Tag Archives: Jacques Lacan

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Against A Unified Theory of Strangeness

There is a trend toward unified theories of strangeness. I recently mentioned The Vengeful Djinn, whose authors suggest: ‘the djinn could be the hidden source of the diversity of paranormal events everywhere’ (Guiley & Imbrogno, 2011: xxi). The Cryptoterrestrials by Mac Tonnies is another recent text in a similar vein: ‘Could “fairies” and “elves” – and all their mythical successors – be distorted representations of an actual species?’ (Tonnies, 2010: 18).

Cases of so-called ‘high strangeness’ provide a very good reason for the supposition of a single source for paranormal phenomena. In a high strangeness case we may confront phenomena that refuse the usual distinctions but manifest as an intimidating mixture of UFOs producing poltergeist-like phenomena, for instance, or saquatch-like animals, which behave as if they were ghosts by vanishing or impossibly flying away.

A recent case of high strangeness was the notorious Skinwalker Ranch (Kelleher & Knapp, 2005). The classic, of course, were the happenings of 1966-67 at Point Pleasance in Virginia, described by John Keel in The Mothman Prophecies (2002). Indeed, it is Keel who was perhaps the first to propose a unified theory of strangeness, accounting for the bewildering explosion of phenomena that confronted him. He mooted ‘ultraterrestrials’ as a possible cause – multi-dimensional beings whose reality intersects with ours in a way that enables them to produce effects wildly at variance from the ordinary.

mothman

Classic high strangeness: the mothman. Drawn by an artist from witnesses' accounts.

Yet the logic of these arguments leads to something perhaps unexpected. It’s clearest in Mac Tonnies’ text. He proposes the cryptoterrestrials are possibly a race of terrestrial beings with whom we have shared the planet for millennia. They are physical, like us. The way they manifest diversely as greys, reptilians, space brothers, man-beasts or fairies is simply a decision on their part, to lead us along whatever lines of supposition best suit their purposes. Tonnies suggests that, technologically, the cryptoterrestrials may not be that far in advance of us, but for the time being they certainly know how to hide from and mislead us, and this is perhaps all that they technologically require.

We arrive at a similar conclusion as we follow Guiley & Imbrogno’s musings on the djinn. The authors posit some theoretical ideas to support their view that the djinn may inhabit dimensions of space unavailable to three-dimensional human beings. But once we apprehend them behind this barrier, what do we find? The djinn are created male and female. Some are Muslims and some are not. Some are enlightened and some are not. Some wish us harm and some do not. They have free will just like us, so the choice is theirs.

Where there is a unified theory of strangeness, it starts to seem that once we peer behind whatever veil separates us from them (‘hidden dimensions’, ‘cloaking technology’) what we find is not very different from ourselves. Perhaps this is conveyed most vividly in the movie version of The Mothman Prophecies (2002), where ‘John Klein’ (Richard Gere) is walking down the street with paranormal expert ‘Alexander Leek’ (Alan Bates). Klein expresses the view that they must be dealing with something far more intelligent than themselves. ‘If there was a car crash ten blocks away,’ responds Leek, ‘then that window washer up there could probably see it. Now, that doesn’t mean he’s God, or even smarter than we are. But from where he’s sitting, he can see a little further down the road.’

'If you could see what I can see when I'm cleaning windows.' Gere and Bates in 'The Mothman Prophecies' (2002).

So, we have three unified theories of strangeness – cryptoterrestrials, ultraterrestrials and djinn. But in each case the logic of the argument implies that by bringing paranormal phenomena together, we also draw them down to earth. What is it about a unified theory of strangeness that transforms ‘the other’ into something not very different from ‘us’?

The nature of the other is to be other than us. But the troubling thing about the other is precisely its otherness. It offers no hooks onto which we can attach labels or identities, or guarantees. Even to label the other as ‘other’ is a step away from otherness; a means of trying to grasp a reassuring handle. Assuming the other is ‘one’ thing, or even that it is ‘anything’, is a step away from otherness. The problem we presume to solve with a unified theory of strangeness, therefore, is the problem of the otherness of the other.

A unified theory is an attempt to arrive at the other of the other. The problem with the other, as it stands, is that it’s a jumbled mess: UFOs, fairies, ghosts, monsters, etc. If we could only ‘get behind’ all of this, we reason, we could get a grip on what’s really happening. Yet the problem with the phenomenon at hand is precisely that it is ungrippable. The immediate problem is actually the temptation to regard ungrippability as a problem, rather than as a real characteristic of what is to hand.

Orthodox wisdom is represented by the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, who regarded ‘the other of the other’ as a fiction that finds expression particularly in paranoia (Žižek, 1997). If we do not accept phenomena that arises for us as phenomena, but instead put trust in something that lies behind the scenes, then we entertain the fantasy of ‘the other of the other’ – the one who, despite the otherness of what appears, is secretly and masterfully in control of its appearance. The fact that this manoeuvre seeks to keep at bay the threatening otherness of the phenomena is betrayed in the way that the theory returns only another version of the self: the djinn, the ultra- or cryptoterrestrials, who are fundamentally, reassuringly, like us. By trying to attain the other of the other we reach instead only more of the self, displaced slightly into ‘another dimension’.

The Cryptoterrestrials

'The Cryptoterrestrials' by Mac Tonnies. Published by Anomalist Books.

There is an alternative that is not limited by dualistic thinking. Contrary to Lacan, there is an other of the other, which is circumscribed neither by narcissism nor paranoia. The other of the other is no-self. What arises in cases of high strangeness, far from bearing the traces of a reassuringly coherent agency, instead bears the traces of no-self, of non-existence. What we seem to be witnessing is not something working to hide from us, or existing elsewhere, but something struggling to reveal itself and exist here.

This logic, of the other of the other as no-self, is what I propose to continue to explore.

References

Rosemary Ellen Guiley & Philip J. Imbrogno (2011). The Vengeful Djinn: Unveiling the Hidden Agendas of Genies. Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn.

John A. Keel (2002). The Mothman Prophecies. London: Hodder & Stoughton.

Colm A. Kelleher & George Knapp (2005). Hunt for the Skinwalker. New York: Paraview Pocket Books.

The Mothman Prophecies (2002). Dir. Mark Pellington. Lakeshore Entertainment. Film.

Mac Tonnies (2010). The Cryptoterrestrials. San Antonio, TX: Anomalist Books.

Slavoj Žižek (1997). ‘The other does not exist’. Journal of European Psychoanalysis. Spring-Fall.

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A Drift At Dawn

It is light now by 4am. Outside, the roads are deserted in a post-apocalyptic silence. The sun is not quite risen and the bluish daylight has a copper tinge. Tennyson captured the loneliness and melancholy of this time of day:

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awaken’d birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square… [1]

But this time is also special for its otherworldly quality. When I lucid-dream, why is it I always find myself either in twilight or at dawn? Mervyn Peake seems to have felt something similar:

It is at times of half-light that I find
Forsaken monsters shouldering through my mind… [2]

A summer dawn is an ideal time for meditation and magick. We are not asleep and not quite awake. It’s a powerful experience to wander abandoned streets, as if the world belonged only to ourselves. This sensation is practically a form of gnosis – a pseudo- or semi-mystical experience – in itself.

Having set myself the aim of a drift at dawn I woke spontaneously at 4.30am, went to my altar, lit a candle and performed a banishing ritual. But half-way down the street toward the crossroads I cursed myself, remembering that I’d forgotten to extinguish the candle. Should I go back and blow it out? At the crossroads I realised I’d also forgotten to bring offerings for the spirits. This wasn’t going well; my mind was half-asleep. Never mind. Forget the spirits of the crossroads. This wasn’t going to be about them…

A stranger in the dawn

A stranger in the dawn.

A man was walking down the hill wearing high visibility work-clothes. I wondered how deserted the streets would actually prove to be. Already I’d been overtaken by a shiny purple van half-way down my street. Then I realised it was probably an undertakers’ van. I learned to spot them after working in an office that overlooked an understakers’ yard. All day long they took delivery of corpses from suspiciously shiny Transit vans.

At the crossroads I heard faint electronic beeping, which I failed to trace. It didn’t seem to come from inside the pollution monitoring station that has recently appeared on the traffic island. But then I felt drawn up the hill in an easterly direction, where the sunrise was gathering strength. In a building adjoined to the church a warm, welcoming lamplight burned. Did this mean someone was on hand to comfort the troubled throughout the night?

I turned left into and up a steep residential street. There were no signs of human life here at all. On the pavement outside a house was an odd-looking object that proved to be a child’s plastic spoon. I picked it up and took it with me. The hollow of the spoon was stained, as if someone had fed their offspring mouthfuls of turmeric.

Welcoming lamplight from the church

Welcoming lamplight from the church.

Near the top of the road crows called loudly. One sat on a roof. The other broke cover from a tree and flew to sit on an entrance post. They put me in mind of Huginn and Muninn, the ravens of Odin who leave the god each day at dawn to gather intelligence from across the entire world. Their names mean ‘thought’ and ‘memory’. Some commentators have suggested Odin’s continual concern that they may not return has a shamanic significance.

At the top of the hill I stood in the middle of the deserted road and looked down toward the park. Belisha beacons were flashing on the pedestrian crossings. There were no people or cars. I was reminded of the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan at a lecture he gave in Baltimore:

All that I could see, except for some trees in the distance, was the result of thoughts actively thinking thoughts, where the function played by the subjects was not completely obvious… The best image to sum up the unconscious is Baltimore in the early morning. [3]

A child's spoon

A child's spoon. If you've lost it I'll send it back!

In other words, the unconscious is thought without a thinker; a city with no citizens. When there are no people we become aware of the built environment and the natural world, of traffic signals and crows, yet these (perhaps too readily) become metaphors to us of our own human process.

Indeed, by this point I had already turned back into the road where I lived. I’d not ventured far at all but had merely walked around the block. The unattended candle on my altar was nagging me. Probably it was safe, but I couldn’t chance it.

There was a van stopped in the road with its hazard lights on. A man was loading something. I hid my camera, in case he was a burglar. Another oddity of this time of day is that despite the daylight we treat others with the suspicion we usually reserve for the hours after dark. It feels uncomfortable to approach or be approached by someone at 4.30am. Yet the man’s activity looked innocent, so when I’d passed I stepped into the road again and let myself be seen. Perhaps I startled him, or he was puzzled by what I was doing, because he made an odd sound, like a shocked or strangled Hi?!

Huginn or Muninn?

Huginn or Muninn?

A pattern of struts against a wall caught my eye. It was like a combination of the runes Odal and Gyfu, which signify ‘material possessions or inheritance’ and ‘gift or generosity’. The divinatory meaning became clear after I’d returned home. The candle was already out; I’d not forgotten to extinguish it after all.

‘What we have is freely bestowed’ the runic pattern had said. This is the secret of a drift: we must include everything as part of the experience, as a gift, and regard nothing as an impediment. The burning candle was not an obstacle. But neither did the discovery that it had been out all along mean that my worries were pointless. What I’d been given I would accept: this had been a walk on which I’d felt constrained because of what I believed I’d overlooked, but the constraint was illusory. The real obstacle was in believing that my oversight had ‘spoiled’ the occasion. Yet a walk around the block is always as real and as fulsome an experience as any.

An audio montage / cut-up of sounds during the drift.

References

Runes everywhere!

Runes everywhere! Odal + Gyfu.

[1] Alfred, Lord Tennyson, ‘Tears, Idle Tears‘ (1847).

[2] Mervyn Peake, ‘At Times of Half-Light’, in: Selected Poems (London: Faber, 1972).

[3] Jacques Lacan, ‘Of Structure as an Inmixing of an Otherness Prerequisite to Any Subject Whatever‘. A talk at John Hopkins University, Baltimore, 1966.