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CHAPTER THREE: Alien Nation
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35 CHAPTER THREE Alien Nation They have landed and now they are among us. —Alien Nation, 1988 Graham Baker’s film Alien Nation leaves the viewer with a central dilemma: why is the movie a horror film? In fact, given the absurd characterization of the “newcomers ,” the film leans toward humor. Apart from the final scenes, the film is not scary. Or is it? Perhaps the fear is of the alien nation: the film suggests that many of the pivotal issues relating to exile, nationalism, and cultural identity are inseparable from mass cultural fear. Yet how can the nation be alien or of aliens? Do aliens bring their nation with them and threaten their host, making home look different and “alien”? Despite the doomsday treatment of the effects of an alien presence on national integrity , this film helps to emphasize an undeniable connection between migration, immigration , exile, and nation formation. Similar to the alteration of filmic horror in Alien Nation, the following chapter suggests that the exile’s experience of nation undergoes a physical and conceptual transformation in the latter part of the twentieth century as a consequence of transnationalism and postmodernism. The weakening of the nation-state associated with transnationalism combined with the fragmentation of the subject and language associated with postmodernism create an unprecedented situation for the political exile. The experience of these particular exiles, then, bears the marks of their historical context and puts pressure on the binary thinking of nationalism versus globalization. Their understanding of nation is governed by two fundamental conditions: first, the nation is not a free-floating, de-territorialized space for exiles that flee right-wing dictators; second, exiles reject idealistic patriotism for a nation ruled by authoritarianism. Holding nationalism and transnationalism in persistent dialectic, the exile writing of Juan Goytisolo, Ariel Dorfman, and Cristina Peri Rossi exemplifies an alternative way of defining cultural identity. These writers combine at least four separate attitudes about nationalism in their writing: first, they reject the authoritarian nationalism of their former countries; second, they promote a counter version of their nation; third, they oppose the negative effects of global politics and economic policies, since these are often directly or indirectly responsible for authoritarian nationalism; and fourth, they also suggest that transnationalism or post-nationalism may be liberating to the subject 36 Chapter Three because nationalism always implies the repression of difference. It is my argument that the exile’s competing and conflicting views on nationalism and globalization constitute the notion of alien nation. Whether from space or from Spain and Latin America, the role of aliens arriving in cosmopolitan centers significantly shifts in the latter part of the twentieth century . While modern national identity reflects earlier mass migrations, the movement of people after the nineteenth century generally presents a threat to an already established national identity. Historians consistently observe a rise in nationalism in response to mass immigration and migration. In fact, Eric Hobsbawn, a seminal theorist of nationalism, “writes the history of the modern Western nation from the perspective of the nation’s margin and the migrants’ exile,” leading Homi Bhabha to conclude that “the emergence of the later phase of the modern nation, from the mid-nineteenth century, is also one of the most sustained periods of mass migration within the West, and colonial expansion in the East” (Location of Culture 139). In the twentieth century immigrants move to nations that have already defined their borders and carved a national image. Hence, the horror of the film Alien Nation. After the establishment of national borders, it is culturally terrifying for a country to be threatened by the presence of a new culture that could potentially redefine national identity. So, the immigrants , refugees, and exiles of the twentieth century are faced with metropolitan centers that see them as outsiders. Unlike the European immigrants to Uruguay, Chile, and the United States in the nineteenth century, for example, who were accepted as part of the process of nation-building, immigrants today are seen as threats to national integrity. A banner in Graham Baker’s film reads “Teach English to the Universe”: the cultural paranoia is evident. The place of the immigrant or the refugee is certainly not equivalent to that of the exiled intellectual. Nevertheless, the literature produced by exiles offers a narrative account of the crisis of cultural identity experienced by individuals who must live in a foreign country. (Grinberg and Grinberg point to many connections between the experience of migration and of exile.) Furthermore, as national...