06/16/2014 Despite the lurid title, Australian academics Jane and Fleming offer a scholarly but intriguing examination of conspiracies and the ideas behind them. The work follows loosely in the tradition of classic pieces like Richard Hofstadter’s 1964 essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” but the authors dismiss the common emphasis on “conspiracists” as a lowbrow fringe that rejects rationality in favor of a pre-Enlightenment world of superstition and powerful secret forces. Many conspiracies are widely accepted—most Americans, for instance, believe the government is hiding information on UFOs—and, paradoxically, conspiracies “offer revelations and truths despite themselves.” The authors add that Enlightenment thinkers rejected appeals to authority in favor of inductive reasoning. Conspiracists not only observe this principle to an absurd extreme, but they also take the truth of their assumptions for granted, concentrating on the flaws in doubters’ arguments. Similarly, zealots believe in plots featuring brilliant, if evil, collaborators who march in lockstep and keep their secrets, while real-life conspiracies (Watergate, Iran-Contra, the Dreyfus Affair, even the assassination of Lincoln) tend to be clumsy and impossible to conceal. Though the book is riddled with turgid academic prose and probably better suited as a long essay, it remains an insightful and nuanced examination of conspiracist thought. (Aug.)
A pleasure to read. Witty, funny, engaging, mainly it is substantial food for thoughts, a serious reflection on a topic whose importance for current affairs has steadily been growing.Colloquium on Violence and Religion Lucidly written, Modern Conspiracy is recommended reading not only for conspiracists and debunkers, but also those interested in a nuanced view of the modern nature of conspiracy and its critique.Times Higher Education The authors treat their subjects with a respect underpinned by a comic distance and sensibility which makes the book a real pleasure to read ... [This book] goes an enjoyably long way towards a better, and more appropriately humane, way of understanding [conspiracy theories].Fortean Times
Lucidly written, Modern Conspiracy is recommended reading not only for conspiracists and debunkers, but also those interested in a nuanced view of the modern nature of conspiracy and its critique.
Times Higher Education Rachel Hoffman
Conspiracy is a fleeting shape in the peripheral vision of modernity: not really there but coming to get you. What is it? A state of mind, form of speech, branch of reason, image of reality or just a sign of the times? Modern Conspiracy reveals it as 'epistemic ambience': the glue that binds truth to fiction, reason to madness, politics to fantasy, sex to revolution. Even the debunkers are in on it. Scholars, scientists, politicians, writers and citizens, take heed. Fleming and Jane know your secrets....
A beautifully accessible and persuasive survey of the field of conspiracy-theorising and debunking.
his intellectually challenging yet humor-filled treatment of "conspiracy theory" reveals the hidden complicity between the theorists and their debunkers--including us and the authors themselves. No solutions are offered, but we learn to see these theories as inevitable and not always regrettable products of the Enlightenment's Cartesian principle by which modern people try, against ever greater odds, to think for themselves.
This opulently researched book is probably the only one you need to read on this topic. The authors prescribe humor, which they exercise tellingly throughout, as an antidote to the paranoia of conspiracy theorists and their symmetrically grim debunkers.
08/01/2014 Many things go wrong and seem to be out of our control, though they are the work of human agency. Conspiracy beckons. Jane (media, journalism, communications, Univ. of New South Wales, Australia; Deadset ) and Fleming (cultural and social analysis, Univ. of Western Sydney, Australia; René Girard: Violence and Mimesis ) note, like Hannah Arendt, that technological power brings profound, unexpected changes. As the authors explain, nobody conspired to bring about climate change, but people did get together to promote the use of fossil fuels. There are also unexplained events. Our proudest technology, even airplanes, can fail or disappear. Despite security, presidents can be assassinated. Conspiracy theorists feed on these events, but the authors also remind us that scheme debunkers have their own epistemological fixation, and both straying from Enlightenment ideology and misuse of it can be fatal and damage minds. Underlying these discussions is a societal critique—our cultures have not given us full control of our own inventions. VERDICT The book is dense with examples and conundrums, so readers will need the index to keep them straight. An entertaining account of much that everyone needs to think about.—Leslie Armour, Dominican Univ. Coll., Ottawa, Ont.