Jeffrey Ewing
It seems so clear that we’re supposed to root for humanity and against each and every Xenomorph. But in Doctor Who, the Doctor muses, “There’s a horror movie named Alien? That’s really offensive. No wonder everybody keeps invading you.” So, what if things aren’t exactly as they seem? What grounds do we have to root for the humans at all? Perhaps our usual interpretation of the Alien films suffers from anthropocentrism—human‐centeredness. After all, if we didn’t automatically equate “human” with “good,” and “Xenomorph” with “bad,” wouldn’t it be possible to see the scary, slimy aliens as merely defending themselves against the humans they perceive as constantly trying to kill them? Jean‐Paul Sartre (1905–1980) might think so. If we take his famous defense of violence, and if we don’t assume an anthropocentric view, we may actually have reasons to root for the Xenomorphs.
Jean‐Paul Sartre was the most beloved French philosopher and perhaps the best known European public intellectual of the twentieth century. Sartre’s works on existentialism and Marxism provide a number of insights on topics like secular morality, existence, resistance, and freedom, but Sartre may seem like a strange choice for defending Xenomorphs. This is because Sartre’s philosophy often ignores the moral status of nonhuman species, and is often taken to be anthropocentric—the opposite of the argument we will be trying to make. This anthropocentric approach comes from Sartre’s attempt to steep his philosophical projects in the view of “humanism,” characterized by a firm separation of the human self and the natural world. For example, in his novel Nausea, Sartre offers an in‐depth description of the alienation of humanity from the natural world through the novel’s main character, Roquentin, who comments:
I am afraid of cities. But you mustn’t leave them. If you go too far you come up against the vegetation belt. Vegetation has crawled for miles towards the cities. It is waiting. Once the city is dead, the vegetation will cover it, will climb over the stones, grip them, search them, make them burst with its long black pincers; it will blind the holes and let its green paws hang over everything. You must stay in the cities as long as they are alive.1
The natural world is not a comfort—it is a destructive force which will outlive and erase human civilization.
It seems, at first glance, that Sartre would defend humanity against what is alien, relate to our fear and the fear of protagonists like Ripley and Newt, and justify the destruction of the Xenomorphs. How can Sartre possibly be used to defend them? Well, to begin with, Sartre makes an important presupposition about human beings—namely, that they are the only species that have conscious awareness of their own selves. Unlike other creatures, which are “passive, inert nature,” we are capable of reflection on, and transformation of our own practices and ourselves in unique ways. Further, humans are free in their self‐consciousness, and so not determined by external forces and limitations in the way non‐human natural things are. But what if Xenomorphs are not passive, inert nature? If they show a similar capacity for self‐conscious awareness, that is, if they can acknowledge Descartes’s foundational discovery of “I think, therefore I am” (and everything that follows from this), then Sartre’s views about the distinctiveness of humanity can also be applied to them. So a Sartrean defense of the Xenomorphs would have two steps: first, to examine why Sartre justifies revolutionary violence, and second, to show that Xenomorphs meet the criteria that Sartre uses to defend revolutionary violence.
Sartre’s existentialist philosophy is grounded in the idea of freedom and the responsibility that results from it—in an early phrasing, “man makes himself.”2 While external forces may constrain us, we are always free to resist and try to change them. Similarly, a person’s consciousness and essence are not pre‐formed and constant. Rather, a person creates herself through her own activity and choices—in Sartre’s formula, “existence precedes essence.”3 In short, for Sartre, our human capacities for knowing and understanding are the source for the potential of human freedom, and through that freedom we create the beings we are. While external powers and limits may constrain our free self‐creation, we can resist rather than submit, fight rather than fall. It is this insight that connects Sartre’s approach to the self to his defense of revolutionary violence.
After World War II, Sartre’s philosophical interests turned towards the political with his Critique of Dialectical Reason (1958–1959), an existentialist defense of Marxism, and his preface to Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth (1961). In the preface, Sartre both condemns European colonialism and defends the rightness of decolonization. First and foremost, Sartre identifies the core of the colonial project—the denial of the humanity of the colonized subject. Sartre argues:
By rejecting metropolitan universalism, our soldiers overseas apply the numerus clausus to the human species: since none can rob, enslave, or kill his fellow man without committing a crime, they lay down the principle that the colonized subject is not a fellow man. Our military forces have received orders to change this abstract certainty into reality: orders are given to reduce the inhabitants of the occupied territory to the level of a superior ape in order to justify the colonist’s treatment of them as beasts of burden. Colonial violence not only aims at keeping these enslaved men at a respectful distance, it also seeks to dehumanize them.4
While Xenomorphs are surely enough not biological humans, they may yet have the factors Sartre thinks characterize our “fellow man,” or people—rationality, consciousness, even emotions—and so have the self‐creating power we just discussed. If this is true, we may find that Xenomorph violence can be defended for the same reasons underlying Sartre’s defense of the decolonization project. If these aliens are consciously self‐aware, then perhaps the attempts of the human military to destroy them are indeed a type of colonial violence, attempting to dehumanize and destroy an intelligent species.
In this light, Xenomorph “attacks” could be interpreted as self‐defense (rather than predatory violence), and attempts to resist human domination. Perhaps the human military can’t see this, like the colonizer who “cannot recognize his own cruelty now turned against him […] he can’t see his own savagery as a colonist in the savagery of these oppressed peasants who have absorbed it through every pore and for which they can find no cure.”5 In this light, the colonizer’s brutality against the colonized is responsible for the latter’s violent response to oppression—violence becomes necessary as a route or means to the preservation of personhood under repressive conditions. In this context, for the colonized:
it is through this mad rage, this bile and venom, their constant desire to kill us, and the permanent contraction of powerful muscles, afraid to relax, that they become men….The false “natives,” therefore, are still humans owing to the power and powerlessness of the oppressor that are transformed into the natives’ stubborn rejection of their animal condition.6
Subjected to extreme human violence, Xenomorph attacks may look like animalistic malice, but as Sartre points out, “in a time of helplessness, murderous rampage is the collective unconscious of the colonized.”7
The intelligence of the Xenomorph species is an incredibly difficult thing to measure. A number of factors could hypothetically impact it, from age or the stage of a particular alien’s development, to the base intelligence of the host species, to the distinct traits of the Xenomorph Queen. Xenomorphs are often treated like animals despite their intelligence. For example, in Alien, the crew of the Nostromo hypothesizes about potential Xenomorph weaknesses:
ASH:
RIPLEY:
ASH:
Interpreting the Xenomorph straightforwardly as an animal makes sense—the crew had never before encountered one, and despite its relatively quick development, it was nonetheless born not too long prior. In Aliens, a conversation between Ripley and Pvt. Hudson further reveals the common tendency for humans to impose the label of “animal” on Xenomorphs despite their evident intelligence:
RIPLEY:
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So, what evidence can help us identify the intelligence level of Xenomorphs?
Well, in Alien, the Xenomorph exhibits at least some degree of predator cunning—making use of hiding spaces and darkness on the ship to pick off the crew one by one, and finding its way to the Narcissus in advance of the Nostromo’s destruction. Even though the alien on the Nostromo isn’t close to doing calculus or reading Sartre’s massive book Being and Nothingness (as far as we can tell), this reflects more on the circumstances it was born into, rather than its characteristics. In the book Alien Vault, which chronicles the creation of the by‐now classic first film, writer Dan O’Bannon clarifies that the Xenomorph aboard the Nostromo has “never been subject to its own culture,” and has furthermore “never been subject to anything except a few hours in the hold of the ship. Quite literally, it doesn’t have an education. The alien is not only savage, it is also ignorant.”8 Absent the tutelage of others of its species or the luxuries of time to develop, the Xenomorph in Alien still manages to outsmart most on board the ship, nearly escaping the film intact. Meanwhile, O’Bannon suggests that the Xenomorphs may be expected to have something akin to culture—a marker of intelligence, even personhood.
When the Xenomorphs cut the power their behavior suggests tactics and planning, alongside an understanding of the humans’ dependence on electricity. Simultaneously, the aliens had built their lair beneath a reactor, a valuable form of protection from oppositional fire—it could be mere coincidence, or it could be the product of intentional defense.
In 1986’s Aliens the species’ potential really starts to shine with a number of other elements that complicate the picture further—considerations of Xenomorph social structure and the intelligence of the Queen. A conversation between Ripley and Bishop relates directly to our ability to assess potential intelligence:
RIPLEY:
BISHOP:
RIPLEY:
BISHOP:
RIPLEY:
BISHOP:
This conversation spotlights both the possible tactical prowess of the Xenomorph Queen (at least) and the hive‐like social organization of the species. The intelligence of the Queen is highlighted at the end of Aliens when the Queen orders other Xenomorphs not to attack Ripley after Ripley threatens to destroy her eggs.
Additionally, Alien: Resurrection and numerous examples from extra‐filmic Alien literature suggest the presence of a Xenomorph hive mind and even telepathy. In such cases, Xenomorph intelligence is difficult to assess compared to human intelligence, as telepathy and hive‐mind attributes are apples to the oranges of human capacities in relevant areas. As Xenomorph Queens clearly exhibit reason and agency and they dominate the hive mind, this may well mean that their intelligence is aggregated in ways that match or surpass human intellect.
All in all, we have incomplete information about the Xenomorphs. We certainly have evidence of apparently limited intelligence, or with animal‐like qualities, but many of these examples are either relatively newborn (e.g., Alien) or born from lower species (e.g., Xenomorphs from dogs in Alien3). As Xenomorphs take on some physical traits from the species they hatch from (e.g., the tendrils of the PredAlien in Alien vs. Predator: Requiem), it stands to reason they may absorb the cognitive capacities (or limitations) of the host species to at least some degree. Simultaneously, many Xenomorphs born from sentient species who have aged past newborns have exhibited both tactics and intelligence. Moreover, the Queen exhibits intelligence, often at the human level. At the same time, the Queen’s intelligence dominates the hive, and the presence of telepathy and hive‐mind capabilities expand Xenomorph intelligence in relevant ways, which are capacities beyond the merely human. In short, even without a hive mind, evidence suggests that Queens and Xenomorphs from intelligent species likely exhibit many if not all the facets we associate with human intelligence. With a hive mind, they surely qualify. So, even though we don’t have full details, it is highly likely that Xenomorphs have the traits identified by Sartre as elevating them above animals. Thus, they are worthy of agency, self‐defense, and, in Sartre’s analysis, resistance.
Ultimately, your average Xenomorph exhibits enough self‐awareness and intelligence to defend itself against human aggression, hunt, hide, use tools, and even sabotage human tactical advantages in the course of its self‐defense. Xenomorph Queens exhibit intelligence at least comparable to humans, while showing additional traits such as control of the hive‐like mental connection with others of her species and possibly having telepathy. In short, our tendency to think of Xenomorphs as mere animals mostly stems from a combination of their unique circumstances and our own lack of understanding. Like the colonizers Sartre criticizes, we view the Xenomorphs as something less than full persons, and the fault is our own, not theirs. Xenomorphs likely meet the criteria that Sartre ascribed to personhood, the self‐creation that begets moral value, and that ultimately legitimates resistance in the face of oppression.
Given this, what looks like alien aggression might really be alien self‐defense, a refusal on the part of the Xenomorphs whose homes we invade, and whose bodies we try and take for science, to be hunted down or cornered as mere animals. We view the aliens as frightening because of our unfamiliarity, but consider this: the filmic evidence suggests that each intelligent species they encounter has sought to use, degrade, or murder them. Human corporations seek to use them for research, the military hunts them, and colonists build homes where they live (a literal colonial act). The Yautja (Predators) hunt them for sport. The Engineers use them as weapons of war. Never are they seen as beings who feel pain, have intrinsic value, or are worthy of autonomous self‐determination. Meanwhile, Xenomorph Queens likely experience all these depravities via their connection to the hive mind. Under these circumstances, just as Sartre defends the revolutionary violence of the colonized in the process of decolonization, Sartre would defend Xenomorph attempts at self‐defense. What looks like mindless aggression may be nothing of the sort. Indeed, we tend to interpret Alien as the story of unfortunate workers being preyed upon by an alien menace. But isn’t it more literally the story of a newborn extraterrestrial being hunted by a pack of humans and, ultimately, dying at the hands of Ripley, our most gifted Xenomorph killer?
In short, Xenomorphs are justified in practicing revolutionary violence. They have sufficient intelligence to create themselves and their own destinies as a species, yet the other intelligent species in the universe continually hunt, kill, use, and abuse them. In this light, when they attack, it is usually either in the context of self‐defense, or in opposition to further campaigns to use or destroy them. Sartre sees the human colonizer treat the human colonized as mere “beasts of burden,” whose sometimes‐violent resistance is both legitimate and the fault of the colonizer. Sartre would also (under these conditions) defend the Xenomorphs for their aggression against our species, and would chide us for demonizing and degrading them. Indeed, he would even likely abhor our traditional read of the Alien series—that the Xenomorphs are a deadly menace to the human species and the universe at large—and would argue that that very interpretation shows how deeply our view has been infected by a humano‐centric ethos of colonizers of the stars.
Sartre’s philosophy highlights the fact that our traditional read of the Alien series is both anthropocentric and wrong. Xenomorphs very likely exhibit the cognitive capacity that Sartre identifies as central to human freedom, and as such they are worthy of their own autonomous self‐determination, not extermination. Thus, Sartre’s famous defense of revolutionary violence against a colonizing force applies to the Xenomorphs, and where we thought humans to be the protagonists of the Alien series, Sartre would point out the ways in which we are its true villains. Indeed, what does it say about us that we root for Ripley to torch the jealously guarded Xenomorph eggs in front of the Xenomorph Queen—their mother? Moving forward, it is my hope that we can recognize our kinship with the Xenomorphs, and instead of fearing and exterminating them, embrace them for the intelligent species they are. With true empathy for our Xenomorph siblings, I hope we find that little alien inside of all of us, just waiting to burst out.