Title
They Know Us Better Than We Know Ourselves : The History and Politics of Alien Abduction / Bridget Brown.
ISBN
9780814739174
Published
New York, NY : : New York University Press, [2007]
Copyright
©2007
Language
English
Language Note
In English.
Description
1 online resource
Other Standard Identifiers
10.18574/nyu/9780814739174.001.0001 doi
Call Number
BF2050 .B76 2007
Dewey Decimal Classification
001.942
Summary
Since its emergence in the 1960s, belief in alien abduction has saturated popular culture, with the ubiquitous image of the almond-eyed alien appearing on everything from bumper stickers to bars of soap. Drawing on interviews with alleged abductees from the New York area, Bridget Brown suggests a new way for people to think about the alien phenomenon, one that is concerned not with establishing whether aliens actually exist, but with understanding what belief in aliens in America may tell us about our changing understanding of ourselves and our place in the world. They Know Us Better Than We Know Ourselves looks at how the belief in abduction by extraterrestrials is constituted by and through popular discourse and the images provided by print, film, and television. Brown contends that the abduction phenomenon is symptomatic of a period during which people have come to feel increasingly divested of the ability to know what is real or true about themselves and the world in which they live. The alien abduction phenomenon helps us think about how people who feel left out create their own stories and fashion truths that square with their own experience of the world.
Access Note
Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics
text file PDF
Source of Description
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 18. Sep 2023)
Available in Other Form
print 9780814799215
Frontmatter
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Elusive Shreds of Memory
2. The Invisible Epidemic
3. Good Subjects
4. My Body Is Not My Own
5. An Ongoing and Systematic Breeding Experiment
6. They Have the Secrets
7. This Is Worse Than Friggin' Aliens
8. Look and See What You Have Done
9. You Have a Sensitivity
10. Reality Gets Exploded
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author