Plots Literary Form And Conspiracy Culture

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Plots: Literary Form and Conspiracy Culture

Author : Ben Carver,Dana Craciun,Todor Hristov
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 190 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2021-11-29
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781000475616

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Plots: Literary Form and Conspiracy Culture by Ben Carver,Dana Craciun,Todor Hristov Pdf

This edited collection contributes to the study of conspiracy culture by analysing the relationship of literary forms to the formation, reception, and transformation of conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories are narratives, and their narrative form provides the structure within which their ‘readers’ situate themselves when interpreting the world and its history. At the same time, conspiracist interpretations of the world may then be transmediated into works of literature and import popular discourse into narrative structures. The suppression and disappearance of books themselves may generate conspiracy theories and become co-opted into political dissent. Additionally, literary criticism itself is shown to adopt conspiracist modes of interpretation. By examining conspiracy plots as literary plots, with narrative, rhetorical, and symbolic characteristics, this volume is the first systematic study of how conspiracy culture in American and European history is the consequence of its interactions with literature. This book will be of great interest to researchers of conspiracy theories, literature, and literary criticism.

Covid Conspiracy Theories in Global Perspective

Author : Michael Butter,Peter Knight
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 390 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2023-02-07
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781000846317

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Covid Conspiracy Theories in Global Perspective by Michael Butter,Peter Knight Pdf

Covid Conspiracy Theories in Global Perspective examines how conspiracy theories and related forms of misinformation and disinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic have circulated widely around the world. Covid conspiracy theories have attracted considerable attention from researchers, journalists, and politicians, not least because conspiracy beliefs have the potential to negatively affect adherence to public health measures. While most of this focus has been on the United States and Western Europe, this collection provides a unique global perspective on the emergence and development of conspiracy theories through a series of case studies. The chapters have been commissioned by recognized experts on area studies and conspiracy theories. The chapters present case studies on how Covid conspiracism has played out (some focused on a single country, others on regions), using a range of methods from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including history, politics, sociology, anthropology, and psychology. Collectively, the authors reveal that, although there are many narratives that have spread virally, they have been adapted for different uses and take on different meanings in local contexts. This volume makes an important contribution to the rapidly expanding field of academic conspiracy theory studies, as well as being of interest to those working in the media, regulatory agencies, and civil society organizations, who seek to better understand the problem of how and why conspiracy theories spread. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

A Sociological Genealogy of Culture Wars

Author : Maya Aguiluz-Ibargüen,Josetxo Beriain
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 157 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 2023-12-12
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781003824060

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A Sociological Genealogy of Culture Wars by Maya Aguiluz-Ibargüen,Josetxo Beriain Pdf

This book analyzes the culture wars as those struggles for the monopoly of the legitimate representation of the world in the normative elucidation of controversial issues linked to values. Public culture in this context would consist of a set of complex classificatory systems of symbols and meanings that constitute a semantic field in permanent dynamic tension. In this work we analyze a whole series of lines of cultural conflict such as the social and semantic genesis of the different forms of “culture war” from the thesis of “modern polytheism” pointed out by Max Weber at the beginning of the 20th century to the national culture wars and the current global culture wars; the social production of truth and the clash with the epistemological tribalisms; the struggles between the new warrior gods, daimons and demons that emerge in modern societies; the struggles of fusion and fission on the symbolic battlefield of “Europe”; the struggles between “pioneers” and “gatekeepers” to define the limits of human nature; the struggles between utopias and dystopias that colonize the present future. This book will be of great help to anybody looking for key interpretations on the nature and structure of modern conflicts in contemporary societies.

Conspiracy Theories in the Time of Covid-19

Author : Clare Birchall,Peter Knight
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 180 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2022-11-04
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781000773651

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Conspiracy Theories in the Time of Covid-19 by Clare Birchall,Peter Knight Pdf

Conspiracy Theories in the Time of Covid-19 provides a wide-ranging analysis of the emergence and development of conspiracy theories during the Covid-19 pandemic, with a focus on the US and the UK. The book combines digital methods analysis of large datasets assembled from social media with politically and culturally contextualised close readings informed by cultural studies. In contrast to other studies which often have an alarmist take on the "infodemic," it places Covid-19 conspiracy theories in a longer historical perspective. It also argues against the tendency to view conspiracy theories as merely evidence of a fringe or pathological way of thinking. Instead, the starting assumption is that conspiracy theories, including Covid-19 conspiracy theories, often reflect genuine and legitimate concerns, even if their factual claims are wide of the mark. The authors examine the nature and origins of the conspiracy theories that have emerged; the identity and rationale of those drawn to Covid-19 conspiracism; how these conspiracy theories fit within the wider political, economic and technological landscape of the online information environment; and proposed interventions from social media platforms and regulatory agencies. This book will appeal to anyone interested in conspiracy theories, misinformation, culture wars, social media and contemporary society.

Religious Dimensions of Conspiracy Theories

Author : Francesco Piraino,Marco Pasi,Egil Asprem
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 318 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 2022-11-30
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781000782684

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Religious Dimensions of Conspiracy Theories by Francesco Piraino,Marco Pasi,Egil Asprem Pdf

Religious Dimensions of Conspiracy Theories contributes to the study of conspiracy culture by analysing the religious and esoteric dimensions of conspiracy theories. The book examines both historical and contemporary examples to explore transnational and transhistorical continuities between religious doctrines, eschatologies, and conspiracy theories. It draws on a broad range of disciplinary insights from historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and religious studies scholars. The book has a global focus and features case studies from North America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. This book will be of great interest to researchers of conspiracy theories, esotericism, extremism, and religion

Thinking Critically About the Kennedy Assassination

Author : Michel Jacques Gagné
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 514 pages
File Size : 43,8 Mb
Release : 2022-03-27
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781000544121

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Thinking Critically About the Kennedy Assassination by Michel Jacques Gagné Pdf

Thinking Critically About the Kennedy Assassination uses the tools of critical thinking, historical research, and philosophical inquiry to debunk the many myths and conspiracy theories surrounding JFK’s shocking and untimely death. As we approach the 60th anniversary of the violent public assassination of President John F. Kennedy, over half of all Americans surveyed continue to believe that he was killed by a conspiracy involving multiple assassins. Through its reasoned and detailed analysis of the content and evolution of JFK conspiracy narratives, this book also serves as a comprehensive case study of paranoid reasoning and modern mythmaking. The book’s opening chapters lay out the "official" academic consensus concerning the Kennedy assassination (better known as the "Lone Gunman Theory") and discuss the origins of popular interpretations of Kennedy’s life and death, such as the nostalgic myth of "Camelot," the unsympathetic "Irish Mafia" narrative, and the many conspiracy theories critical of both. Subsequent sections scrutinize the alleged motives of leading conspiracy suspects, the ballistic, forensic, and medical evidence related to JFK’s murder, and the most popular "proofs" of an enduring government cover- up. The book concludes that no clear evidence exists to suggest that JFK was the victim of a conspiracy and ends with a discussion of the causes and consequences of paranoid thinking in contemporary public discourse. This volume will appeal to students of history, politics, psychology, and cultural and media studies, and to a broader audience interested in American history, critical thinking, and conspiracy thinking.

Plots, Designs, and Schemes

Author : Michael Butter
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter
Page : 332 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 2014-05-08
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9783110346930

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Plots, Designs, and Schemes by Michael Butter Pdf

Plots, Designs, and Schemes is the first study that investigates the long history of American conspiracy theories from the perspective of literary and cultural studies. Since research in these fields has so far almost exclusively focused on the contemporary period, the book concentrates on the time before 1960. Four detailed case studies offer close readings of the Salem witchcraft crisis of 1692, fears of Catholic invasion during the 1830s to 1850s, antebellum conspiracy theories about slavery, and anxieties about Communist subversion during the 1950s. The study primarily engages with factual texts, such as sermons, pamphlets, political speeches, and confessional narratives, but it also analyzes how fears of conspiracy were dramatized and negotiated in fictional texts, such as Nathaniel Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown (1835) or Hermann Melville's Benito Cereno (1855). The book offers three central insights: 1. The American predilection for conspiracy theorizing can be traced back to the co-presence and persistence of a specific epistemological paradigm that relates all effects to intentional human action, the ideology of republicanism, and the Puritan heritage. 2. Until far into the twentieth century, conspiracy theories were considered a perfectly legitimate form of knowledge. As such, they shaped how many Americans, elites as well as “common” people, understood and reacted to historical events. The Revolutionary War and the Civil War would not have occurred without widespread conspiracy theories. 3. Although most extant research claims the opposite, conspiracy theories have never been as marginal and unimportant as in the past decades. Their disqualification as stigmatized knowledge only occurred around 1960, and coincided with a shift from theories that detect conspiracies directed against the government to conspiracies by the government.

Fantastic Cities

Author : Stefan Rabitsch,Michael Fuchs,Stefan L. Brandt
Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
Page : 276 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2022-02-04
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781496836649

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Fantastic Cities by Stefan Rabitsch,Michael Fuchs,Stefan L. Brandt Pdf

Contributions by Carl Abbott, Jacob Babb, Marleen S. Barr, Michael Fuchs, John Glover, Stephen Joyce, Sarah Lahm, James McAdams, Cynthia J. Miller, Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns, Chris Pak, María Isabel Pérez Ramos, Stefan Rabitsch, J. Jesse Ramírez, A. Bowdoin Van Riper, Andrew Wasserman, Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, and Robert Yeates Metropolis, Gotham City, Mega-City One, Panem’s Capitol, the Sprawl, Caprica City—American (and Americanized) urban environments have always been a part of the fantastic imagination. Fantastic Cities: American Urban Spaces in Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror focuses on the American city as a fantastic geography constrained neither by media nor rigid genre boundaries. Fantastic Cities builds on a mix of theoretical and methodological tools that are drawn from criticism of the fantastic, media studies, cultural studies, American studies, and urban studies. Contributors explore cultural media across many platforms such as Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy, the Arkham Asylum video games, the 1935 movie serial The Phantom Empire, Kim Stanley Robinson’s fiction, Colson Whitehead’s novel Zone One, the vampire films Only Lovers Left Alive and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, Paolo Bacigalupi’s novel The Water Knife, some of Kenny Scharf’s videos, and Samuel Delany’s classic Dhalgren. Together, the contributions in Fantastic Cities demonstrate that the fantastic is able to “real-ize” that which is normally confined to the abstract, metaphorical, and/or subjective. Consequently, both utopian aspirations for and dystopian anxieties about the American city become literalized in the fantastic city.

Conspiracy Literature in Early Renaissance Italy

Author : Marta Celati
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 2020-12-17
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780192608963

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Conspiracy Literature in Early Renaissance Italy by Marta Celati Pdf

Conspiracy has been a political phenomenon throughout history, relevant to any form of power from antiquity to the post-modern era. This means of resistance against power was prevalent during the Renaissance, and the Italian fifteenth century, in particular, can be regarded as an 'age of plots'. This book offers the first full-length investigation of Italian Renaissance literature on the topic of conspiracy. This literature covered a range of different genres and it enjoyed widespread diffusion during the second half of the fifteenth century, when the development of this literary production was connected with the affirmation of centralized political thought and princely ideology in Italian states. The centrality of conspiracies also emerges in the sixteenth century in Machiavelli's work, where the topic is closely interlaced with problems of building political consensus and management of power. This volume presents case studies of the most significant humanist texts (representative of different states, literary genres, and of prominent authors—Alberti, Poliziano, Pontano—and minor, yet important, literati), and it also investigates Machiavelli's political and historical works. Through interdisciplinary analysis, this study traces the evolution of literature on plots in early Renaissance Italy. It points out the key function of the classical tradition and the recurring narrative approaches, the historiographical techniques, and the ideological angles that characterize the literary transfiguration of the topic. This volume also offers a reconsideration of the complex facets of humanist political literature that played a crucial role in the development of a new theory of statecraft.

The Return of the Baroque in Modern Culture

Author : Gregg Lambert
Publisher : A&C Black
Page : 178 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2004-11-01
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781847143259

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The Return of the Baroque in Modern Culture by Gregg Lambert Pdf

The Return of the Baroque in Modern Culture explores the re-invention of the early European Baroque within the philosophical, cultural, and literary thought of postmodernism in Europe, the United States, the Caribbean, and Latin America. Gregg Lambert argues that the "return of the Baroque" expresses a principle often hidden behind the cultural logic of postmodernism in its various national and cultural incarnations, a principal often in variance with Anglo-American modernism. Writers and theorists examined include Walter Benjamin, Paul de Man, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Octavio Paz, and Cuban novelists Alejo Carpentier and Severo Sarduy. A highly original and compelling reinterpretation of modernity, The Return of the Baroque in Modern Culture answers Raymond Williams' charge to create alternative national and international accounts of aesthetic and cultural history in order to challenge the centrality of Anglo-American modernism.

Conspiracy Culture

Author : Dr Peter Knight,Peter Knight
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 308 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2013-04-15
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781135117313

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Conspiracy Culture by Dr Peter Knight,Peter Knight Pdf

Conspiracy theories are everywhere in post-war American culture. From postmodern novels to The X-Files and from gangsta rap to feminist polemic, there is a widespread suspicion that sinister forces are conspiring to take control of our national destiny, our minds, and even our bodies. Conspiracy explanations can no longer be dismissed as the paranoid delusions of far-right crackpots. Indeed, they have become a necessary response to a risky and increasingly globalized world, in which everything is connected but nothing adds up. Peter Knight provides an engaging and cogent analysis of the development of conspiracy culture, from 1960s' countercultural suspicions about the authorities to the 1990s, where a paranoid attitude is both routine and ironic. Conspiracy Culture analyses conspiracy narratives about familiar topics like the Kennedy assassination, alien abduction, body horror, AIDS, crack cocaine, the New World Order, as well as more unusual ones like the conspiracies of patriarchy and white supremacy. Conspiracy Culture shows how Americans have come to distrust not only the narratives of the authorities, but even the authority of narrative itself to explain What Is Really Going On. From the complexities of Thomas Pynchon's novels to the endless mysteries of The X-Files, Knight argues that contemporary conspiracy culture is marked by an infinite regress of suspicion. Trust no one, because we have met the enemy and it is us.

Shaping the World of Change

Author : Anonim
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 257 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2024-06-06
Category : Education
ISBN : 9789004705777

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Shaping the World of Change by Anonim Pdf

This book sets out the theme of a world that is changing rapidly and higher education being an important agent in shaping that change through knowledge generation, transfer and innovation. The chapters in this book focus on this shaping role of higher education along a number of key areas: governance, sustainability, teaching and learning, student agency, quality and internationalization. From these different topics, this volume presents ways in which higher education helps dealing with and shaping the educational and societal changes that we are facing in the aftermath of the pandemic and challenges that we are expecting in the near future. Contributors are: Victor M. H. Borden, Bruno Broucker, Edel Cassar, Bárbara Coelho Gabriel, Cindy Cogswell, Julia Draghi, Brigitte Ecker, Pınar Eldemir, Klaus Feldmann, Cláudia Figueiredo, Anne Gannon, Jussi Kivistö, Manja Klemenčič, Theodor Leiber, Nandarani Maistry, Sara Moreno Pires, Takalani Muloiwa-Klenam, Darlington Mutakwa, Erna Nairz-Wirth, Ruaidhri Neavyn, Jessica Nooij, Mark O’Hara, Beate Pawle, Alexandra Polido, Maria Pöschl, Silke Preymann, Verena Régent, Lotte Scheeren, Kateryna Suprun, Robertt Valente, Floris J. N. van Berckel Smit, Annemieke van der Horst and Sabine Weiss.

Empire of Conspiracy

Author : Timothy Melley
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 252 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 2016-12-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781501713019

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Empire of Conspiracy by Timothy Melley Pdf

Why, Timothy Melley asks, have paranoia and conspiracy theory become such prominent features of postwar American culture? In Empire of Conspiracy, Melley explores the recent growth of anxieties about thought-control, assassination, political indoctrination, stalking, surveillance, and corporate and government plots. At the heart of these developments, he believes, lies a widespread sense of crisis in the way Americans think about human autonomy and individuality. Nothing reveals this crisis more than the remarkably consistent form of expression that Melley calls "agency panic"—an intense fear that individuals can be shaped or controlled by powerful external forces. Drawing on a broad range of forms that manifest this fear—including fiction, film, television, sociology, political writing, self-help literature, and cultural theory—Melley provides a new understanding of the relation between postwar American literature, popular culture, and cultural theory. Empire of Conspiracy offers insightful new readings of texts ranging from Joseph Heller's Catch-22 to the Unabomber Manifesto, from Vance Packard's Hidden Persuaders to recent addiction discourse, and from the "stalker" novels of Margaret Atwood and Diane Johnson to the conspiracy fictions of Thomas Pynchon, William Burroughs, Don DeLillo, and Kathy Acker. Throughout, Melley finds recurrent anxieties about the power of large organizations to control human beings. These fears, he contends, indicate the continuing appeal of a form of individualism that is no longer wholly accurate or useful, but that still underpins a national fantasy of freedom from social control.

A Culture of Conspiracy

Author : Michael Barkun
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 260 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2003
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN : 0520248120

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A Culture of Conspiracy by Michael Barkun Pdf

Unravelling the genealogies and permutations of conspiracist worldviews, this work shows how this web of urban legends has spread among sub-cultures on the Internet and through mass media, and how this phenomenon relates to larger changes in American culture.

Counterfeit Politics

Author : David Kelman
Publisher : Bucknell University Press
Page : 202 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2012-10-20
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781611484151

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Counterfeit Politics by David Kelman Pdf

In Counterfeit Politics, David Kelman reassesses the political significance of conspiracy theory. Traditionally, political theory has sought to banish the “paranoid style” from the “proper” domain of politics. But if conspiracy theory lies outside the sphere of legitimate politics, why do these narratives continue to haunt political life? Counterfeit Politics accounts for the seemingly ineradicable nature of conspiracy theory by arguing that all political statements ultimately take the form of conspiracy theory. Through careful readings of works by Ernest Hemingway, Ricardo Piglia, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Jorge Luis Borges, Ishmael Reed, Jorge Volpi, Rigoberta Menchú, and Ángel Rama, Kelman demonstrates that conspiracy narratives bear witness to an illegitimate or “counterfeit” secret that cannot be fully recognized, understood, and controlled. Even though the secret is not authorized to speak, this “silence” is nevertheless precisely what gives the secret its force. Kelmangoes on to suggest that all political statements—even those that do not seem “paranoid”—are constitutively illegitimate or counterfeit, since they always narrate this unresolved play of legitimacy between an official or authorized plot and an unofficial or unauthorized plot (a “complot”). In short, Counterfeit Politics argues that politics only takes place as “conspiracy theory.”