ABSTRACT
There are several themes to be addressed in this chapter. First, liminality was a key issue which surfaced repeatedly during the course of my research into so-called Alien Big Cat (ABC) sightings in Wales, UK (where ‘Alien’ reflects the animals’ non-endemic status). The unknown nature, origin and behaviours of the cats; the presence of these creatures in a landscape which is not their native ‘home’; and the difficulties associated with verifying their presence are all factors which contribute to the status of ABCs as ‘matter out of place’. The question of authority in relation to the validity of sightings has also come to the fore more recently, and this is another theme which will be considered here. I argue that authority (in the sense of whose accounts are credible) is linked to the liminal or transgressive nature of ABCs, (and this applies also to cryptozoological entities or ‘cryptids’ more generally). Their unknown and unknowable status makes them risky subjects for authority figures to deal with and a balance is sought between the reality of a sighting as a visceral, tangible experience for the individual in question, and the need to account for what could otherwise be dismissed as the product of an over-active imagination. In his recent writing, Ingold (2013a and 2013b) has argued that engaging
with cryptids (although he doesn’t refer to them as such) can heal what he sees as the rupture ‘between the real world and our imagination of it’ (2013b: 749). By taking the existence of ABCs seriously I seek to reflect on the uneasy relationships between anthropology and relativism on the one hand, and science and imagination on the other, both of which are key aspects of the recent ontological turn in anthropology.
