Representing the Unrepresentable

Abstract

This article discusses the representations of alienhood in a selection of first contact science-fiction films. It performs a cinematographic reading of human encounters with and attitudes towards alienhood. By examining the visual stylistic choices, the representation of outer-space (other)worlds and alienhood will be problematized beyond the binarism of vilification and celebration. Instead, contact with alienhood will offer deeper insight into the cultural, intellectual and psychological facets of human identity and urge further introspection about the human position in a universe that no longer obeys an anthropocentric logic. Ultimately, first contact science-fiction cinema will be shown to relativize the reassuring conception of selfhood and to suggest the obsolescence of universalist-humanist assumptions about alienhood. This is achieved by opting for a representational one-way route which leads towards acceptance, not of the alien per se, but of the potential and limits of the human self when faced with the unknowability and the unrepresentability of alienhood.