A Key Premise and the Argument in Short

First the argument. Adapting ideas from Giorgio Agamben, supplemented by Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, we argue that the UFO taboo is functionally necessitated by the anthropocentric metaphysics of modern sovereignty. Modern rule typically works less through sovereign coercion than through biopolitics, governing the conditions of life itself s1Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended (New York: Picador, 2003).. In this liberal apparatus of security, power flows primarily from the deployment of specialized knowledges for the regularization of populations, rather than from the ability to kill. But when such regimes of governmentality are threatened, the traditional face of the state s2Michel Foucault, “Governmentality,” Ideology and Consciousness 6 (1979): 5-21., its sovereign power, comes to the fore: the ability to determine when norms and law should be suspended—in Carl Schmitt’s terms, to decide the exception s3Carl 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).. The UFO compels decision because it exceeds modern governmentality, but we argue that the decision cannot be made. The reason is that modern decision presupposes anthropocentrism, which is threatened metaphysically by the possibility that UFOs might be ETs. As such, genuine UFO ignorance cannot be acknowledged without calling modern sovereignty itself into question. This puts the problem of normalizing the UFO back onto governmentality, where it can be “known” only without trying to find out what it is—through a taboo. The UFO, in short, is a previously unac- knowledged site of contestation in an ongoing historical project to constitute sovereignty in anthropocentric terms. Importantly, our argument here is structural rather than agentic s4Albert Harrison & James Thomas, “The Kennedy Assassination, Unidentified Flying Objects, and Other Conspiracies,” Systems Research and Behavioral Science 14 (1997): 113-28.. We are not saying the authorities are hiding The Truth about UFOs, much less that it is ET. We are saying they cannot ask the question.

Although we draw on theorists not associated with epistemic realism, a key premise of our argument is that a critical theorization of the UFO taboo in relation to modern rule is possible only if it includes a realist moment, which grants to things-in-themselves (here the UFO) the power to affect rational belief. To see why, consider Jodi Dean’s otherwise excellent Aliens in America, one of the few social scientific works to treat UFOs as anything more than figments of over-active imaginations s5Jodi 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).. Like us, Dean emphasizes that it is not known what UFOs are, leaving open the ET possibility. But for her the significance of this ignorance is to exemplify the postmodern breakdown of all modern certainties, such that scientific truth is now everywhere a “fugitive”—not that it might be overcome by considering, scientifically, the reality of UFOs.

In the UFO context such anti-realism is problematic, since its political effect is ironically to reinforce the skeptical orthodoxy: if UFOs cannot be known scientifically then why bother study them? As realist institutions, science and the modern state do not concern themselves with what cannot be known scientifically. For example, whatever their religious beliefs, social scientists always study religion as “methodological atheists,” assuming that God plays no causal role in the material world. Anything else would be considered irrational today; as Jürgen Habermas puts it, a philosophy that oversteps the bounds of methodological atheism loses its philosophical seriousness s6Habermas, “A Conversation about God and World,” 160; also see Austin Harrington, “Habermas’s Theological Turn?,” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 37 (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 Behaviour 36 (2006): 57-75.. By not allowing that UFOs might be knowable scientifically, therefore, Dean implicitly embraces a kind of methodological atheism about UFOs, which as with God shifts attention to human representations of the UFO, not its reality.

Yet UFOs are different than God in one key respect: many leave physical traces on radar and film, which suggests they are natural rather than supernatural phenomena and thus amenable in principle to scientific investigation. Since authoritative discourse in effect denies this by treating UFOs as an irrational belief, a realist moment is necessary to call this discourse fully into question. Interestingly, therefore, in contrast to their usual antag- onism, in the UFO context science would be critical theory. In this light Dean’s claim that UFOs are unknowable appears anthropocentrically monological. It might be that We, talking among ourselves, cannot know what UFOs are, but any “They” probably have a good idea, and the only way to remain open to that dialogical potential is to consider the reality of the UFO itself s7 cf. Bennett, The Enchantment of Modern Life; and Marguerite La Caze, “The Encounter between Wonder and Generosity,” Hypatia 17 (2002): 1-19.. Failure to do so merely reaffirms the UFO taboo.

In foregrounding the realist moment in our analysis we mean not to foreclose a priori the possibility that UFOs can be known scientifically; however, we make no claim that they necessarily would be known if only they were studied. Upon close inspection many UFOs do turn out to have conventional explanations, but there is a hard core of cases, perhaps 25 to 30 percent, that seem to resist such explanations, and their reality may indeed be humanly unknowable—although without systematic inquiry we cannot say. Thus, and importantly, our overarching position here is one of methodological agnosticism rather than realism, which mitigates the potential for epistemological conflict with the non-realist political theorists we draw upon below s8Porpora, “Methodological Atheism”; and Sven Rosenkranz, “Agnosticism as a Third Stance,” Mind 116 (2007): 55-104.. Nevertheless, in the context of natural phenomena like UFOs agnosticism can itself become dogma if not put to the test, which requires adopting a realist stance at least instrumentally or “strategically,” and seeing what happens s9Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “In a Word: Interview,” in Outside in the Teaching Machine (London: Routledge, 1993), 1-24.. This justifies acting as if the UFO is knowable, while recognizing that it might ultimately exceed human grasp.