Mars Needs Lawyers!

Okay, now we’re cooking with Crisco. Here’s the abstract for an article , in the August issue of the journal Political Theory , called “Sovereignty and the UFO,” by Alexander Wendt (Ohio State Univ.) and Raymond Duvall (Univ. of Minnesota):

Modern sovereignty is anthropocentric, constituted and organized by reference to human beings alone. Although a metaphysical assumption, anthropocentrism is of immense practical import, enabling modern states to command loyalty and resources from their subjects in pursuit of political projects. It has limits, however, which are brought clearly into view by the authoritative taboo on taking UFOs seriously. UFOs have never been systematically investigated by science or the state, because it is assumed to be known that none are extraterrestrial. Yet in fact this is not known, which makes the UFO taboo puzzling given the ET possibility. Drawing on the work of Giorgio Agamben, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida, the puzzle is explained by the functional imperatives of anthropocentric sovereignty, which cannot decide a UFO exception to anthropocentrism while preserving the ability to make such a decision. The UFO can be “known” only by not asking what it is.

This may be the greatest sentence of its kind ever written: “Drawing on the work of Giorgio Agamben, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida, the puzzle is explained by the functional imperatives of anthropocentric sovereignty, which cannot decide a UFO exception to anthropocentrism while preserving the ability to make such a decision.”

I mean, this has got it all—a dangling participle, a complete grammatical jumble, and the phrase “the functional imperatives of anthropocentric sovereignty.” Plus it seems to be about how the existence of UFOs demolishes our legal system. What more do you want out of life?