Conspiracy Panics: Political Rationality and Popular Culture

by Jack Z. Bratich

While most other works focus on conspiracy theories, this book examines conspiracy panics, or the anxiety over the phenomenon of conspiracy theories. Jack Z. Bratich argues that conspiracy theories are portals into the major social issues defining U.S. and global political culture. These issues include the rise of new technologies, the social function of journalism, U.S. race relations, citizenship and dissent, globalization, biowarfare and biomedicine, and the shifting positions within the Left. Using a Foucauldian governmentality analysis, Bratich maintains that conspiracy panics contribute to a broader political rationality, a (neo)liberal strategy of governing at a distance through the use of reason. He also explores the growing popularity of 9/11 conspiracy research in terms of what he calls the "sphere of legitimate dissensus." Conspiracy Panics concludes that we are witnessing a new fusion of culture and rationality, one that is increasingly shared across the political spectrum.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction

239 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2008

Reviews

[Stevphen Shukaitis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent book. Why is it that the mere mention of the phrase 'conspiracy theory' is enough to conjure images of people wearing aluminum foil on their head and other such absurdities? What Bratich does with great skill in this book is look at the effects and power relations created within panics over conspiracy, or the processes that lead to a condition where the mention or accusation of a set of being a conspiracy theory leads to the marginalization of the ideas contained. Conspiracy theories and panics over them are thus an important site for the shaping of political rationality, particularly in how they discount and render separate from what Bratich describes as the 'sphere of legitimate dissensus.' The point is not to embrace any particular series of conspiracy theories, but rather to see what their social functions are what subjugated knowledges are contained within them. On other words, there is more lost in terms of building forms of social movement and radical politics in the forms of power invoked in panicking over conspiracy narratives than posed by their existence. Indeed, one can reformulate an approach to politics based upon the forms of subjugated investigations and collective intelligence found within these narratives. Bratich does an excellent job in providing a set of tools for such a task.