The Conspiracy Imaginary
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4188788 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Timothy Melley (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 89 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 757-785 |
| Publication date | 2022-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Social research (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0037-783X • E-ISSN: 1944-768X |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/sor.2022.0053 |
| OpenAlex | W4307103686 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
The Conspiracy Imaginary Timothy Melley (bio) if the nixon era was "the age of conspiracy" in the united states, as don DeLillo once suggested ([1978] 1989, 111), then the Trump era would seem to be the age of conspiracy theory. This is not to suggest there is anything particularly new about conspiracy-mongering. It has long been part of politics, as has anxiety over its potential to corrupt democratic institutions. Indeed, the very notion that there is a distinctive form of discourse called "conspiracy theory" emerged in response to mid-twentieth-century authoritarianism and demagoguery in Europe and the United States (McKenzie-McHarg 2018; Thalmann 2019; Melley forthcoming). Still, within a US context, the Trump era seems a high-water mark in populist skepticism about professional expertise, distrust of large institutions, and the normalization of conspiracy claims in national political discourse. A host of reporters, critics, and political observers have decried the contemporary centrality of conspiracy discourse, connecting it to increasing nativist authoritarianism, political polarization, and "post-truth" media culture.1 Distrust of wellestablished science has hamstrung urgent public policy measures amid a global pandemic and growing planetary climate crisis. And a sitting president of the United States not only made evidence-free conspiracy allegations the core of his political strategy but also persuaded a sizable portion of the electorate to challenge the longstanding norms underpinning US democracy (Leonhardt and Thompson 2017; Lester 2016). How do we understand the extraordinary power of conspiratorial reason today? What is it a symptom of? What epistemological conditions foster it, and how does it work? How, that is, does it develop its presuppositions, its claims, and its "evidence"? [End Page 757] These questions, like the term "conspiratorial reason," may seem odd. The more common question about conspiracy theory is how it could be so wrong, so simple-minded, so nutty. Indeed, the mere use of the phrase "conspiracy theory" often implies faulty thinking, cognitive weakness, paranoid personality traits, or even mental illness.2 While such factors undoubtedly influence the way individuals develop their beliefs, openness to conspiratorial explanations is far too pervasive to be accounted for through psychological categories alone. It is also a symptom of the conditions of knowledge in society. Conspiracy theories are attempts to imagine institutional powers that are difficult to see and comprehend. In the postwar United States, public knowledge of important institutions has been shaped by two opposing factors: first, institutional secrecy that mystifies the operation of state and corporate entities; and second, a florid conspiracy imaginary that incessantly suggests the normality of institutional deception and malfeasance. These two factors are mutually reinforcing: institutional secrecy fuels the production of suspicious and cynical representations. For more than a half century, the relentless growth of a vast national security state, powerful corporations, public relations operations, and media networks has been anything but secret. While the specific operations and strategies of such institutions are often hidden from public view, they are at the same time "public secrets"—the objects of incessant speculation, suspicion, and representation. This paradoxical epistemology has changed the way citizens understand their relation to state and society.3 The conspiracy imaginary plays a powerful role in this transformation of citizenship. It insistently circulates cynical allegations, revelations, and depictions of conspiracy in a wide array of discursive forms: news, political speech, long-form journalism, documentary, talk radio, games, rumors, social media posts, advertising, television, film, and literature. The imaginary is supported by three media frameworks: a 24-hour news system organized around the revelation of scandals and "breaking news"; a social media ecosystem in which misinformation and disinformation can easily be amplified (Knight 2021); [End Page 758] and an entertainment industry bent on the relentless production of conspiracy melodrama. This infrastructure makes conspiratorial explanation widely available to public consciousness. Its cynical contents include specific conjectures about how conspiracies might work and more general assumptions about institutional malfeasance. Both types of speculation are strikingly formulaic, and this quality is part of their cultural power. One reason Donald Trump's conspiracy politics proved persuasive to so many voters is that his major allegations reiterated, with minimal modification, the core propositions of the American conspiracy imaginary. THE TROUBLE WITH "CONSPIRACY THEORY" Any account
Authoritarianism · Democracy · Distrust · Epistemology · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Skepticism · Sociology · The Imaginary · Law · Misinformation and Its Impacts · Philosophy · Psychology
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2 |
| Citation span | 2024 - 2026 (3) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |