Abstract
In this chapter, I trace paranoia and the political logic of conspiracy theorizing as responses to a social order characterized by the psychosis of late capitalism. Critiquing the classical academic approaches to conspiracy forwarded by Hofstadter and Jameson, I theorize the conspiracy theorist not as a pathological individual, but as an actor caught in a symptomatic machination of truth seeking that ultimately leads to political inertia. Reading Lacanian theory alongside a map of conspiracy disguised as a resumé, I develop an understanding of paranoid psychosis as a cultural effect and I work towards a psychoanalytic account of paranoia as a productive, critical, pedagogical disposition.
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Burdick, J. (2018). The Paranoid and Psychotic Pedagogies of Conspiracy Theory: Locating the Political in the Sinthome of Conspiratorial Logics. In: Sandlin, J., Wallin, J. (eds) Paranoid Pedagogies. Palgrave Studies in Educational Futures. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64765-4_9
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