>From Reason Magazine OnLine REASON * March 1999 Learned Nonsense By Mark Goldblatt Aliens in America: Conspiracy Cultures from Outerspace to Cyberspace, by Jodi Dean, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 242 pages, $15.95 paper The author of Aliens in America, Jodi Dean, is a professor at Hobart and William Smith Colleges; the publisher is a respected university press. With a cursory glance at the title, therefore, an unwary reader might anticipate a learned inquiry into extraterrestrial phenomena. But in Dean's poststructuralist take on UFO sightings and alien abductions, E.T. takes a back seat to politics. From the first page to the last, in fact, the author remains doggedly agnostic with regard to the reality of what she is describing. Reality itself (a word she prefers to put inside quotation marks) is pretty much beside the point for Dean, whose academic field is not astronomy but political science and whose previous work concerned the rather more earthbound subjects of feminism and identity politics. <<Remainder of article @ http://www.reasonmag.com/9903/bk.mg.learned.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~ A<>E<>R The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority. -Thomas Huxley + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
