| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £4.10
Trade in Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £4.10, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Plus, get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organise and find favourite items. |
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
He begins with exploring Richard Hofstadter's work on the paranoid style of American politics, and leaps into studying the militia movement, later focusing on JFK, the X-Files, and other forms of "conspiracy as entertainment" and also examines millennial Christian groups and apocalyptic predictions, etc. Fenster is rigorous in his exploration of conspiracy theories-as he explains in the beginning, he is not detailing the theories so much as examining what they represent, both culturally and individually. In this, he does an excellent job, particularly regarding the militias.
He seeks to get past the old notion of conspiracy theory as pathology to seeing it as a legitimate, if extreme and disempowering expression of popular dissatisfaction with the status quo. This is an important observation: that conspiracy theory, by embracing the idea of all-powerful individual villainy (a secret group behind it all), instead of structural problems (capitalism, American democracy) people can actually affect and change, conspiracy theory saps the strength from people by making them paranoid bystanders to their own lives. But he's clear to point out how the structure of the American political system creates this line of thought, albeit unintentionally-the majority of Americans are marginalized in this society. The tonic for this would seem to be action, rather than taking refuge in conspiracy theory.
Overall, this book is worth your time, but don't read it as a titillating account of conspiracies or you will be disappointed. If you're curious about what makes these things tick, then this book is for you.
The answers are simple, this book has details. This book has facts. This book has information that is hard to find anywhere else. Above all this book isn't conjecture. Fenster's ability to bring to life the conspiracy and what it means to society is nothing short of remarkable.
From the very beginning, we find that author's attention to detail almost incredible. Fenster has taken what society has reduced to nothing more than tabloid trash and revealed secrets that will make you scared and judging from the writing you should be.
Fenster covers Militia groups, JFK, the Millennium, Bill Clinton and other and does it very well. I am certainly glad to have had the chance to read this remarkable book. I would hope the author is in the process of a second edition. Once again - excellent job!
Mark Fenster argues in "Conspiracy Theories" that these ideas swirl around us and everyone to a greater or lesser degree buys into them. We could not work effectively in society without sometimes wild explanations. What percentage of the population, for example does not believe there was a conspiracy to assassinate JFK in 1963? Is your theory the same as mine? What evidence supports these assertions?
For Fenster conspiracy theories are something of a mind game we play to help explain what we view as irrational. It is also a way to ease the boredom of our mundane modern existence. Furthermore, it helps to explain an overarching cynicism about contemporary culture and especially politics, which seems both out of reach and impossible to parse. Moreover, it plays to modern society's hidden desires for scapegoating, bigotry, and fascism.
Fenster's short study--only nine chapters with an introduction and an afterword--steps through several key issues. A first section explores the use of conspiracy to shape political thought and action. Here he takes down the marginalization of conspiracism to politics that was so much a part of Hofstadter's consensus historiographical tradition. He then undertakes several case studies of conspiracy, offering sophisticated analyses of the many conspiracy themes surrounding the Clinton presidency, popular manifestations of JFK's assassination and the X-Files, Christian fundamentalist apocalyticism, and the possibility of the theme in cultural studies.
"Conspiracy Theories" is very much a work of scholarship. For those seeking the scholarly situation of the theme into the larger area of American studies, media studies, and cultural analysis and criticism this is a welcome work. For those interested in a more practically and politically motivated discussion this work will be disappointing. As it is, this is a useful place to begin analyzing a complex theme in modern American society.
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
