They Know Us Better Than We Know Ourselves: The History and Politics of Alien Abduction

253 Pages·2016·1.2 MB·English

by  Bridget Brown

They Know Us Better Than
We Know Ourselves
They Know Us
Better Than We
Know Ourselves
The History and Politics of
Alien Abduction
Bridget Brown
a
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
new york university press
New York and London
www.nyupress.org
© 2007by New York University
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Brown, Bridget, Ph. D.
They know us better than we know ourselves : the history and
politics of alien abduction / Bridget Brown.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8147-9921-5(cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8147-9921-3(cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-8147-9922-2(pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8147-9922-1(pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Alien abduction. I. Title.
BF2050.B762007
001.942—dc22 2007006143
New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper,
and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability.
Manufactured in the United States of America
c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
p 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
1 Elusive Shreds of Memory: The Trauma and
Recovery of Alien Abduction 21
2 The Invisible Epidemic: Abduction Traumatists 37
3 Good Subjects: Submitting to the Alien 52
4 My Body Is Not My Own: The Intimate Invasion of
Alien Technology 70
5 An Ongoing and Systematic Breeding Experiment 83
6 They Have the Secrets: Conspiracy Theory as
Alternative History 100
7 This Is Worse Than Friggin’ Aliens: Conspiracy
Theory and the War against Citizens 121
8 Look and See What You Have Done: Abductees and
the Burden of Global Consciousness 142
9 You Have a Sensitivity: The Limits of Chosenness 160
10 Reality Gets Exploded: Abductee Culture,
Abductee Belief 177
Conclusion: Alien Abduction and the
New Face of Terror 207
Notes 211
Bibliography 239
Index 243
About the Author 247
v
Acknowledgments
First, thanks to the abductees who were, for the most part,
extremely willing and helpful participants in this project. I am grateful
also to the folks at The Center for UFO Studies for complete access to
their fabulous archive.
I also offer my profuse thanks to many willing and astute readers.
These include Andrew Ross, Lisa Duggan, Toby Miller, and Cyrus Patell
of New York University. Thanks also to my colleagues Sandie Fried-
man, Rebekah Kowal, Leslie Paris, and Deborah Williams. And to Peter
Knight, coordinator of the conspiracy cultures conference held at King
Alfred University, at which a version of chapter 4 was presented in
1998, and editor of Conspiracy Nation: The Politics of Paranoia in
Postwar America (NYU Press, 2002), in which a related version of
chapter 4appears. And to Eric Zinner and Emily Park at NYU Press for
their patience and faith in the project.
I dedicate this book to my family and friends for their support dur-
ing the long haul, for the innumerable alien cartoons, articles, pho-
tographs, and related ephemera they sent me, as well as for the endless
opportunities to discuss my project and fine-tune my arguments. And fi-
nally, to my husband, Lawrence Lipkin.
vii
Introduction
The salient characteristic of the traumatic event is its power to in-
spire helplessness and fear. —Judith Herman1
It starts with fear and opens up into exploration.
—Jean, alleged alien abductee
Welcome to SPACE
In the summer of 1999Henry, one of the alleged alien abductees I inter-
viewed for this project, invited me to attend a meeting of the SPACE
(Search Project for Aspects of Close Encounters) support group for ab-
ductees and other experiencers of paranormal phenomena. Henry has
been facilitating such SPACE meetings since 1992. SPACE’s Statement
of Purpose, as it appears in the organization’s newsletter, the SPACE
Explorer, reads:
The support and research group gives UFO experiencers a chance to
share openly in a comfortable social setting and to explore experi-
ences on the unknown frontier of close encounters. This interactive and
proactive program tries to help by providing understanding; caring sup-
port; nonjudgmental, meaningful feedback unencumbered by belief sys-
tems; and professional resources. In our search for truth, we hope to en-
courage experiencers toward real empowerment by overcoming fears;
creating new life skills; nurturing transformation; and, for those who
wish, conducting proactive interaction with the unknown.
The meeting that I attended took place in the apartment of a member
who lives in a doorman building on the Upper East Side of New York
City and focused on open sharing with other experiencers. I was struck
by the sense of fellowship among attendees. There were eighteen people
at the meeting I attended, including me. Attendees were asked to bring
1
2 | Introduction
Fig.1.SPACEExplorernewslettercover.SPACEExplorer8,no.4(winter2000),Iissue6.
snacks for a mid-meeting refreshment break. I contributed a bag of tor-
tilla chips, was introduced, and the conversation began. Attendees be-
gan by swapping possibly alien-related ailments and experiences: does
anyone have headaches? Experience lucent dreams? Remote viewing?
Does anyone see fire flies? Blue beams? People considered these ques-
tions and reported related experiences. The conversation organized it-
Introduction | 3
self around the ways in which things “bleed through” from different re-
alities and dimensions for the people in attendance. Tanya, whose story
I discuss further in chapter 7, contributed that, in her experience, the
alien facets of her own identity occasionally bleed through for others to
see. One other member of the group—a woman in her late sixties who
lives in the West Village—shared several stories of conscious, waking
“breakthroughs,” episodes during which she sees things while walking
down the street or sitting in a restaurant, things that others simply do
not see. To me, an outside observer, such accounts sounded delusional.
Yet here in this “comfortable social setting” they were met with, as
promised, “non-judgmental feedback.”
The conversation then turned to alien abduction specifically, to how
people do and should deal with their mysterious experiences. Reiterat-
ing the ongoing debate between widely published alien abduction ex-
perts Budd Hopkins and John Mack—a debate over the central mean-
ing and purpose of abduction that I have traced throughout this project
—SPACE members discussed whether they should “remain victims” or
use their abduction-related suffering to, in the words of one attendee,
“transform into something totally powerful.” In this conversation an in-
teresting sort of factionalism emerged. Several attendees who were new
to the group spoke in New Age/twelve-step parlance characteristic of
John Mack and the “large group transformational work” he has done.2
They argued, in line with Mack, that powerful transformation can oc-
cur through trauma. Barbara, an attractive young woman with a glow
of affluence and West Coast good health, advocated dealing with the
alien abductor/victimizers by “releasing, surrendering the ego, and . . .
[coming] into higher consciousness.” She implored the group to try to
meet the enemy with love and positive energy for the greater good of
humankind.
Her suggestion was met with some nods, some bewildered silence,
and some resistance. Jim, an older gentleman wearing a ponytail, was
particularly unimpressed with her suggestion due to his belief that it is
really the very human members of our government that are the enemy.
The government, he stressed, would merely laugh at such expressions of
love and forgiveness. Conflict cannot be resolved through benevolent
and positive thought, he argued, when the powers that be operate on
the “CYA” principle—cover your ass. But Barbara was not easily
daunted. She suggested that if “we as a group”—abductees, victims—
forgave the government for what it had done, maybe conflict would be
4 | Introduction
resolved: the government would admit past wrongs and we would all
“move to a higher level.” Her thinking exemplifies the sort of blurring
between private and public, or social, “healing” in which abductees of-
ten engage. Barbara offered in support of her suggestion the story of a
two-time rape victim who is stronger, better than ever as a consequence
of her trauma. Making the common and always troubling equation be-
tween alleged abductees and rape victims, she proposed to the skepti-
cal hostess of the meeting, Sylvia, that she and others “give them”—ali-
ens, government, whatever forces conspire to oppress us—“what they
need with your heart,” in a sort of collective act of redemptive submis-
sion. Both Jim and Sylvia, more inclined toward the view espoused by
Budd Hopkins that the real and present threat of abduction must be
met with equal doses of self-defense and self-healing, were unconvinced.
For starters, Jim noted that, “some of us can’t do that. It’s too painful.”
Sylvia added, shifting back again from aliens to the government as cul-
prit, “I can’t forgive the government” citing the things the government
had done to citizens with “LSD and Agent Orange.”
In many ways the conversation from the SPACE meeting with which
I open, and the meeting in general, contains and exemplifies most of the
features of belief in alien abduction that I will discuss in the chapters
that follow. A number of interpretive camps have emerged among those
who espouse and profit from the “ET hypothesis,” or the argument that
actual extraterrestrial aliens regularly and repeatedly abduct humans. I
tack back and forth between these approaches throughout this book.
They include the New Age argument that alien abduction is a mode of
spiritual transformation; the so-called “realist” argument that alien ab-
duction is simply physical and emotional victimization to be treated
therapeutically; and the conspiracy theory argument that alien abduc-
tion is the product of human-alien conspiracy and government decep-
tion. So too did the conversation at the SPACE meeting reflect many of
the central anxieties to which abductees give voice in their accounts, in-
cluding the struggle with the possibilities and limitations of victim iden-
tity based on certain ideas about trauma; the quest to locate various
“powers that be” in the alien; the struggle for control of knowledge,
both of one’s self and of one’s world; and the unsettling belief that the
body is the site of that struggle.
The unique ways in which stories of abduction by extraterrestrials
give expression to these anxieties is of central concern to me throughout
the chapters that follow. I seek to offer a critical but respectful reading