ABSTRACT
A cultural critic looking only for quick and easy answers might conclude that the shift from ‘alien hatred’ to ‘alien love’ outlined in the previous chapter marks the absolute end of humanism. The argument would run as follows: if the binary opposition between ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ no longer holds, if the alien invasion films of the 1950s now seem laughably absurd, if contemporary culture suggests nothing short of a ‘Crisis of versus’, then we cannot possibly still be in the orbit of anthropocentrism. ‘Man’ must surely have died, and with that passing comes the birth of ‘alien love’.
