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Knowledge and the Production of Nonknowledge: An Exploration of Alien Mythology in Postwar America
This volume shows how alien stories represent and articulate issues of otherness in America's post-war technocratic society. Reading the texts that are constitutive of alien myth, the book explains how the political condition of post-war America is encoded at the level of popular culture. An analysis of America's consumer culture suggests that the consumption of alien myth is comparable with the technical and bureaucratic rationality of the American political order. By expanding this examination of the relationship between technology and myth, the study shows how during the age of technologocentrism the double-strategy constituted by the pursuit of consumption and the objectification of the alien other leads the dominant order toward a temporary communion with the technological system. As such, the commodity tranquilizes the centre's capital-anxiety (the panic caused by the machine's ability to both bestow being and cause non-being) and understand the permanent state of lack that is highlighted by both the form and content of the narratives described by alien myth.
205 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 13, 2014
The very example of really bad academic writing.
Jargon? Check!
Abstractions? Check, check.
Failure to define terms? Oh yeah.
No concern for the subject matter? Uh-huh.
Stupid infighting? You betcha!
At least the title is pretty good, even if it follows the typical monograph form: something catchy, colon, explanation of what the book is really about.
So what is the book really about?
It’s hard to say, at first, because Featherstone perversely refuses to define his terms. (There’s no entry in the index for ‘nonknowledge’!) And he’s dropping sesquipedalian words like ‘technologocentrism’ in the first two paragraphs. He assumes an easy familiarity with both the subject matter and the theorists he brings to bear on the questions he raises. But he really doesn’t care about the subject matter. It’s theory he likes, and he trails off into long, tangential fights with other theorists, although the book is really, really short already (about 175 pages of actual text.) The bulk of the last three chapters is filler.
But, cutting through all the argle-blargle, there is a point here. Featherstone claims that discussion of space aliens in the post-War era was a product of the late-capitalist mode of production. (Yes, he’s a Marxist in Frederic Jameson mold.) Further, he suggests, all modes of production will create with them some kind of nonknowledge, the shadow of genuine knowledge.
Yes, it was surprising to see a supposedly sophisticated theorist using (although not arguing for) unproblematic notions of truth and fiction. Oh well.
Put this way, the thesis doesn’t seem so novel. And it’s not. Most historians would say something similar without bother to import in the theoretical apparatus. Indeed, he seems primarily to be arguing against Jim Keith, a conspiracy theorist himself. He wants to say that the American psyche (yes, he uses that idea, too!) is responsible for creating aliens; it is not that discussion of aliens in fringe areas has altered the American Society.
It is possible that all the theoretical shenanigans could help illuminate some of the story, but Featherstone’s focus is so abstract one can never know. The last three chapters mostly give a thumbnail sketch of political and economic trends in America since the end of World War II. He clearly cares very little for the alien stories, and those who spread them—the stories are nonknowledge, the people victims of some of kind of Gramscian ideology.
Don’t bother.
Jargon? Check!
Abstractions? Check, check.
Failure to define terms? Oh yeah.
No concern for the subject matter? Uh-huh.
Stupid infighting? You betcha!
At least the title is pretty good, even if it follows the typical monograph form: something catchy, colon, explanation of what the book is really about.
So what is the book really about?
It’s hard to say, at first, because Featherstone perversely refuses to define his terms. (There’s no entry in the index for ‘nonknowledge’!) And he’s dropping sesquipedalian words like ‘technologocentrism’ in the first two paragraphs. He assumes an easy familiarity with both the subject matter and the theorists he brings to bear on the questions he raises. But he really doesn’t care about the subject matter. It’s theory he likes, and he trails off into long, tangential fights with other theorists, although the book is really, really short already (about 175 pages of actual text.) The bulk of the last three chapters is filler.
But, cutting through all the argle-blargle, there is a point here. Featherstone claims that discussion of space aliens in the post-War era was a product of the late-capitalist mode of production. (Yes, he’s a Marxist in Frederic Jameson mold.) Further, he suggests, all modes of production will create with them some kind of nonknowledge, the shadow of genuine knowledge.
Yes, it was surprising to see a supposedly sophisticated theorist using (although not arguing for) unproblematic notions of truth and fiction. Oh well.
Put this way, the thesis doesn’t seem so novel. And it’s not. Most historians would say something similar without bother to import in the theoretical apparatus. Indeed, he seems primarily to be arguing against Jim Keith, a conspiracy theorist himself. He wants to say that the American psyche (yes, he uses that idea, too!) is responsible for creating aliens; it is not that discussion of aliens in fringe areas has altered the American Society.
It is possible that all the theoretical shenanigans could help illuminate some of the story, but Featherstone’s focus is so abstract one can never know. The last three chapters mostly give a thumbnail sketch of political and economic trends in America since the end of World War II. He clearly cares very little for the alien stories, and those who spread them—the stories are nonknowledge, the people victims of some of kind of Gramscian ideology.
Don’t bother.
June 19, 2008
This was an interesting book. I don't know that I would areccomend it to every body. It is somebody's PhD thesis. I can't believe that anybody could get a thesis in alien anything....He doesn't present any of his own opinions or give tons of details on any one alien myth. He does, however, go through where all of the alien myths came from and lists all the books that have the complete sources for more alien fun.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews