A Crisis of Truth? Conspiracism in an Age of Political Turmoil

Abstract

This thesis examines the role of conspiracism within the broader context of a “post-truth” crisis that is felt to either accelerate or erupt from a shift in political hegemony taking place in North American and Western European liberal democracies. In this context of disorientation, this thesis proposes to stay with the uncertainties of this new and unstable category of thought and subjectivity. I ask: what new affective and ideological formation is the category of “conspiracism” attempting to name in this moment? What norms, imaginaries, and affects are mobilized and reshaped in this problematization of dissent? How is this affective and ideological formation lived, performed, and contested?