p.
>137), in the same manner as those who debunk abduction stories do.
>The central question is "How can claims to truth be defended when
>reality is virtual?" (p. 140).  Abductees counter this problem by
>providing details and amassing data.  Dean links abductees' fear of
>and skepticism toward official explanations with conspiracy theory,
>which she suggests can be helpful "for coding politics in the
>virtual realities of the technoglobal information age" (p. 144).
>Abduction narratives, the Internet, and conspiracy theory, Dean
>argues, share a view of truth that presumes "a notion of fundamental
>interconnectedness" (p. 146).  The problem, she again suggests, is
>that we lack the "criteria" for uncovering the truth.
>
>The final chapter, "The Familiarity of Strangeness," explores the
>ways in which alien abduction stories have become prevalent in our
>culture.  Not only do they relate to "insecurities about technology,
>otherness, and the future," but they connect to "immigration
>anxieties" and fears of noncitizen aliens as well (p. 155).  Dean
>argues that the alien represents a kind of "boundary-blurring,"
>breaking down "formerly clear distinctions"  (p. 156), a symbol of
>insecurity, which Dean characterizes as "the predominant sense of
>contemporary reality" (p. 166).  Abduction stories suggest that one
>is not safe even in one's own home, thus representing common fears
>of strangeness in daily life.  Dean particularly focuses on the
>theme of an alien breeding project, creating hybrid beings through
>the use of abducted women.  Abduction stories testify to a fear that
>we are not safe anywhere, and the government cannot protect us, nor
>can we protect ourselves or our families.  She argues that ufology
>is not indicative of ignorance, but rather a "pervasive skepticism.
>No one and nothing can be trusted.  There is no overarching
>conception of reality" (p. 171).  Even memories of abduction can't
>be trusted because they could be implanted by the aliens.  Dean
>emphasizes that paranoia can be "a sensible response to real
>virtuality that is produced through excesses in the technologies of
>truth" (p. 171).  Since a single truth is elusive, Dean argues that
>we "rely on networks of truth, on multiple sites of information" (p.
>177).  Despite the passivity of the abduction experience, which Dean
>links to our passivity in the face of multiplying technology and the
>instability of "reality," and since resistance is indeed futile,
>what agency and what control we have lies in communicating our
>experiences and creating "networks of community" (p. 180).
>
>While Dean draws compelling connections between televised images of
>astronauts, alien abduction, cyberspace, and virtual reality, her
>book, in a sense, participates in the very same concern with
>interconnectedness that she writes about.  Her persistent emphasis
>on the instability of reality has a paranoid tinge to it,
>particularly as she refuses to state whether she believes in
>abduction or not.  Instead she focuses on the subversive potential
>of abduction narratives, a potential I believe she overstates,
>describing them as an appropriate response to an age in which truth
>is tenuous and multiple.  Thus she seems to side with abduction
>researchers in their dismissal of objective and expert opinion; Dean
>suggests that the scientific community fails to understand that
>there is no basis for an overarching, consensus reality.
>
>There are a few other weaknesses.  Dean confines her argument to the
>United States; one cannot help wondering if it is only in the U.S.
>that abduction narratives appear, and if not, how their general
>pattern may differ in other countries.  Dean's book also has a very
>topical nature; in failing to gloss references to such personalities
>as Barney Frank and such events as Heaven's Gate, she limits the
>useful lifespan of her study.  While such references are familiar to
>a contemporary reader, they may not be familiar to a reader five or
>ten years from now.
>
>Another curious feature of the book is Dean's adoption of the very
>discourse she analyzes; the words "icon," "link" and "click on"
>appear repeatedly, and not necessarily in discussions of the World
>Wide Web itself.  The use of such Internet-based language again
>limits the useful lifespan of the book (will we be clicking on links
>and icons ten years from now?) and again hints that Dean herself
>participates in the "virtual reality" she is analyzing.  As she
>herself points out, her approach, "the notion that abduction
>provides a cultural expression of the confused passivity
>accompanying the collapse of the real" (p. 123), does not contradict
>the claims of abduction researchers.  Dean's avoidance of taking a
>position on the truthfulness of abduction accounts seems
>disingenuous given her apparent promotion of the paranoid and
>"cyberian" mode of thinking she describes.
>
>The book also suffers from a frequent reiteration of her main
>points; within each chapter and throughout the book as a whole, her
>ideas are frequently repeated more than developed.  Nonetheless,
>Dean's support for her arguments is extensive, and she provides a
>very readable and compelling account of the typical pattern of
>abduction narratives and the cultural context in which they occur.
>She draws her examples of the ubiquitousness of alien images in our
>culture from a variety of media--books, web sites, television and
>film, and advertising--and her analysis of the fears such images and
>accounts arise from is very convincing, particularly the association
>of extraterrestial aliens with the noncitizen kind and her
>association of abduction fears with fears of technology.  I also
>found the chapters on the "theatricality" and "televisuality" of the
>space program to be particularly persuasive; Dean effectively
>examines the image of the astronauts and the political context in
>which such images were produced.  The book is richly detailed and a
>worthwhile read.
>
>       This review is copyrighted (c) 1998 by H-Net and the
>       Popular Culture and the American Culture Associations.
>       It may be reproduced electronically for educational or
>       scholarly use.  The Associations reserve print rights
>       and permissions. (Contact: P.C.Rollins at the following
>       electronic address: Rollinspc@aol.com)
-- 
Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean@primenet.com >
Home Page:  < http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Shadowlands/8832 >
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