Conspiracy Nation: The Politics of Paranoia in Postwar America / Edition 1

Conspiracy Nation: The Politics of Paranoia in Postwar America / Edition 1

by Peter Knight
ISBN-10:
0814747361
ISBN-13:
9780814747360
Pub. Date:
02/01/2002
Publisher:
New York University Press
ISBN-10:
0814747361
ISBN-13:
9780814747360
Pub. Date:
02/01/2002
Publisher:
New York University Press
Conspiracy Nation: The Politics of Paranoia in Postwar America / Edition 1

Conspiracy Nation: The Politics of Paranoia in Postwar America / Edition 1

by Peter Knight

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Overview

An intriguing interrogation of America’s long-running obsession with conspiracy theories

Why are Americans today so fascinated by Area 51? How did rumors that the AIDS virus originated as a weapon of biowarfare emerge? Why does the Kennedy assassination provoke heated debate over fifty years after the fact, and why did Donald Trump’s birther theories only serve to increase his popularity with voters? The origins of these ideas reveal important facets of American culture and politics.

Placing conspiracy thinking at the center of American history, and challenging the knee-jerk dismissal of conspiratorial thought as deluded and often dangerous, Conspiracy Nation provides a wide-ranging survey of conspiracy theories in contemporary America. In the 19th century, inflammatory rhetoric about slave revolts, the well-publicized specter of the black rapist, and the formation of the Ku Klux Klan all worked as conspiracy theories to legitimate an emerging sense of national consciousness based on an ideology of white supremacy – one that still persists today.

In our contemporary world, panicked responses to increasing multiculturalism and globalization yield new notions of victimhood and new theories about conspiratorial plans for global domination. Offering up a provocative array of examples, ranging from alien abduction to the novels of DeLillo and Pynchon to Tupac Shakur's "paranoid style," Conspiracy Nation documents and unearths the workings of conspiracy in the contemporary moment.

Contributors: Clare Birchall, Jack Bratich, Bridget Brown, Jodi Dean, Ingrid Walker Fields, Douglas Kellner, Peter Knight, Fran Mason, John A. McClure, Timothy Melley, Eithne Quinn, and Skip Willman


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780814747360
Publisher: New York University Press
Publication date: 02/01/2002
Edition description: New Edition
Pages: 278
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Peter Knight teaches American Studies at the University of Manchester, UK. He is the author of Conspiracy Culture, and the general editor of The Encyclopedia of Political Conspiracy Theories

Table of Contents

Acknowledgementsvii
Introduction: A National of Conspiracy Theorists1
Theories of Conspiracy Theory
1Spinning Paranoia: The Ideologies of Conspiracy and Contingency in Postmodern Culture21
2A Poor Person's Cognitive Mapping40
3Agency Panic and the Culture of Conspiracy57
Alien Nation
4If Anything Is Possible85
5"My Body Is Not My Own": Alien Abduction and the Struggle for Self-Control107
The Enemy Within
6Injections and Truth Serums: AIDS Conspiracy Theories and the Politics of Articulation133
7White Hope: Conspiracy, Nationalism, and Revolution in The Turner Diaries and Hunter157
8"All Eyez on Me": The Paranoid Style of Tupac Shakur177
The Ends of Conspiracy
9The X-Files and Conspiracy: A Diagnostic Critique205
10The Commodification of Conspiracy Theory233
11Forget Conspiracy: Pynchon, DeLillo, and the Conventional Counterconspiracy Narrative254
Contributors275
Index277

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"A rich and diverse collection."

-Journal of American Studies

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