The "Paranoid Style" Redux: Leftists, Historians, and Conspiracy Theory

2008 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 35-37
Author(s):  
John A. Grigg
Keyword(s):  
Conspiracy Theory ◽  
Paranoid Style

scholarly journals Conspiracy Theory: Truth Claim or Language Game?

2016 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ole Bjerg ◽  
Thomas Presskorn-Thygesen
Keyword(s):  
War On Terror ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Language Game ◽  
Conspiracy Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
Truth Claim ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
Political Effects ◽  
Paranoid Style

The paper is a contribution to current debates about conspiracy theories within philosophy and cultural studies. Wittgenstein’s understanding of language is invoked to analyse the epistemological effects of designating particular questions and explanations as a ‘conspiracy theory’. It is demonstrated how such a designation relegates these questions and explanations beyond the realm of meaningful discourse. In addition, Agamben’s concept of sovereignty is applied to explore the political effects of using the concept of conspiracy theory. The exceptional epistemological status assigned to alleged conspiracy theories within our prevalent paradigms of knowledge and truth is compared to the exceptional legal status assigned to individuals accused of terrorism under the War on Terror. The paper concludes by discussing the relation between conspiracy theory and ‘the paranoid style’ in contemporary politics.

The Paranoid Style in French Prose: Lacan with Léon Bloy

1990 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-154
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Mehlman
Keyword(s):  
Paranoid Style

Situating Conspiracy Theory

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-29
Author(s):  
Susan Lepselter
Keyword(s):  
Conspiracy Theory

A failure of imagination: Competing narratives of 9/11 truth

Diogenes ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 62 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 121-129
Author(s):  
Mark Fenster
Keyword(s):  
World Trade Center ◽  
Conspiracy Theory ◽  
Popular Politics ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Intelligence Services ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Trade Center ◽  
Cover Up ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

This essay describes the emergence of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon as an object of conspiratorial intrigue and imagination, offering a snapshot of the “9/11 truth movement” and its various theories as they began to reach full bloom. Theories about the attacks have come to constitute the dominant conspiratorial present – a present that looks remarkably like the mid- and late-twentieth-century past, despite significant changes in information technology and the continuing institutionalization and ironization of conspiracy theory as an influential form of popular politics. In addition to the 9/11 conspiracy community, the essay considers the battle over the 9/11 Commission’s review of the government’s failure to anticipate the terrorist attacks. The Commission engaged in knowing and savvy efforts to respond to conspiracy theories and to preempt popular belief in them, offering an authoritative narrative (or, more precisely, set of narratives) to explain what occurred. Meanwhile, the 9/11 truth movement made equally knowing and savvy efforts to critique the official account, responding with its own efforts to reinterpret and re-narrate the attacks, their causes, and what they signify about the contemporary world. While the 9/11 Commission may have criticized the federal government and its intelligence services for their failures of imagination prior to the attacks, the truth movement criticized the Commission either for a failure of imagination – an explanation for the attacks that could see through the “official” account – or for a quite imaginative cover-up of the hidden truths of 9/11. By considering the clash between official authorities and an active conspiracy community, this essay considers how the movement attempted to form a collective political and scholarly community, producing a blizzard of texts offering narratives that compete with the ones told by the Commission that seek the impossible grail of conspiracy theory: the truth. The essay also considers the effects, if any, of the state’s attempt to preempt and respond to conspiracy theories.

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