Modern sovereignty is anthropocentric, constituted and organized by reference to human beings alone. Although a metaphysical assumption, anthropocentrism is of immense practical import, enabling modern states to command loyalty and resources from their subjects in pursuit of political projects. It has limits, however, which are brought clearly into view by the authoritative taboo on taking UFOs seriously. UFOs have never been systematically investigated by science or the state, because it is assumed to be known that none are extraterrestrial. Yet in fact this is not known, which makes the UFO taboo puzzling given the ET possibility. Drawing on the work of Giorgio Agamben, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida, the puzzle is explained by the functional imperatives of anthropocentric sovereignty, which cannot decide a UFO exception to anthropocentrism while preserving the ability to make such a decision. The UFO can be “known” only by not asking what it is.
Anthropocentrism need not mean all human beings, since historically many physical humans were not considered humans socially. cf. Philip Almond, " Adam, Pre-Adamites, and Extra-Terrestrial Beings in Early Modern Europe," Journal of Religious History30 ( 2006): 163-74.
2.
Majid Yar , "From Nature to History, and Back Again: Blumenberg, Strauss and the Hobbesian Community," History of the Human Sciences15 (2002): 53-73.
3.
Gesa Lindemann , "The Analysis of the Borders of the Social World ," Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour35 (2005): 69-98.
4.
Giorgio Agamben, The Open: Man and Animal, trans. Kevin Attell (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004 ).
5.
Both the promise and the limits of modern critique are suggested by Jürgen Habermas, "A Conversation about God and World," in Religion and Rationality, ed. E. Mendietta ( Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2002), 147-67; and William Connolly, Why I Am Not a Secularist (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999).
6.
Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women (London: Routledge, 1991); Giorgio Agamben, The Open; Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (New York: Vintage, 1973); Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987); and Jane Bennett, The Enchantment of Modern Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001).
7.
We refer to "the" UFO, because that is how UFOs are treated in modern rule, as singular phenomenon. As known from subsequent identifications, however, UFOs are in fact not all the same.
8.
The official report by the Belgian Air Force is at www.ufoevidence.org/documents/ doc408.htm.
9.
In the literature, 100,000 is a stylized figure since there is no complete database.
10.
Peter Sturrock , "Report on a Survey of the Membership of the American Astronomical Society Concerning the UFO Problem," Journal of Scientific Exploration8 ( 1994): 1-45.
11.
We lack the space to defend this key empirical assumption of our argument. Suffice it to say that although there is some variation in UFO secrecy, in our view the only serious potential exception to the taboo itself is France (although there have been suggestions the Soviet Union became interested in UFOs in the last days of the regime). Since 1977 the French government has quietly funded study on selected UFO cases; see Gildas Bourdais, "The Death and Rebirth of Official French UFO Studies," International UFO Reporter31 (2007): 12-16. This falls far short of a systematic effort to find out what UFOs are, but in light of our argument the French case (and perhaps Soviet) would be worth examining in detail.
12.
The only nominally scientific study of UFOs in the United States was the politicized and methodologically flawed 1969 Condon Report; Edward Condon and Daniel Gillmor, eds., Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1969). For critiques of the Report see David Saunders and Roger Harkins, UFOs? Yes! Where the Condon Committee Went Wrong (New York: World Publishing, 1968); J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience (New York: Marlowe, 1972); James MacDonald, "Science in Default: Twenty-two Years of Inadequate UFO Investigations," in UFOs-A Scientific Debate , ed. Carl Sagan and Thornton Page (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1972), 52-122; and Peter Sturrock, "An Analysis of the Condon Report on the Colorado UFO Project," Journal of Scientific Exploration1 ( 1987): 75-100.
13.
cf. Lorraine Daston, ed., Biographies of Scientific Objects (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000).
14.
The orthodoxy's attitude toward ufology is typified by the Skeptical Inquirer (circulation: 35,000), published by the aptly named "CSICOP," or Committee for the Scientific Investigation of the Claims of the Paranormal. See T. Pinch and H.M. Collins, "Private Science and Public Knowledge," Social Studies of Science14 (1984): 521-48.
15.
On the U.S. government's involvement with the UFO issue see David Jacobs, The UFO Controversy in America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975), and Richard Dolan, UFOs and the National Security State (Rochester, NY: Keyhole, 2000).
16.
See Ernest Hook, ed., Prematurity in Scientific Discovery (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).
17.
Note that the taboo is not necessarily on publicity; although official secrecy about UFOs is pervasive, it is a contingent rather than essential feature of the taboo (also see note 74 below). As for the term taboo, if one may speak of a spectrum the UFO taboo seems deeper than the "nuclear taboo" in international politics (Nina Tannewald, "The Nuclear Taboo," International Organization53 [ 1999]: 433-68), but shallower than the paradigmatic anthropological cases of incest or cannibalism. cf. Nachman Ben-Yehuda , Deviance and Moral Boundaries ( Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985).
18.
Indeed, Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) advocates have been at the forefront of UFO skepticism. For a critique of SETI see Alex Ellery, Allen Tough, and David Darling, "SETI-A Scientific Critique and a Proposal for Further Observational Modes," Journal of the British Interplanetary Society56 (2003): 262-87.
19.
On securitization see Barry Buzan, Ole Waever, and Jaap de Wilde , eds., Security: A New Framework for Analysis ( Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1998 ).
20.
Nancy Tuana , "Coming to Understand: Orgasm and the Epistemology of Ignorance," Hypatia19 (2004): 194-232; and Tuana, "The Speculum of Ignorance," Hypatia21 (2006): 1-19.
21.
For the latter see especially Ron Westrum, "Social Intelligence about Anomalies: The Case of UFOs," Social Studies of Science7 (1977): 271-302.
22.
Michel Foucault , Society Must Be Defended ( New York: Picador, 2003).
23.
Michel Foucault , "Governmentality," Ideology and Consciousness6 (1979): 5-21.
24.
Carl Schmitt , Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006); also see Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).
25.
cf. Albert Harrison and James Thomas, "The Kennedy Assassination, Unidentified Flying Objects, and Other Conspiracies," Systems Research and Behavioral Science14 ( 1997): 113-28.
26.
Jodi Dean, Aliens in America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998); see also Brenda Denzler, The Lure of the Edge (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); and Debbora Battaglia, ed., E.T. Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005). In contrast, and more typical of authoritative attitudes in social science, recent research in psychology on "alien abductions" dismisses the ET hypothesis a priori; see Susan Clancy, Abducted (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005 ); and, for an alternative view, David Jacobs, ed., UFOs and Abductions (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000).
27.
Habermas, " A Conversation about God and World," 160; also see Austin Harrington, "Habermas's Theological Turn?," Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour37 (2007): 45-61. For a provocative critique of methodological atheism see Douglas Porpora , "Methodological Atheism, Methodological Agnosticism, and Religious Experience," Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour36 (2006): 57-75.
28.
cf. Bennett, The Enchantment of Modern Life; and Marguerite La Caze, "The Encounter between Wonder and Generosity,"Hypatia17 (2002): 1-19.
29.
Porpora, "Methodological Atheism"; and Sven Rosenkranz, "Agnosticism as a Third Stance," Mind116 (2007): 55-104.
30.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, "In a Word: Interview," in Outside in the Teaching Machine (London: Routledge, 1993), 1-24.
31.
The widely used phrase is misleading, however, because "skepticism" should imply doubt but openness, whereas in UFO discourse it has been deformed into positive denial.
32.
See especially Jacques Vallee and Janine Vallee, Challenge to Science: The UFO Enigma (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1966); McDonald, "Science in Default"; Hynek , The UFO Experience; and Michael Swords, "Science and the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis in Ufology," Journal of UFO Studies1 (1989): 67-102.
33.
cf. John Lemons , Kristin Shrader-Frechette, and Carl Cranor, "The Precautionary Principle: Scientific Uncertainty and Type I and Type II Errors," Foundations of Science2 (1997): 207-36.
34.
Illobrand von Ludwiger, Best UFO Cases-Europe ( Las Vegas, NV: National Institute for Discovery Science , 1998); and Peter Sturrock, The UFO Enigma (New York: Warner Books, 1999).
35.
Peter Kosso , "Detecting Extrasolar Planets," Studies in History and Philosophy of Science37 (2006): 224-36.
36.
Peter Lipton , "The Epistemology of Testimony," Studies in History and Philosophy of Science29 (1998): 1-31.
37.
Michael Crowe , The Extraterrestrial Life Debate, 1750-1900 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
38.
Peter Ward and David Brownlee, Rare Earth (New York: Copernicus Books, 2000).
39.
Stuart Kauffman , At Home in the Universe ( Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1995).
40.
Martyn Fogg , "Temporal Aspects of the Interaction Among the First Galactic Civilizations," Icarus69 (1987): 370-84.
41.
Stephen Webb , Where is Everybody? (New York: Copernicus Books, 2002).
42.
J. Deardorff , B. Haisch, B. Maccabee, and H.E. Puthoff, "Inflation-Theory Implications for Extraterrestrial Visitation," Journal of the British Interplanetary Society58 (2005): 43-50.
43.
H.E. Puthoff , S.R. Little, and M. Ibison, "Engineering the Zero-Point Field and Polarizable Vacuum for Interstellar Flight," Journal of the British Interplanetary Society55 ( 2002): 137-44.
44.
John Ball, "The Zoo Hypothesis," Icarus19 (1973): 347-49; J. Deardorff, "Examination of the Embargo Hypothesis as an Explanation for the Great Silence," Journal of the British Interplanetary Society40 (1987 ): 373-79.
45.
Foucault, "Governmentality ," 11.
46.
See also Foucault, Society Must Be Defended.
47.
Translator's note in Schmitt, Political Theology, 5, footnote 1.
48.
Agamben, State of Exception , 4.
49.
Sergei Prozorov , "X/Xs: Toward a General Theory of the Exception ," Alternatives30 ( 2005): 81-112.
50.
Schmitt, Political Theology , 5.
51.
Ibid.
52.
Agamben, State of Exception.
53.
On ontological security, see Jennifer Mitzen, "Ontological Security in World Politics," European Journal of International Relations12 (2006): 341-70.
54.
In ufology, this is known as the "ontological shock" argument; we prefer "metaphysical" to highlight the ways in which the UFO is presented within modern discourse as an almost supernatural phenomenon.
55.
Jacques Derrida, "Plato's Pharmacy," in Dissemination, trans. B. Johnson ( Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 63-171.
56.
Jack Reynolds , "Habituality and Undecidability: A Comparison of Merleau-Ponty and Derrida on the Decision," International Journal of Philosophical Studies10 ( 2002): 449-66, at 450.
57.
Aletta Norval , "Hegemony after Deconstruction: The Consequences of Undecidability," Journal of Political Ideologies9 (2004): 139-57, at 143, quoting Ernesto Laclau.
58.
Here there is a direct contrast with conspiracy theories, which assume that a decision has been made. If so, then this part of our argument is wrong, although one might then fairly ask why the decision was kept secret.
59.
Ibid., 147.
60.
cf. Edward Berryman, "Taking Pictures of Jesus: Producing the Material Presence of a Divine Other," Human Studies28 (2006): 431-52.
61.
See Robert Jahn and Brenda Dunne, "The PEAR Proposition," Journal of Scientific Exploration19 ( 2005): 195-245.
62.
For purposes of espionage, by the United States and Soviet Union during the cold war; Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff, Mind-Reach (Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads, 2005).
63.
Felicity Mellor , "Colliding Worlds: Asteroid Research and the Legitimization of War in Space," Social Studies of Science37 (2007): 499-531.
64.
Bernard Baars , "Subjective Experience is Probably Not Limited to Humans: The Evidence from Neurobiology and Behavior," Consciousness and Cognition14 ( 2005): 7-21.
65.
Raymond Corbey , The Metaphysics of Apes ( Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
66.
Carl Jung, Flying Saucers (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978). This invites a Lacanian reading of the UFO as "the Real."
67.
Dolan, UFOs and the National Security State, 193-203.
68.
See note 12 above.
69.
Peter Galison , "Removing Knowledge," Critical Inquiry31 (2004): 229-43. On UFO secrecy, see especially Dolan, UFOs and the National Security State; and, for the official view, Gerald Haines , "CIA's Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-1990 ," Intelligence and National Security14 (1999): 26-49; and Charles Ziegler, "UFOs and the US Intelligence Community," National Security14 (1999): 1-25.
70.
For introductions to this literature, see Dean, Aliens in America ; and Jack Bratich, "Making Politics Reasonable: Conspiracism, Subjectification, and Governing Through Styles of Thought," in Foucault, Cultural Studies, and Governmentality, ed. J. Bratich, J. Packer, and C. McCarthy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003), 67-100.
71.
Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann , The Spiral of Silence, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).
72.
Bratich, "Making Politics Reasonable."
73.
See www.cnes-geipan.fr. The 25 percent figure is comparable to the 30 percent unexplained cases acknowledged by the Condon Report.
74.
In terms of the taxonomy of ignorance developed by Tuana in "The Speculum of Ignorance," the French and British actions might move them into the category of "knowing that we do not know, but not caring to know." That is progress insofar as it enables subsequent knowing, but whether it will remains to be seen.
75.
See, for example, Ann Druffel, Firestorm: Dr. James E. McDonald's Fight for UFO Science (Columbus, NC: Wild Flower Press, 2003); and, inter alia, Dolan, UFOs and the National Security State.
76.
For example, Scot Stride, "An Instrument-Based Method to Search for Extraterrestrial Interstellar Robotic Probes," Journal of the British Interplanetary Society54 (2001): 2-14.
77.
The ethical opening we take to be profound, pointing on one hand toward the UFO as faceless Levinasian Other that demands a radical acknowledgement of human limits in practicing an ethics of responsibility and on the other toward dialogical possibilities with non-human Nature that the Levinasian perspective does not suggest.
