This study analyzes the politics of contemporary conspiracy theory discourses in the United States. Departing from the predominant methodological individualism that characterizes many contemporary analyses of conspiracy theory, which take the individual subject as the unit to be explained and governed, this study situates the production and proliferation of conspiracy theory discourses in the context of cybernetics and related transformations in politics that have tended to reduce democratic representativeness and increase forms of economic and political inequality. Cybernetics, which is often defined as the science of command and control, offers a series of concepts that facilitate an understanding of how freedom and control have become aligned in the second half of the 20th and early 21st centuries in the United States. I utilize Michel Foucault's governmentality approach to formulate a cybernetic governmentality methodology, which analyzes the governance of subjectivity in and through cybernetic systems of communication. Cybernetics, which seeks to invite the individual subject to realize itself through 'choice' and by way of its imbrication into machinic systems, conceptualizes the subject as a consumer and processor of information. I put forth the notion of the scripted political to analyze a key tension within contemporary U.S. politics, as politics is becoming increasingly uncertain yet also often appears to be strongly controlled by political and economic elites. Conspiracy theory, as a speculative genre of thinking, aims to steer events towards certain political ends. Conspiratorial speculation has become a popular means to connect and reflect on a felt obsolescence or superfluity on the part of the individual subject. To substantiate these arguments, I specifically analyze the discourses of QAnon and Covid-19 conspiracy theories. These discourses express political fantasies that often privilege the idea of a liberal autonomous individual subject. The politics of contemporary conspiracy theory in the United States thus concerns the fact that these conspiratorial discourses seek to perform a form of liberal subjectivity. However, this performance of individual liberal subjectivity is always caught in cybernetic systems of communication, which seek to produce value, harvest data, and maximize the attention of their 'users', thus undermining the potential for any meaningful form of liberal subjectivity. / Doctor of Philosophy / This study analyzes the politics of contemporary conspiracy theory discourses in the United States. Whereas today many scholars approach conspiracy theory as concerning the beliefs of individual subjects, whose thoughts are considered deviant and potentially requiring reform or monitoring, this study engages with conspiracy theory discourses and their conditions of possibility. While many acknowledge that conspiracy theory is a response to a felt loss of control, this notion of control is understood to be only potentially true or valid. Cybernetics, which is often defined as the science of command and control, offers a series of concepts that facilitate an understanding of how freedom and control have become aligned in the second half of the 20th and early 21st centuries in the United States. Cybernetics, which seeks to invite the individual subject to realize itself through 'choice' and by way of its imbrication into machinic and technological systems, conceptualizes the individual subject as a consumer and processor of information. I develop a new notion that I call the scripted political to study a key tension within contemporary U.S. politics, as politics is becoming increasingly uncertain yet also often appears to be strongly controlled by political and economic elites. Conspiracy theory is a speculative genre of thinking that is well-suited to produce social and political meaning in a condition of information saturation characteristic of today's social domain. It does so, among other things, by providing explanations about the operations of what many conspiracy theorists consider to be concentrated forms of power and by attempting to steer events towards certain desirable political ends. However, as a way of producing social and political meaning, conspiracy theory often misses the mark. Yet, despite its frequent factual inconsistencies, conspiratorial discourses and speculations have become popular means to create social connections and to reflect on a sense of obsolescence or superfluity felt by many individual subjects. To support these arguments, I focus on the conspiratorial discourses of and about QAnon and about the Covid-19 pandemic. These discourses express political fantasies that often privilege the idea of a liberal autonomous individual subject. However, I show in this study that fantasies about a re-empowered mode of individual liberal subjectivity are often caught in cybernetic systems of communication, which are more interested in producing economic value, harvesting all sorts of data about individual subjects, and maximizing the attention of their 'users', thus undermining the potential for any return to a meaningful form of liberal subjectivity.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/118964 |
| Date | 13 May 2024 |
| Creators | Beckenhauer, Samuel Brian |
| Contributors | Political Science, Debrix, Francois, Copeland, Nicholas M., Logan, Nneka, Britt, Brian M. |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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