|
Article Excerpt
ABSTRACTS
The alien is one of SF's core motifs, often discussed as the Other of the Human. One might think, then, that the very idea would allow SF artists limitless creativity, with an opportunity to imagine anything at all that is 'not human'. However, at least since the publication of Stanislaw Lem's Solaris, the question is continually raised: is it truly possible to imagine the not-human, or does anthropomorphism subtly shape every attempt to escape the human image? SF has been the niche of culture where philosophical questions about the alien, and the possibility of escaping anthropocentrism, have been explored most thoroughly. An examination of its vast literature reveals that this supposedly freely imagined strangeness of most aliens is modelled on terrestrial beings whose marginalized status is a cause of deep anxiety about rights and claims regarding property, animals, machines, women, children, and non-Western peoples.
**********
The New and the Other
Science fiction is the genre of art, and the mode of awareness, that sees things in terms of the New and the Other. Neither of these concepts--these mega-meta-super-hyper-chronotopes--is unique to SF. The New is at the heart of every modernist text; the Other is the motive for every adventure tale. But the modernist New is always locked in struggles with the past, and the Other in adventure fiction is defined by the familiar. In SF they are free to determine the universe with each other. SF's great trope of the new is the Future; of the other, the Alien.
The Slime Molds of Garrota
SF aliens are descended from the prodigies of early adventure stories (Pliny's mouthless Astomoi, dog-headed Kynokephaloi, sirens, Cyclopes, Amazons), and from the spirit-agents of mythology (angels, demons, avatars, fairies, magical animals). Aliens become distinct from them as soon as their existence is derived from science. Aliens do not come into being by fiat. They are material, just as human animals are, created by evolutionary processes in determinate environments. (1) They are conscious. They have goals. They have limits. And for the most part they are aware of these conditions--just as we are. They intersect with human beings at the point of technoscience, where they are discovered in our own explorations, or they happen on us through theirs. Aliens are our shadows, and we are theirs.
[...] the intelligent slime molds of Garrota considered human beings with all their technology not as phenomena in the real world, but as a figment of their own unimaginable imaginations [...] (2)
A Surplus of Strangers
As science-fictional creatures made possible by technoscience, aliens are particularly important for Anglo-Saxon culture. I know of no language other than English that has dedicated a word for them. The usual interlingual term is some form of 'extraterrestrial'--extraterrestre, ausserirdisch, Isei-jin. But those are too impersonal to cover this class of beings. The paradox of 'alien' is that it designates a creature at the line of the near (the house of the 'uncanny') and the distant (the space of the 'xenopsychozoic')--far enough away to warrant an untranslated Latin word, but near enough to leave it untouched by the inflexions of science. A foray into the OED reveals that 'alien' was already in use in the fourteenth century as a noun for 'a person belonging to another family, race, or nation', 'one who is subject to another country than that in which he resides. A resident foreign in origin and not naturalized, whose allegiance is thus due to a foreign state'. It began as a legal term concerned with whether one is certified to belong to a community, or not.
Most languages have distinct terms for 'stranger' and 'foreigner', yet most do not extend either of them to cover creatures from other worlds. Some, like Japanese, borrow the word from English for the purpose (Eirian). The title of Ridley Scott's film is not translated, no matter where it plays. It is Alien even in France. In the US, 'alien' has been closely tied to the concept of 'Alien Enemies' at least since the Alien and Sedition Act of 1798. Thus 'alien' was available to be used to identify a particular class of foreigners, defined by the fact that they could be officially defined. This, of course, guaranteed that they could not be. Since the immigration-control laws of the 1880s directed against the inflow of Chinese labourers, aliens can be legal or illegal, resident or nonresident, desirable or undesirable. They can be welcomed and eventually transformed into citizens, or deported and expelled. The Other can be made legally the same, or placed beyond the pale. Because its status is in flux, it always elicits uncertainty.
Resident Aliens
Old imperial cultures were familiar with the notion of alien residency. Before the advent of the nation state, hegemons usually granted an important place to foreigners living in their lands and contributing to their economies. The Athenians had their metics, who could almost never become citizens and vote, but served in the army, paid taxes, and were protected by the city laws. The Romans had their civitas peregrina, the community of conquered tribes who were permitted a limited membership in the Roman community. The caliphates had their dhimmi, non-Muslim People of the Book who were afforded limited protection by shari'a from persecution and jihad provided they followed strict rules forbidding blasphemy and intermarriage. The adoption of 'alien' to refer to extraterrestrials suggests the imperial confidence of Anglo-Saxon technoscientific culture contemplating its range, evoking Cecil Rhodes's sigh,
The world is nearly all parceled out, and what there is left of it, is being divided up, conquered and colonized. To think of these stars that you see overhead at night, these vast worlds which we can never reach. I would annex the planets if I could; I often think of that. It makes me sad to see them so clear and yet so far. (3)
The notion of aliens as outsiders, always incomplete and disadvantaged vis-a-vis the citizens of the state they lived in, underwent a radical destabilization with the early Christians. They, as the second-century Epistle to Diognetus phrases it, are essentially 'resident aliens' (paroikoi) in the fallen world, living in it but refusing to accept its dominion. (4) The alien begins to be a subject.
Weak Equality
Aliens enter the world through the portal of the lack. They may be the conscience of our morally obtuse species, like Voltaire's Micromegas. They may be our species' future, like Wells's Martians, or our unimagined past, like Lovecraft's Old Gods from Outer Space. They may be our reptile brains, our angelic overminds, our inner children, our outer shells. They may be what we oppress and repress. They may arrive only to draw attention to our incompleteness, or they may represent our other halves, our heart's desire, imaginary friends. The energy of the alien comes from human subjects' constant desire for a meaning-giving supplement, some new thing that can be recognized and yet be free of the banality of human social existence. It is a matter of indifference whether they inspire fear or love, just so long as they keep the portals open to the more. They come from the same energies that conjure up angels, demons, and apparitions, but the alien differs from all these because it cannot be certain of its relationship to others. Supernatural agents are called into being; aliens are thrown into it. Whatever powers they may have, they too need to survive--and, consequently, to understand. They may have clear intentions--to occupy the Green World, destroy the human vermin, mate with buxom babes, construct a galactic city--but these are goals born from their own needs, and they have, for better or worse, encountered human beings as they try to fulfil them. No cosmic order or great chain of being positions them in the hierarchy of sentience. In the end, they are driven by themselves. They exist, whether they like it or not, for themselves. However useful they may be for teaching humanity about cosmic humility, the dangers of development, or galactic guevarismo, some part of them is not functional--they exist in themselves. Even though they are only fictions, they enjoy a certain material resistance. They are commensurable with our own resistance to ourselves, precisely in their incommensurability.
Aliens surprise us. They invade from Mars without warning. They secretly abduct our parents and neighbours. They leave behind tools of inconceivable power. In their turn, they cannot be sure what to expect from us. We invoke them to supplement our lacks, but they always arrive exceeding what we need. And vice-versa.
Aliens are novums. (5) They are unexpected stones thrown into the pool of human social existence. They may know a lot about the pool, but, because they are not gods, they know as little about the shores as we do. The gods envied mortals the intensity of their passions. But they made us that way, so that when they descended to earth, it was to enjoy their creations. Aliens may envy us our water, our orgasms, our diamonds--in any case they arrive as equals. And equals of the weak are equally weak.
Aliens may appear to be gods. Lem's Great Players (in 'The New Cosmogony') communicate with each other by altering the laws of nature. (6) Aliens may even pretend to be gods shaping the course of cosmic evolution. They may appear to be masters of space and time, and demand to be human beings' masters accordingly. But they know they have limits, and suspect that there are others, somewhere, who will challenge or complete them. It is often our bad luck that we stand in...
|
