Imagine se tudo isso for verdade : O movimento Raeliano entre verdades, ficções e religiões da modernidade.

Abstract

The aim of t he present work is to analyze the Raelian Movement, a religious group created by Claude Vourillon who calls himself Raël Prophet. The Raelian Movement, which was founded in France in 1973, claims that human being life on Earth was created by extraterrestrial beings. Since its formation, the Raelian Movement has spread its philosophy to several countries, including Brazil, and currently has 60 thousand members all over the world. With a transnational profile, this movement has propagated its ideas through means of mass communication and its most significant mass media event was in 2002 with the announcement, by the leaderships of the Movement, of the birth of the first human clone called Eve . Raelian cosmology is defined as atheist and its ideas are attributed to extraterrestrial scientific sources. This study develops an analysis of the raelian ideas present in the Extraterrestrial Message, linking them to the prophetic truth produced in the scientific field and also to the fictions of literature and cinema related to science. Considering that the mediation of means of mass communication operates as style in the raelian performances, this research proposes an analysis of the constructions of self and the raelian relation ways starting at categories particular to mediatic language such as fame and construction of celebrities in the interior of this group that transforms shows and parties into religious experiences in its ethos. Unfolding ideas of a popularized science , the role of the brain as a raelian sacred icon and its articulation with the controversy on the mental manipulation , as well as the pertinent aspects to the cloning and the genetic manipulation as a raelian project for the present of humanity, are analyzed in this research. The movement is polemic in what concerns the fre sexuality suggested to its members; then, this work also studies the Raelian Movement moral model, especially in respect to its notions of femininity and family. Analyzing the Raelian Movement as a performance of modernity , this study discusses the consequences of the modern project taken to extremes, raising questions about the future and its representations in the contemporary social life.