Aliens in America

by Jodi Dean

Book Overview

In a provocative analysis of public culture and popular concerns, Jodi Dean examines how serious UFO-logists and their pop-culture counterparts tap into fears, phobias, and conspiracy theories with a deep past and a vivid present in American society. Aliens, the author shows, provide cultural icons through which to access the new conditions of democratic politics at the millennium. Because of the technological complexity of our age, political choices...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0801484685
• ISBN13: 9780801484681
• Release Date: March 1998
• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Cultural implications of an "extreme deviant" subject

I write as a "not comformist" natural scientist that recognizes that this book is an interesting postmodernist study of a extraordinarily deviant theme. As such this study "textualize" the problem of evidence and proof (of eg UFO abductions) and focuse at the cultural-political implications of this topic. Is easy (and same times necessary) to brand postmodernist critiques of mainstream science as "Higher Superstition" but the quality of analysis and writing of this book gives food to many more unexpected multidisciplinary questions that we dare to think of if we follow "only" the best of the debunkers arguments. Are members of the mainstream prepared to tolerate the use of the word "naivette" applied to the apostol of true science and UFO debunker Carl Sagan as does the author of this book?. Well, if we may learn something of she (the author) is that skepticism is a very subtle and hard adquired virtue not necessarily to be atributed only to the defenders of one position, in this case the people(natural scientists) on the side of the official political dogma.

Those who speak rarely understand what they read

It seems,after reading the book, having Jodi Dean as a professor, and taking more than 1 theory class, that most negative criticisms of this book come from those who are clueless. "Aliens" is a step-forward in critical thinking as well as cultural analysis. It does not pose any statements about existence or nonexistence, but rather the contemporay status of issues like truth and security. do not read this book if you are looking to solve the alien puzzle. However, if you are curious to a contemporary view of subaltern counterculture in ameria, this is not a bad place to start.

One of the best and most original treatments of this topic.

Excellent! Possibly the only book on the subject to seriously examine what popular interest in this subject actually says about our world. This book is not about arcana; if you're looking for new tales of crashed saucers or big-eyed Pleadians, look elsewhere. Instead, the author sheds light on questions of evidence, real government conspiracies, "plausible denial", perceptions of reality, witness veracity, televisuality, UFOs, etc., and challenges the reader to define exactly what is the "consensus reality". The chapter on the role of women during the U.S. space program and the "citizen witness" is by itself worth the price of admission. The freshest look at this topic in years.

An Important and Provocative Book

This book analyses critically the implications of mediated America for democracy in America. Dean complements her earlier work on the theory of discursive democracy by starting with contemporary society, rather than theory, and then considering the theoretical implications for democracy in light of her survey of media culture. Dean finds that contemporary conditions of proliferating standards of value make it difficult to come to democratic agreement. Thus, while liberal and democratic thinkers value rational inquiry as the foundation for truth, Dean finds faith, force, and prejudice the predominant basis for accepting some claims rather than others under these current conditions. In light of some rather unfair and indeed highly ideological reviews of her work recently (the NY Rev of Books comes to mind), I am left wondering, upon completion of the book,whether such reviewers have sought to kill the messenger for daring to utter her (critical) message.