Resistance

We have called ours a “critical” theory, in that it rests on a normative assumption that the limits of modern rule should be exposed. In the present context this means that human beings should try to know the UFO. Although we believe the case for this presumption is over-determined and overwhelming, it is not a case we can make here. Nevertheless, it seems incumbent upon us to follow through on the practical logic of our theory, so taking its desirability as given, in conclusion we address the question of resistance to the UFO taboo.

We have called ours a “critical” theory, in that it rests on a normative assumption that the limits of modern rule should be exposed. In the present context this means that human beings should try to know the UFO. Although we believe the case for this presumption is over-determined and overwhelming, it is not a case we can make here. Nevertheless, it seems incumbent upon us to follow through on the practical logic of our theory, so taking its desirability as given, in conclusion we address the question of resistance to the UFO taboo.

The structuralism of our argument might suggest that resistance is futile. However, the structure of the UFO taboo also has aporias and fissures that make it—and the anthropocentric structure of rule that it sustains—potentially unstable.

One is the UFO itself, which in its persistent recurrence generates an ongoing need for its normalization. Modern rule might not recognize the UFO, but in the face of continuing anomalies maintaining such nonrecognition requires work. In that respect the UFO is part of the constitutive, unnormalized outside of modern sovereignty, which can be included in authoritative discourse only through its exclusion.

Within the structure of modern rule there are also at least two fissures that complicate maintaining UFO ignorance. One is the different knowledge interests of science and the state. While the two are aligned in authoritative UFO discourse, the state is ultimately interested in maintaining a certain regime of truth (particularly in the face of metaphysical insecurity), whereas science recognizes that its truths can only be tentative. Theory may be stub- born, but the presumption in science is that reality has the last word, which creates the possibility of scientific knowledge countering the state’s dogma.

The other fissure is within liberalism, the constitutive core of modern governmentality. Even as it produces normalized subjects who know that “belief” in UFOs is absurd, liberal governmentality justifies itself as a dis- course that produces free-thinking subjects who might doubt it s1Bratich, “Making Politics Reasonable.”. It is in this context that we would place the recent disclosure by the French government (and at press time the British too) of its long-secret UFO files (1 600 reports), including its investigations of selected cases, of which the French acknowledge 25 percent as unexplained s2See www.cnes-geipan.fr. The 25 percent figure is comparable to the 30 percent unex- plained cases acknowledged by the Condon Report. . Given that secrecy is only a contingent feature of the UFO taboo, and that even the French are still far from seeking systematic knowledge of UFOs, this disclosure is not in itself a serious challenge to our argument. However, the French action does illustrate a potential within liberalism to break with authoritative common sense n1In 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., even at the risk of exposing the foundations of modern sovereignty to insecurity.

The kind of resistance that can best exploit these fissures might be called militant agnosticism. Resistance must be agnostic because by the realist standards of modernity, regarding the UFO/ET question neither atheism nor belief is epistemically justified; we simply do not know. Concretely, agnosticism means “seeing” rather than ignoring the UFO, taking it seriously as a truly unidentified object. Since it is precisely such seeing that the UFO taboo forbids, in this context seeing is resistance. However, resistance must also be militant, by which we mean public and strategic, or else it will indeed be futile. The reproduction of UFO ignorance depends crucially on those in positions of epistemic authority observing the UFO taboo. Thus, private agnosticism—of the kind moderns might have about God, for example—is itself part of the problem. Only breaking the taboo in public constitutes genuine resistance.

Even that is not enough, however, as attested by the long history of unsuccessful resistance to the UFO taboo to date s3See, 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.. The problem is that agnosticism alone does not produce knowledge, and thus reduce the ignorance upon which modern sovereignty depends. For a critical theory of anthropocentric rule, therefore, a science of UFOs ironically is required, and not just a science of individual cases after the fact, which can tell us only that some UFOs lack apparent conventional explanations. Rather, in this domain what is needed is paradoxically a systematic science, in which observations are actively sought in order to analyze patterns from which an intelligent presence might be inferred s4For example, Scot Stride, “An Instrument-Based Method to Search for Extraterrestrial Interstellar Robotic Probes,” Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 54 (2001): 2-14. . That would require money, infrastructure, and a long-term commitment of the kind that to date has been possible only for epistemic authorities, or precisely those actors most resistant to taking UFOs seriously. Still, given the potential disjunction of interest between science and the state, it is possible here for science to play a key role for critical theory. Whether such a science would actually overcome UFO ignorance is unknowable today, but it is only through it that We might move beyond the essentially theological discourse of belief and denial to a truly critical posture. Modern rule and its metaphysics are extraordinarily resilient, so the difficulties of such resistance cannot be overstated. Those who attempt it will have difficulty funding and publishing their work, and their reputations will suffer. UFO resistance might not be futile but it is certainly dangerous, because it is resistance to modern sovereignty itself. In this respect militant UFO agnosticism is akin to other forms of resistance to governmentality; however, whereas sovereignty has found ways of dealing with them, the UFO may reveal an Achilles heel. Like Achilles, the modern sovereign is a warrior whose function is to protect—in this case, from threats to the norm. Unlike conventional threats, however, the UFO threatens humans’ capacity to decide those threats, and so cannot be acknowledged without calling modern sovereignty itself into question. To what extent that would be desirable is a large normative question which we have bracketed here n2The 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 prac- ticing an ethics of responsibility and on the other toward dialogical possibilities with non- human Nature that the Levinasian perspective does not suggest.. But taking UFOs seriously would certainly embody the spirit of self-criticism that infuses liberal governmentality and academia in particular, and it would, thereby, foster critical theory. And indeed, if academics’ first responsibility is to tell the truth, then the truth is that after sixty years of modern UFOs, human beings still have no idea what they are, and are not even trying to find out. That should surprise and disturb us all, and cast doubt on the structure of rule that requires and sustains it.