Truth and its Discontents: Rumor, Secrecy, and Conspiracy Theory

4.0 credits

In light of the recent revival of populism and authoritarian politics around the world, much attention has centered around the emergence of an era of “post-truth.” This course explores the mediation practices that shape this contemporary moment and the social, material, and political-economic conditions that they result from and foster. We will examine how knowledge is produced and travels in ways we might consider non-normative and the effects that these forms of mediation have in the world, shaping subjectivities, forms of political mobilization, and their mutual relationships. The first part of the course analyzes some of the broader social conditions that shape the possibility of knowledge—the mediated quality of social life, the role of ideological and affective formations, and some of the blind spots that shape our modes of perception and sense-making. It also touches on some of the subtle forms of violence that permeate social worlds. The second part looks at the social lives of different “genres” of non-normative knowledge—including secrecy, spectacle, rumor, and conspiracy theory. We explore how these forms of knowledge travel, the kinds of affective dispositions attached to them, what notions of and relations to power they presuppose, how they seek to overcome or sustain uncertainty, and how they relate to normative forms of knowledge production. We finish the course by looking at a distinct set of genres of knowledge production and circulation—such as parody, humor, and fiction—and their creative modes of power subversion.