The Resonance Of Unseen Things

The Resonance of Unseen Things offers an ethnographic meditation on the “uncanny” persistence and cultural freight of conspiracy theory. The project is a reading of conspiracy theory as an index of a certain strain of late 20th-century American despondency and malaise, especially as understood by people experiencing downward social mobility. Written by a cultural anthropologist with a literary background, this deeply interdisciplinary book focuses on the enduring American preoccupation with captivity in a rapidly transforming world. Captivity is a trope that appears in both ordinary and fantastic iterations here, and Susan Lepselter shows how multiple troubled histories—of race, class, gender, and power—become compressed into stories of uncanny memory. “We really don’t have anything like this in terms of a focused, sympathetic, open-minded ethnographic study of UFO experiencers. . . . The author’s semiotic approach to the paranormal is immensely productive, positive, and, above all, resonant with what actually happens in history.” —Jeffrey J. Kripal, J. Newton Rayzor Professor of Religion, Rice University “Lepselter relates a weave of intimate alien sensibilities in out-off-the-way places which are surprisingly, profoundly, close to home. Readers can expect to share her experience of contact with complex logics of feeling, and to do so in a contemporary America they may have thought they understood.” —Debbora Battaglia, Mount Holyoke College “An original and beautifully written study of contemporary American cultural poetics. . . . The book convincingly brings into relief the anxieties of those at the margins of American economic and civic life, their perceptions of state power, and the narrative continuities that bond them to histories of violence and expansion in the American West.” —Deirdre de la Cruz, University of Michigan

'The Resonance of Unseen Things: Power, Poetics, Captivity and UFOs in the American Uncanny' offers an ethnographic meditation on the "uncanny" persistence and cultural freight of conspiracy theory. The project is a reading of conspiracy theory as an index of a certain strain of late-20th century American despondency/malaise, especially as experienced by people experiencing downward social mobility. Written by a cultural anthropologist with a literary background, this is a deeply interdisciplinary project that focuses on the enduring American preoccupation with captivity in a rapidly transforming world. Captivity is a trope that appears in both ordinary and fantastic iterations here, and this book shows how multiple troubled histories-of race, class, gender and power-become compressed into stories of uncanny memory.

Fringe Rhetorics explores the rhetorical construction of conspiracy theories and paranormal accounts. This book describes a method of analysis for fringe rhetorics and provides examples for applying this method to investigate these arguments’ persuasive power.

Soundscapes profoundly connect listeners to the places they inhabit and thereby reveal the vibrant and resonant fabrics that lie beneath the delineated spaces of visual representation. In Resonant Fabrics, Marvin Heine explores and celebrates the many-layered and ambiguously undulating sense- and soundscapes as they shape and are shaped by urban cultures and particular ways of listening. By examining historical documents, contemporary accounts, and original empirical material through a combination of actor-network-theory, ecology, and sound studies scholarship, he embraces, in a stylistically embodied and often poetic manner, the sonic urban world in all its fragile, ephemeral, yet deeply affective sonority.

"Mother Figured" is a wide-ranging study of apparitions and miracles of the Virgin Mary in the Philippines from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. While most analyses have read Marian revival as antimodern, de la Cruz demonstrates that its origins actually lie "within "secular modernity. She takes inspiration from one of Mary s titles that has grown in popularity in modern times Mary the Mediatrix to show how modern print and technological media enable and support the circulation of miraculous narratives and images. While thoroughly grounded in local tradition, the resurgence of Marianism in the Philippines is a subject of global relevance. De la Cruz portrays Filipino Catholics not as mere followers of the faith from the margins or from below but as guardians of orthodoxy and aggressive purveyors of their own sort of Christian universalism. In this sense, the book offers a timely analysis of the social and political implications of contemporary Christianity s shift to the Global South."

A gripping account of an alien abduction and its connections to the breakdown of American society in the 1960s In the mid-1960s, Betty and Barney Hill became famous as the first Americans to claim that aliens had taken them aboard a spacecraft against their will. Their story--involving a lonely highway late at night, lost memories, and medical examinations by small gray creatures with large eyes--has become the template for nearly every encounter with aliens in American popular culture since. Historian Matthew Bowman examines the Hills' story not only as a foundational piece of UFO folklore but also as a microcosm of 1960s America. The Hills, an interracial couple who lived in New Hampshire, were civil rights activists, supporters of liberal politics, and Unitarians. But when their story of abduction was repeatedly ignored or discounted by authorities, they lost faith in the scientific establishment, the American government, and the success of the civil rights movement. Bowman tells the fascinating story of the Hills as an account of the shifting winds in American politics and culture in the second half of the twentieth century. He exposes the promise and fallout of the idealistic reforms of the 1960s and how the myth of political consensus has given way to the cynicism and conspiratorialism and the paranoia and illusion of American life today.

Spirited Histories combines ethnography with critical theory to provide a sophisticated exploration of the intersection of haunting and the paranormal with technology, media, and history. Retrieving the past in places of trauma and death can take on many facets. One of these is an attention to hauntings, ghosts, and absences that go with the collective experience of loss and disappearance. People memorialize the dead and their stories in myriad ways. But what about the untold stories, or the forgotten, unnamed? This book explores the ways groups of Chilean paranormal investigators and ghost tour operators produce alternate histories using paranormal machinery, rather than simply theatricalizing pain. It offers a look at technologies, machines, and apparatuses – themselves imbued with a long history of supernatural and scientific expectations – and a social analysis of how certain groups of people marshal the voices of the dead to generate particular micro-histories. This fascinating volume will be of interest to a range of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, history, religious studies, and scholars of technology and new media.

This book explores the nexus of corruption, late capitalism, and illiberal politics in the Trump era. Through deep, contextualized analysis and careful critique, it offers valuable perspectives on how corruption is defined and understood in the current historical moment. The book asks: Is today's corruption something new, or is it a continuation of prior patterns of illiberalism? Chapters in this collection consider how corruption is practiced, mobilized, or invoked in a range of cases, each of which is embedded within larger concerns about what citizenship, social belonging, honesty, and justice mean in the United States today. The authors examine a constellation of unscrupulous actors and questionable actions, with topics ranging from sex scandals and shady real estate deals to the Trump administration’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Several essays directly address the increasingly violent rhetoric and the deliberately anti-democratic policies that have flourished during the Trump era. The book draws on anthropological insights and comparative analysis to place the policies and practices of Trump and his supporters in a wider global context. Corruption and Illiberal Politics in the Trump Era will be of great interest to readers from anthropology, sociology, political science, discourse studies, media studies, linguistics, and American studies.