UFOs, the Absurd, and the Limit of Anthropological Knowledge: Imagining the Impossible in Chile (Routledge Studies in Anthropology)

This book offers an ethnographic and conceptual analysis of contemporary UFO phenomena, focusing specifically on Chilean ufology and the ufological “absurd”, nonsensical instances for their experiencers in which there is no conceptual way out.It asks how anthropology can come to terms with what is not said, what is not known, what is in the dark, or even with what both “is” and “is not”.The work draws on three years of participant observation with empirical ufologists, amateur sky watchers, and contactees of varying kinds in Chile.The chapters mobilize three main bodies of literature to elucidate the ufological absurd: negative theology, anthropology of play and deceit, and the physics of dark matter.They explore notions of parallax, paradox, and trickster anthropology.The author takes UFO phenomena, specifically the absurd aspects, as a heuristic with which to posit a conversation between domains; a conversation which highlights darknesses, finiteness, and the limits of representation