Suspense, Para-Science and Laughter

great deal of tension as the mountebanks, or geniuses-to-be, announce their unconventional findings that would overturn the established order of things and redraw the maps of knowledge. One might say that the mounting of the suspense is an essential condition for the para-sciences in general. While it may be an implicit and illicit feature of all forms of knowledge-production, the mounting of suspense dominates in the two marginalized case studies I would like to examine. My assumptions are as follows: 1) The para-sciences rely upon an increase in suspense, with epistemological doubt on the ascendance. 2) Para-science deals with the staging or demonstration of what is suspended--excluded forms of knowledge. 3) As a combat zone of controversy, para-science is constructed out of a montage of contentious viewpoints which overlay the suspense. Conversely, when the suspense is surmounted, then everything will seem clear. If one can extend or overturn the figure of suspense, everything will be settled. That's what is called normal science. That's what is meant by institutionalization or becoming established. Of course, there will still be a degree of fine-tuning and smoothing over. The tension can never be repressed completely. But, at least on the surface, the floating particles and the suspended sentences of the para-scientific state will have settled down into an organization and a body of scientific knowledge

Art · Laughter · Literature · Psychoanalysis · Computer Science · Digital Education and Society · Misinformation and Its Impacts · Psychology