In an era of intensified information warfare, ranging from global disinformation campaigns to individual attention hacks, what are the compelling terms for political judgment? How are we to build the knowledge needed to recognize and address important forms of harm when critical information is either not to be trusted or kept hidden? Rather than approach conspiratorial narrative as an irrational response to an obviously decipherable reality, Conspiracy/Theory identifies important affinities between conspiracy theory and critical theory. It recognizes the motivation people have-in their capacities as experts, theorists, and ordinary citizens-to search for patterns in events, to uncover what is covert and attend to dimensions of life that might be hiding in plain sight. If it seems strange that so many find themselves living in incommensurable, disorienting realities, the multidisciplinary contributors to Conspiracy/Theory explore how and why that came to be. Across history and geography, contributors inquire into the affects and imaginaries of political mobilization, tracking counterrevolutionary projects while acknowledging collective futures that demand conspiratorial engagement.
Contributors. Nadia Abu El-Haj, Hussein Ali Agrama, Kathleen Belew, Elizabeth Anne Davis, Joseph Dumit, Faith Hillis, Lochlann Jain, Demetra Kasimis, Susan Lepselter, Darryl Li, Louisa Lombard, Joseph Masco, Robert Meister, Timothy Melley, Rosalind C. Morris, George Shulman, Lisa Wedeen
Introduction: Conspiracy/Theory / Joseph Masco and Lisa Weeden
Part I. Organizing Fictions
1. Impasse and Genre in American Politics and Literature / George Shulman 37
2. Where Did AIDS Come from? / Lochlann Jain 61
3. A False Flag / Joseph Masco 81
4. Conspiracy Attunement and Context: The Case of the President’s Body / Elizabeth Anne Davis 104
5. Conspiracy, Theory, and the “Post-Truth” Public Sphere / Timothy Melley 127
Part II. Atmospheres of Doubt
6. On Certainty and the Question of Judgment / Lisa Wedeen 149
7. Resonant Apophenia / Susan Lepselter 174
8. The Play of Conspiracy in Plato’s Republic / Demetra Kasimis 190
9. An Economy of Suspicion: On the “Military-Civilian Divide” and the New American Militarism / Nadia Abu El-Haj 210
Part III. The Force of Capital
10. Conspiracies of Theory: Of Gold in the Shadow of Deindustrialization / Rosalind C. Morris 235
11. Adrian Piper and Alien Conspiracies of Bullying and Whistleblowing / Joseph Dumit 264
12. Humanitarian Profiteering in the Central African Republic as Conspiracy and Rumor / Louisa Lombard 291
13. Confessions of an Accused Conspiracy Theorist: The Financialization of Higher Education / Robert Meister 314
Part IV. The Politics of Enmity
14. Conspiracy and Its Curious Afterlives / Faith Hillis 341
15. Comedy of Terrors: National Security Fictions and the Origins of al-Qa‘ida / Darryl Li 362
16. After Muslims: Authority, Suspicion, and Secrecy in the Liberal Democratic State / Hussein Ali Agrama 386
17. Flame and Steel inside the Capitol / Kathleen Belew 409
Epilogue / Joseph Masco and Lisa Wedeen 425
Acknowledgments 435
References 437
Contributors 483
Index
