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Dangerous Machinery (Conspiracy Theory Masterpiece Theatre)
31 Plays2 years ago
Josh (for the most part) reviews Ginna Husting and Martin Orr's "Dangerous Machinery: “Conspiracy Theorist” as a Transpersonal Strategy of Exclusion" (Symbolic Interaction, Vol. 30, Issue 2, 2007).
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Josh is @monkeyfluids and M is @conspiracism on Twitter
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Transcript
Humorous Detective Story Elements
00:00:00
Speaker
So, we got some rave reviews for Poirot of the Apes. Got any more Belgian goodness? Sure, how about the mysterious case of the green Ceilin? Could be. Not literally, just figuratively. Ace dings, my friend. I think you should put the sound of the solid green down. You see ace dings, my little gray cells, they tell me the solid green, it is the people. Okay, what else you got? Well, I haven't got an Agatha Christie style title for this one, but it's basically Blade Runner.
00:00:28
Speaker
Good enough. I've seen things a-stings that you would not believe. Poisonings by the little old ladies on the River Nile. I've seen vials of cyanide shattered in the fireplaces of the manor. All these momentous things, they will not be lost to Po-O. He has to mind like a trap.
00:00:44
Speaker
Hmm, not quite as good. One more. Mon ami, are you talking to me? Estings, are you talking to me? Bonjour, are you talking to me? Zen, who else are you talking to? Estings, I ask again, are you talking to me? Well, I'm the only one here, Estings. Who do you think you're talking to? Oh, Inspector Japp of the Scotland Yard on the telephone?
00:01:05
Speaker
I see Hastings. The little grey cells. They let it puddle down. Well, we've plumbed the deaths here. Have we? Have we? For the sake of what's left of our audience, I certainly hope so.
Introduction to the Podcast and Hosts
00:01:25
Speaker
The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy. Brought to you today by Josh Addison and Dr Em Denton.
00:01:34
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy. I am Josh Addison in Auckland, New Zealand, and in Zhuhai, China, it's associate professor of philosophy and passionate advocate for the abolition of feet, the measurement and the body part, Dr. M. Dentis. Indeed. So, so sure am I about the unnecessary, unnecessary nature. That's a much better way of putting it.
00:01:58
Speaker
so sure alive about the unnecessary nature of feet that I no longer have any feet of my own and indeed am pruning the feet of others I know so watch out next time you see me it's going to be snipy snip snip with the sheesh sheesh yep no I personally had my feet replaced with with good good good honest meters many years ago now
00:02:21
Speaker
How are you feeling, first of all, given your convalescence last week? Well, so I'm better from the vaccination post-hot jab thing. I've also hurt a hamstring, which means it both hurts to stand up and to sit down, which is actually quite difficult when you want to record a podcast.
00:02:48
Speaker
Right, well, so I know I say this every time, but maybe this episode better maybe we actually have motivation to make this episode a short one then for your own physical well-being. Indeed, I mean this is going to be a classic episode that whenever you ask for my comments, I'll go, nothing to say here, move along. Indeed, I'm going to say there's nothing more to say here, move along.
Analyzing Conspiracy Theory Discourse
00:03:16
Speaker
Welcome to Conspiracy Theory Masterpiece Theatre.
00:03:29
Speaker
Right, so it is a conspiracy theory masterpiece theater episode, but a slightly different one. We're looking at, I believe for the first time, a paper from Jenna Husting and Martin Orr. Indeed, we're moving outside the philosophy into sociology and also moving back in time. So we're changing discipline and temporal period. Things have got very confused. And there's a reason why they've got confused.
00:03:55
Speaker
And it'll eventually make a kind of sense, but never be acknowledged in the actual episodes themselves, so you know. It gets a bit meta at this point. Yes. No, so the path we're looking at is called dangerous machinery. Conspiracy theorist is a transpersonal strategy of exclusion.
00:04:12
Speaker
And last time we had an article titled that rhymed, which I believe I said I'm 1,000% in favor of. If that's the case, I'm 2,000% in favor of article titles that sound like a sort of early period Nine Inch Nails album. Well, indeed, it's even published in a journal that sounds like a Nine Inch Nails album. Symbolic interaction.
00:04:39
Speaker
Maybe something a bit new, I've 80s, I'm not sure. Oh, yes, definitely. Possibly even a tall album. I can imagine a tall album being called Symbolic Interaction 3. Anyway, now, Jenner and Martin are names familiar to anyone who's been listening to this show for a while. You've interviewed them multiple times. But since this is the first time I believe we're actually looking at any of their work, can you give us a quick intro to the pair of them and what they do?
00:05:08
Speaker
No, we'll be moving straight along. Actually, that's not fair. So Martin Jenner, a sociologist at Boise State University, which is an unusually named university because Boise is not a state. Idaho is a state. Boise is located in Idaho.
00:05:23
Speaker
and yet somehow the university is not called Boise, Idaho State University, or Idaho State University Boise, it's Boise State University, which now makes me think the university is indeed a tissue of lies, which is even more confusing because I've been to Boise State University, or at least I've been to an institution that claims to be Boise State University.
00:05:47
Speaker
Anyway, they're both sociologists. They published this paper back in 2007. I met Marty at the conspiracy theory conference run by J.U. Sinski. I met Jina when I went to Boise to see Marty and to give a talk. And they're both scholars of the highest class. And I'm not saying that for the sheer fact that I'm also co-writing two papers with them at the moment.
00:06:10
Speaker
And that, unfortunately, is as far as we got before the internet connection between the two of us just died completely. It had been a little bit patchy as we were recording the start of the episode. Dropped out a couple of times and then came back and then dropped out again almost instantly. So we decided
00:06:27
Speaker
that instead of wasting the entire evening wrestling with technology, we should just go away and do one of those sort of Frankenstein-y episodes that we did from time to time back when M was in Romania. So what's going to happen now is that I'm going to go through the paper
00:06:46
Speaker
and say what I thought of it, and M is going to interject at various points with comments as and when they see fit, or maybe not at all, who knows. And I assume we'll be able to edit it together into something vaguely sensible, so
00:07:09
Speaker
Here goes, basically. So yes, the paper Dangerous Machinery, conspiracy theorist as a transpersonal strategy of exclusion. It has an abstract, and the abstract reads as follows. In a culture of fear, we should expect the rise of new mechanisms of social control to deflect distrust, anxiety and threat.
00:07:29
Speaker
Relying on the analysis of popular and academic texts, we examine one such mechanism, the label conspiracy theory, and explore how it works in public discourse to go meta by sidestepping the examination of evidence. Our findings suggest that authors use the conspiracy theorist label as one, a routinized strategy of exclusion, two, a reframing mechanism that deflects questions or concerns about power, corruption, and motive, and three, an attack upon the personhood and competence of the questioner.
The 'Conspiracy Theorist' Label and Public Discourse
00:07:58
Speaker
This label becomes dangerous machinery at the transpersonal levels of media and academic discourse, symbolically stripping the claimant of the status of reasonable interlocutor, often to avoid the need to account for one's own action or speech. We argue that this and some of the mechanisms simultaneously control the flow of information and symbolically demobilize certain voices and issues in public discourse.
00:08:19
Speaker
And so in the intro, they sort of set out something that actually sounded quite similar to the last paper we looked at, must be about four weeks ago by now, the truth games and language claims, where if you recall, the authors of that paper talked about how the label of conspiracy theory or conspiracy theorist
00:08:42
Speaker
kind of operates by different rules. You call someone a conspiracy theorist and suddenly the usual rules of evidence or argumentation or what have you kind of go out the window and it gets treated as special. And so on this one, Jenner and Martin kind of making a similar claim and yet about 10 years before that.
00:09:03
Speaker
So in the intro, for instance, they sell an introduction section. They say, when I call you a conspiracy theorist, I can turn the tables on you instead of responding to a question, consumer challenge. I twist the machinery of interaction so that you, not I, are now called to account. In fact, I've done even more by labeling you. I strategically exclude you from the sphere where public debate, sorry, public speech debate and conflict occur.
00:09:27
Speaker
So right from the start, they sort of seem to be identifying the fact that this label of conspiracy theory, used obviously in the pejorative sense that we're used to, can sort of short-circuit any kind of discussion and immediately put the person you're accusing of being a conspiracy theorist on the back foot, as it were, which I think is a cricket term. I'm not sure if that translates overseas, but anyway.
00:09:53
Speaker
So I guess before we start, this is a sociology paper and it's the first sociology paper I've ever read, I'm pretty sure, and I found it a little bit
00:10:04
Speaker
I guess harder to read is kind of the word, not in that it's written in obscure or difficult language, but just that it operates differently to philosophy papers. If one thing is a lot more empirical, as we'll see, having sort of made their claims at the start, a large part of this paper is going to be basically
00:10:26
Speaker
a survey of media and academic literature to sort of provide evidence for their claims. But it does start off in the first proper section, which is called Going Meta, Frames as Machinery of Discourse, setting things out a little bit. So they do a bit of good old-fashioned defining of terms, in particular the idea of a frame.
00:10:51
Speaker
a frame being sort of the sort of thing a speaker would say in certain circumstances as opposed to anything the speaker may actually say. I think I'm getting that right. And so they talk about how the label of conspiracy theorists sort of shifts the frame because when you've been accused of being a conspiracy theorist
00:11:16
Speaker
you're no longer it's again it's it's no longer about what you're saying it becomes about what what you say in relation to that we'll see a bit later on though they talk about the whole disclaimer
00:11:28
Speaker
strategy of saying, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but it sort of metaphorically pulls the rug out from under you. They say, conspiracy theory or theorist is an apparatus that when invoked sets in motion a frame shift that exposes both the speaker's claims and the speaker's competence to attack. So again, it's not just
00:11:52
Speaker
arguing against what you say, it's almost attacking your right to say it or your competence to be able to say it. And so that sort of sets up, I'm glossing over a lot here, and I'll probably be doing that a bit, because again, there's a lot of stuff that didn't quite
00:12:14
Speaker
resonate with me coming from a philosophy background. So I've kind of skipped across to the things that I wanted to say make sense to me, which is not to imply that the rest of the paper doesn't make sense.
Political and Media Shifts in Conspiracy Theory
00:12:27
Speaker
I don't have the background to properly handle it. So that's the start of it. We get into the next section
00:12:35
Speaker
called Situating the Machinery, Symbolic Interaction and the Sociology of Power and Language. They start by saying power language and meaning construction is central to our work. Power is a notoriously slippery concept.
00:12:47
Speaker
whether we take a Foucauldian or symbolic interactionist approach, but scholars across perspectives concur that we must approach power not as a what or a thing, but as a how, a set of processes or mechanisms. Foucault at least. I almost feel like I'm on familiar ground there, although I never really did a lot of Foucault. We haven't talked about it much in this particular podcast, but he's a name I know.
00:13:09
Speaker
But so they say, talking in particular about American political culture, they say that recent work on the transpersonal level indicates that US public arenas are now characterized by anxiety and the constant spectre of danger, in addition to, or perhaps instead of, a sense of homogeneity, the idea being that
00:13:27
Speaker
in previous times there was, and obviously I have no competence to be speaking about the national mood of the United States a decade or so before I was born, but basically the suggestion is that
00:13:42
Speaker
that we went from an idea of sort of homogeneity and the way you would attack something would be sort of to suggest it's not properly American. And now that these days, especially in the sort of post 9-11 era, there's the undercurrent of fear, which I think is not a particularly outlandish claim if you just look at how much of
00:14:07
Speaker
sort of populist politics, especially your good old Trumpy stuff, is all about identifying a boogeyman, identifying a threat, whether it's immigrants or terrorists or critical race theory or what have you. So moving on, they say, in such a culture, fear and threat become the means for media politicians and corporations to sell commodities, buy votes and justify policies, reducing civil rights and promoting war.
00:14:31
Speaker
As a mythos of consensus had turned into a mythos of fear, we would expect to find new interaction mechanisms to shield authority and legitimacy from challenge or accountability in a society characterized by political, economic, and cultural inequalities. Conspiracy theory, or theorist, is one such mechanism. The label functions symbolically, protecting certain decisions and people from question in areas of political, cultural, and scholarly knowledge construction.
00:14:55
Speaker
such devices as strategies of exclusion and are used across the political spectrum and for a variety of topics. In all these contexts, they can deflect attention from the claims at hand and shift discourse to the nature of the claimant, which again, emphasizes, reinforces the case that they're trying to make here that as soon as you call someone a conspiracy theorist, as soon as you call something a conspiracy theory, you're immediately undermining it. Obviously, again, we're talking about the
00:15:23
Speaker
the very pejorative use, not the use that Em and I generally talk about. You're immediately challenging not just the content of the conspiracy theory but the character or the standing or the competence of the person who's putting it forward, sort of shifting the attack even a further
00:15:45
Speaker
step back so you don't even need to criticize the actual content of what they're saying. You put them in a position where they sort of have to justify themselves before they can even begin justifying what they're talking about.
00:15:57
Speaker
Now, the next section is called caveat. I may be paranoid, but that doesn't mean. And they quick that just as a another point before they get into the main body of the paper, compare talking about conspiracy theories to talking about paranoia and rumor. And I know we have seen talk of rumor in the past coming up in some of our papers. So.
00:16:22
Speaker
Again, this is a little more familiar. But so in this section they argue that the charge of conspiracy theory in public spheres discredit specific explanations for social and historical events, regardless of the quality or quantity of evidence.
00:16:38
Speaker
The charge tends to at least tacitly involve the belief that conspiracy theories constitute a general type of claim that can be dismissed as such. We do not deny that some claims characterise as conspiracy theories are false, but conspiracy theories like rumour and the categories overlap are forms of collective problem solving or meaning construction. Moreover, and to our point, when the phrase becomes a means of delegitimising, trivialising or dismissing claims,
00:17:03
Speaker
It no longer matters whether they were in fact claims about conspiracy or simply demands that decisions, events and uses of power be accounted for publicly. And this in this section, they again acknowledge as we've seen in numerous other papers, we know that conspiracies do occur. And indeed, as they point out, there are such things as criminal conspiracy, like there are certain kinds of conspiracies that are recognized by the law.
00:17:29
Speaker
And so they're not talking about whether or not conspiracies can be true or not. They say, our concern then is neither explanation of any particular historical event nor any general distinction between conspiracies and other forms of social causation. Rather, we analyze conspiracy theory as a metamove that true or false breaches the narrow circle of truth and falsity involved in routine, unproblematic claims
00:17:55
Speaker
making. The nature of that work is the focus of this article.
Empirical Analysis of 'Conspiracy Theory' in Media
00:17:59
Speaker
So we start to get into the main part of the article, the method and data section. So here's where I started to get a little bit what's going on here. It gets all empirical. I didn't know you were allowed to do that. But of course, this is a completely different discipline. So the method and data section, they set out how they plan to study the use of the terms conspiracy theory and conspiracy theorist.
00:18:25
Speaker
They say that our goal was not to provide an exhaustive or definitive empirical analysis of all appearances of conspiracy theory, but to isolate and track its functions as one mechanism of discursive power in an age of fear and uncertainty. So they talk about exactly what they've been analyzing to track how conspiracy theory is used. They are using LexisNexis, they say. We searched the New York Times to track the frequency of conspiracy theory and theorists
00:18:54
Speaker
from 1968 to 1995. As Table 1 shows, the phrase has been on the rise since the mid-1980s. They have a table. They have an actual graph in this paper. It practically looks like science. I'm all at sea here. And obviously, being a podcast, I cannot show you this graph. But take it from me that it very clearly shows the terms conspiracy or conspiracy theorists both in
00:19:19
Speaker
headlines or leads or in the full text of article there's quite a noticeable jump sort of around 1980 and then it continues to trend upwards all the way to the early 2000s.
00:19:35
Speaker
So they say we examine the labels conspiracy theorist and conspiracy theory as well as explicit articulations of the phrase's semantics. And they quickly discovered that the phrase no matter the context reframes or shifts the ground of the interaction.
00:19:50
Speaker
But it wasn't just news media usage of the term. They also looked at the more sort of academic usage of it. They say, to locate users of the phrase in the social science press, our second discursive arena, we relied on searches of the sociological abstracts, which I assume is a journal, for the terms conspiracy, conspiracy theorist or theorists, and conspiracy theory or theories. And so the next part, which forms the main
00:20:15
Speaker
body of the paper, I suddenly realise I'm talking quite quickly, I think possibly because I'm still in the mindset of how we wanted to get this episode over quickly to spear Em's poor hamstring, but maybe I should be pausing slightly at the end of each section to give Em a chance to interject, so maybe next stick a pause in here in case there's anything in particular that Em's been dying to get off their chest. So, dear listener,
00:20:37
Speaker
Here's something which is really interesting. So, normally these Conspiracy Theory Masterpiece Theatre episodes are almost an hour in length, and we always try to make them as short as possible, but there's always so much to say. What's interesting about this episode is that it's basically just Josh talking about this paper in symbolic interaction by Marty and Jina, the paper dangerous machinery.
00:21:03
Speaker
And the episode is 46 minutes long, which means anything I add in at this point just makes the episode even longer. It occurs to me the reason why these Conspiracy Theory Masterpiece Theatre episodes are so long
00:21:22
Speaker
is because Josh really really really likes to get into the weeds when it comes to discussing these articles and that's great. It's really really quite exciting to listen to someone taking a look at a paper I know particularly well
00:21:37
Speaker
and showing fresh insights. Some of the stuff that Josh has talked about about the earlier philosophical papers we've looked at has led to me reevaluating some of those early claims. So it's great to hear Josh talk about this stuff at the same time.
00:21:55
Speaker
I don't have anything to say at this particular juncture, but I am putting these little snippets of my thoughts in as I'm editing and listening to the episode, thus making it longer than 46 minutes, it should be pointed out. So maybe, maybe I'll be interjecting with something more substantive in just a few minutes' time, or maybe not.
00:22:18
Speaker
I don't know. Josh will never know. Well, he probably will if he listens to the episode. You will know. But by the time you know, it'll be too late. It'll be set in stone. That's the thing about an audio medium. It's very much temporally fixed. Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. As I move along to the next bit.
00:22:43
Speaker
And again, actually, one thing I should have said at the start there, this is something that would not be apparent to you, but M may or may not have noticed that. Usually when we do a conspiracy theory masterpiece theater episode, I'll read through the paper, and because obviously it's entirely new to me, I sort of do the read through and note taking and what have you. And in philosophy papers, there usually sort of be a bit of a quote and then a whole bunch of points of my thinking on the quote.
00:23:13
Speaker
But when it's a paper I don't quite understand as well, it's pretty much nothing but quotes that I figure probably speak for themselves or I don't know enough to actually say anything about. And the notes that I took for this one are almost 100% just rote quotations of what they said. So there's probably better scope for him to be interjecting here. So going forwards, I'll have to remind myself to take a breath in between each section.
00:23:42
Speaker
But the first section is mainstream news and conspiracy theory. So they start this by saying conspiracy theory might be used variously, for example, to conceal, defend, label, or paraphrase. In our data, it is uniformly a metamove with several analytically distinct yet co-occurring functions. It reflexively reframes an interaction, challenges the legitimacy of claims or claimants, and allows its user to avoid addressing the claims themselves.
00:24:10
Speaker
It shifts discourse from claimant's manifest content to their right to be taken seriously, again restating basically that seems to be the theme of this article that they're trying to find evidence for.
Conspiracy Theories in Political and Sports Discourse
00:24:22
Speaker
So they look at the use of the term conspiracy theory or conspiracy theorist in four different areas, each of which has its own little subsection in here.
00:24:33
Speaker
So those areas are politics, sports, American character, and race, nation, and ethnicity. So in the first section, our first subsection, I suppose, politics, power is conspiracy theory. They give examples of political conspiracy theories, in particular theories that the Bush administration had been forewarned of something like 9-11, which of course
00:25:02
Speaker
Again, they're not specifically going for sort of 9-11 truth stuff. They're going for any sort of theory where the label conspiracy theory is applied, because of course there were. It did sort of come out that there was that briefing that suggested that Al-Qaeda are probably looking to make some sort of attack on American soil. I forget the exact details of it.
00:25:25
Speaker
And so it was a slightly bad look that this information does seem to have been there, but either wasn't noticed or wasn't properly taken seriously or acted upon. And yet, so we know this is the thing that happened, and yet when people would say stuff like that, that the Bush administration had been warned about this, it wouldn't sometimes be written off as that's just a conspiracy theory.
00:25:46
Speaker
And so they talk about how political conspiracy theories like this see the term conspiracy theory used to basically ridicule them. And often, in doing so, they'd make reference to things like grassy knolls or Roswell. And a theme you saw of it was sort of the conflation of anything that gets the label conspiracy theory instantly gets lumped in with the much less plausible, less reputable ones.
00:26:13
Speaker
So moving on to the next section, sports, bad call or conspiracy. Looking at the usage of the term conspiracy theory in sports articles, mostly they say we're only ever really passing references. It would usually be in stories where there'd be accusations of bias in a referee or something like that.
00:26:37
Speaker
and someone would just sort of, there'd just be a sort of an offhand comment to, you know, was there really bias or is this just a conspiracy theory on the part of Saw Losers or something like that? It was obviously disparaging, it was obviously again ridiculing what was the quote up above? Shifting discourse from claimants manifest content to their right to be taken seriously. But
00:27:03
Speaker
in a much more sort of offhand, just passing mention kind of way. So the next subsection, American character, everyone loves a conspiracy theory, and this was
00:27:13
Speaker
As they say, associations between conspiracy theories and pathology, as we often see, we've seen that in philosophical articles and in other ones, the idea that conspiracy theory is sort of evidence of some sort of pathology, whether that be actual mental illness or just sort of epistemic vices, as we've seen.
Cultural Fascination with Conspiracy Theories
00:27:34
Speaker
But, yes, associations between conspiracy theory and pathology are forged in the genre of articles structured around the question, why do Americans love conspiracy theories?
00:27:44
Speaker
And so this was them looking at articles, basically talking about conspiracy theories and why people like them and why they stick around and so on and so forth. And once again, they saw a lot of instances of conspiracies, known conspiracies, things that we know actually happened, nevertheless still get folded in with the unproven ones.
00:28:12
Speaker
And so they say it's the move to tarnish what was in fact conspiracy shows the labels power. So things that were actual conspiracies that actually happened, your Watergate's and what have you, you can still use the label to take away the power of any such thing simply by associating them with other conspiracy theories that we know are what?
00:28:41
Speaker
that are considerably less reputable, less plausible, to suggest that they're all kind of the same. All these conspiracy theories, they're all alike. So anything that shares that label is sort of tarred as being as bad as the worst of them. And then finally, the last subsection here is race, nation, ethnicity. The other is conspiracy theorist.
00:29:07
Speaker
where they say, articles on Iraq reveal a conjunction of racism and conspiracy baiting as a means of national identity spoilage. The mechanism functions to tarnish any particular member of a nation or collectively linked with the label. And so this is the idea that you say that conspiracy theories are popular within a certain population.
00:29:27
Speaker
so as to again suggest that the population as a whole has something wrong with it. You apply this technique of sort of shifting the discourse to their right to be taken seriously to a whole people. So they say the phrase conspiracy theory as opposed to in the instance here that they talk about the Muslim world and how the idea that you know the
00:29:54
Speaker
Iraq and the Muslim world in general are, they like their conspiracy theories, they are full of them. And by doing so, as they put it, the phrase conspiracy theory symbolically shifts the Muslim world outside the realm of serious people with whom one can reason. So again, they say it's sort of used, can be used to tar an entire people or an entire population in some way or another as being sort of outside the usual
00:30:27
Speaker
So despite Josh not actually leaving me a pause here to interject to myself, I am interjecting into the proceedings. So what we just talked about here is basically labelling practices. And labelling practices
00:30:40
Speaker
don't really get talked about a lot in a kind of explicit sense in the philosophical literature until much later on in the debate. So 2007-2008, when this paper is having impact, it's not having a similar impact on the way that philosophers talk about the distinction between these things called conspiracy theories and the accusations
00:31:06
Speaker
which we use when we call someone a conspiracy theorist or we call someone to view a conspiracy theory and so what Marty and Jenna do here is really interesting in that they're looking at different societal contexts and going look the phrase gets deployed in a variety of different ways in different contexts and I want to pull out the sport example here in part because that's
00:31:32
Speaker
a project I'm working on with Martin Jira, the way in which talk of conspiracy theories in the sporting world is kind of passed in the media in a way which it isn't with respect to political conspiracies. So people are quite happy to talk about conspiracy theories in sports.
00:31:51
Speaker
as being warranted or unwarranted depending on the evidence and there are lots of examples of people talking about conspiracy theories about what happened to a particular sports team or why there was match fixing going on in a particular league and they'll refer to that as a conspiracy theory but they'll also quite willingly go and it could be true.
00:32:13
Speaker
Well, it's often when we talk about the conspiracy theories and politics, when the label's deployed, it's deployed in such a way that we go, wow, you know, that's probably a rational belief, isn't it? So it's really interesting the stuff they're doing here. And it's kind of a shame that this paper wasn't more widely cited amongst philosophers at the time.
00:32:34
Speaker
because it dives into a whole bunch of issues that we should have been cognisant of in the first place. So that was the media sampling. Next we move on to looking at conspiracy theorists and the academic press.
Academic and Philosophical Perspectives
00:32:51
Speaker
So now we actually start looking at
00:32:54
Speaker
we start seeing even more familiar names showing up here. There have been references through many of the quotes I've said, but as the names were all in the fields outside of philosophy, I've sort of left them out. But looking at the analysis of academic texts, they say full understanding of the mechanics of the phrase, the phrase being conspiracy theory or conspiracy theorist,
00:33:18
Speaker
requires unpacking academic definitions of theories and theorists. The literature is sparse but rapidly growing. We identify three main strands of this literature. Analyses of conspiracy theory as individual psychopathology,
00:33:34
Speaker
epistemological analyses of conspiracy theorizing as a type of unwarranted knowledge claim, and recently more careful cultural studies analyses of conspiracy theories that redress some of the problems of the other two strands.
00:33:50
Speaker
So if that sounds familiar, you'll see in the middle there epistemological analyses, we're right into the philosophy, although as you could possibly tell from that quite there, they're looking at the philosophical articles that kind of, those earlier ones that poo-poo conspiracies from an epistemological sense.
00:34:09
Speaker
Whereas I don't know about their later works, but I'm guessing they probably would have found favour with some of the later papers that we've looked at that are a lot more charitable towards conspiracy theories. So as with the media section, it's divided up into sub-sections.
00:34:28
Speaker
The first one is called Pathologizing Conspiracy Discourse, Hofstadter and His Followers, and so this is, in this they're looking at more political theory, starting with good old Hofstadter's paranoid style, which goes all the way back to it, and basically predates the philosophical writings on it, was what was referred to
00:34:48
Speaker
in the earliest articles we saw. So in this they say that Hofstadter denies making ad hominem attacks. He claims to be labelling a style rather than characterising types of people, yet his descriptions and definitions reveal his target, the personal, moral and intellectual competence of individuals. So there they, obviously in this sense, conspiracy theory and theorists are being used very much in the
00:35:18
Speaker
A pejorative sense. They say much discourse about conspiracy has become almost inseparable from Hofstadter's creation of the paranoid mind. His quote-unquote conspiracy theorist has become a condensed symbol saturated with constellations of taken-for-granted meanings.
00:35:33
Speaker
Which, yeah, that's sort of the root of it here, this idea. All the baggage with which the term conspiracy theory or conspiracy theorist gets loaded, the baggage that we in this podcast have generally objected to, is very much loaded into Hofstadter's definition.
00:35:49
Speaker
Now, moving onwards to conspiracy theories, unwarranted categories of knowledge. This is when they actually do the survey of the philosophical work, which they say recent philosophical work on conspiracy theory furthers Hofstadter's agenda, establishing the epistemological limitations of conspiracy theory as a general type of knowledge claim. He referring to Steve Clark's 2002 paper,
00:36:14
Speaker
Brian L. Kelly's 99 and 2003 papers and Peekman's 1995. So those very earliest papers, which as you recall, all tended to be... those earliest ones did kind of start with the... from the angle of, gosh, conspiracy theories. We know they're a bit wacky, so let's see if we can show why. Although...
00:36:32
Speaker
at the very least, I recall Brian's earliest papers, did say, no, we can't write them off per se, but nevertheless would try to, there was that earlier project of trying to identify these, well, here are the kinds of conspiracy theories that we can automatically write off, and then even that seems to have been
00:36:53
Speaker
losing ground these days. So it looks at these earlier papers and notes though that of course Lee Basham's earlier papers critiqued
00:37:03
Speaker
those ones, and although they didn't use the language at the time, were basically the critiques of the generalist style, generalist conception of what conspiracy theories are, although as we know it was a while before a particular label came out. And it's basically a survey of the early literature in philosophy on conspiracy theories. They
00:37:27
Speaker
sort of mention the papers from Clark Kelly and Pigdon and then talk about how Lee Basham criticises them, talk about Steve Clark's reply to Basham's arguments and others. So at this point,
00:37:42
Speaker
They basically conclude that the consensus, the broad consensus, although they point out that there is argument back and forth in philosophy in the field of epistemology is that conspiracy theories are inherently suspect, thus fitting in with the attitudes they've seen elsewhere. But then they get into the third section, cultural studies and conspiracy theorizing in an age of anxiety.
00:38:07
Speaker
which they clearly find greater favours with. They start the section by saying, a third, much stronger scholarship has recently developed around the notion of conspiracy and conspiracy theory. The scholarship lies in the nexus between cultural studies, sociology, and history. Unlike the two literatures reviewed above, this work is careful in its theorisation and analysis of conspiracy, treating conspiracy claims as potentially legitimate responses to a postmodern cultural moment
00:38:33
Speaker
and often noting the pageration of the phrase conspiracy theorist. And so they go through the idea that in this particular area, we do see explanations of conspiracy theories that aren't pathological. They say things like these authors see conspiracy theories as reflections of a culture of fear, uncertainty, and anxiety. So the idea is very much that conspiracy theories aren't a mode of defective thinking in some way. They are at least at times valid response to the culture and the world you see around them.
00:39:03
Speaker
So it starts referring to instances of papers in this field, which, of course, I'm not at all familiar with, maybe even can add a little bit of color after this, but they talk about Jody Dean, who argues that people find it increasingly difficult to discern truth in an age of virtual technology and overwhelming information flows. Thus, aliens, both immigrant and planetary, come to signify our very real fears of invasion, violation, and mutation. They talk about Timothy Mellie,
00:39:32
Speaker
who apparently argues that conspiracy theorizing is less a reaction to specific events or issues than a manifestation of what he calls agency panic or deep anxieties arising from a sense of diminished human agency, a feeling that individuals cannot affect meaningful social action. And also Mason, whose first name
00:39:54
Speaker
Ah, there we go. And Fran Mason. Fran Mason points to conspiracy theorizing as a form of political agency in a global society pervaded by technologies and simulacra. So this sort of study still pathologizes conspiracy theorizing at times. It's not completely sort of non-projorative or non-judgmental entirely.
00:40:19
Speaker
They say, while we agree with this analysis of the current era, we believe that such accounts may end up reflexively strengthening categories of otherness. Instead of questioning the coherence of conspiracy theorising as a category or pointing to the reframing power of the phrase, these analyses come dangerously close to reifying it.
00:40:36
Speaker
And together alien abductees, the X-Files and concerns about corporate or political corruption, erases distinctions between the varying concerns of conspiracy, treating them all as part of the quote-unquote freak show of American culture in the post modern moment. And they go on, scholarly analysis must engage the micro-politics of the
Impact of Labeling on Public Discourse
00:40:53
Speaker
term.
00:40:53
Speaker
While this work on conspiracy has shown us the importance of cultural context for understanding many different kinds of phenomena, it must also attend more systematically to the micro-politics of the term, its ability to reflexively tarnish identities of wildly disparate claimants and to place limits on what can be uttered in the public sphere.
00:41:11
Speaker
Elsewhere, the way that the label conspiracy theory or conspiracy theorist can be applied to tarnish whole categories of claim or argumentation or person, basically. So that ends the survey of media and academic literature that talks about conspiracy theory.
00:41:37
Speaker
They do have another section after this called disclaimers, and this is where they talk about usages of the term conspiracy theory as a sort of, as a disclaimer, as a preemptive move to try and head off this reframing. The classic, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but
00:41:55
Speaker
So, because people know the power of the term conspiracy theorist to reframe a discussion, so people will try to preempt that by saying, you know, this isn't a conspiracy theory, even though in some cases it obviously is, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, and therefore I'm not going to let you invalidate my argument in this way.
00:42:15
Speaker
by trying to get ahead of the tactic, as they say. The charge conspiracy theory has become serious enough that writers now routinely engage in self-surveillance lest they be labeled a conspiracy theorist. Since the conspiracy theorist is often equated with a pathological type, delusional, incompetent, or just stupid, the disclaimer I'm not a conspiracy theorist but is an increasingly common strategy among those who would question or make claims about abuses of power
00:42:41
Speaker
and provides evidence of the policing of public discourse. So, again, I mean, this is just, I guess, to account for the uses of the terms that they saw in their survey of literature where someone isn't making accusations of conspiracy theory, but they're nevertheless acknowledging its power to reframe discourse in this way when they say, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, rather than accusing someone else of being one.
00:43:11
Speaker
So finally we come to the conclusion, where they basically just reiterate the points they've made so far. They say, this article traced one such mechanism and used an academic discourse, the phrase conspiracy theory. In our data, the charged conspiracy theory is a reframing device that neutralizes questions about power and motive,
00:43:33
Speaker
while turning the force of challenges back on to their speakers, rendering them unfit public interlocutors. Indeed, those who question uses of power increasingly feel compelled to disclaim, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but, such a squeezing of what can be said and done constitutes a form of discursive violence, thus do public accounts become less and less critical and quote-unquote political. And so then finally, at the end of the whole thing, they saw it like this.
00:43:59
Speaker
We suggest that a whole host of similar devices can be examined. Recent argument over uncivil discourse and social decay seem more like new mechanisms of social control than indicators of social decay in the populace. Like conspiracy theorists, the label may also serve to set some issues, claims and concerns outside the symbolic boundary of reasonable deliberation and contestation.
00:44:20
Speaker
Variants of the label conspiracy theorists become dangerous. The mechanism allows those who use it to sidestep sound scholarly and journalistic practice, avoiding the examination of evidence, often in favour of one of the most important errors in logic and rhetoric, the ad hominem attack. While context-claim and counter-claim are vital to public discourse, we must recognise that democracy is a fragile and delicate thing, quoting Denzen 2004.
00:44:43
Speaker
and mechanisms that define the limits of the sable must be continually challenged. We call on scholars and journalists then to continue to develop a language for systematically tracking and diminishing such dangerous machinery. We are not conspiracy theorists, but we believe that this machinery weakens public spaces that are central for interaction, contest and deliberation, the spaces where we define our world.
00:45:05
Speaker
So this basically seems to agree with the sorts of stuff we've been saying here for many, many years, that there is a danger in the pejorative use of the term conspiracy theory or conspiracy theorist, which is that it allows people to get away with conspiring, essentially. It allows people to do dodgy things and then simply deflect any claim, any sort of criticism or questioning by saying, oh, that's just conspiracy theory, which
00:45:33
Speaker
If you allow this pejorative gloss on the term conspiracy theory, it serves to just simply brush the whole thing aside and place the onus back on the person making the claims to justify
00:45:48
Speaker
their ability or competence to be making those claims in the first place. So that's why, yes, while it is true, and as many of the papers we looked at have argued, there is, in common colloquial usage, conspiracy theory often has all this baggage. It's a loaded term with a whole bunch of implications. And so while we've seen some papers that say, well, you have to take those implications on board when you're defining it,
00:46:16
Speaker
Then you get others that say, well, no, by loading it up with all this baggage, there are significant negative consequences to doing that. So yes, it may be a thing that happens, but we should be arguing against it. So while I don't know where things go from here, I'm sure Emma can fill us a little bit after this.
00:46:38
Speaker
I would assume that Jenner and Martin are happier with the direction that at least some of the philosophical literature has taken.
Collaborative Understanding of Conspiracy Theories
00:46:48
Speaker
I mean, they're still talking to him, so I assume they must be getting along nicely there because, yes, as we've seen while the earlier papers around the epistemology of conspiracy theories were fairly dismissive,
00:47:00
Speaker
even though there was fairly early pushback from the likes of Lee Basham, it is people have come more and more to the idea that, no, this idea that you can simply write off conspiracy theories or even that you can write off certain kinds of conspiracy theories isn't really defensible. And the only way you can look at things is to evaluate particular conspiracies on their own individual merits.
00:47:26
Speaker
on the assumption that Ian has put in some last words here. Or maybe I've done such a good job that there was no need for it at all. Who knows? You have done a very good job, Josh. I just want to put in here, could you ask the question, what did Marty and Jenna think of the existing literature? I would say that they're very pleased, as you successfully predicted, about where the literature has gone. In part, because I'm doing work with Marty and Jenna, so they're working with an epistemologist,
00:47:53
Speaker
who is of the particular event. We're also involved in a reading group that I run, so they're involved in the discussion with other philosophers about the work that is going on both in the social sciences more generally and in philosophy specifically. So yeah, there's a whole bunch of work going on here and Martyn Jenner, now integral to the philosophical project,
00:48:16
Speaker
And in the same respect, some of us philosophers are now trying to bring in some of the sociological into our philosophical discussion. So it's a fruitful collaboration, which also sounds like it should be the name of an academic cocktail at an academic cocktail bar.
00:48:33
Speaker
I think we've come to the end of this slightly unusual episode. We had a filler episode last week due to unwellness of Ian's person. Now we have a weird cobbled together strangely edited Frankenstein episode due to illness on the part of our internet connection. So hopefully this does not become a regular thing, or we might have to rethink exactly how we start doing these episodes, but
00:48:58
Speaker
Fingers crossed, things will be back to normal next week and we can do a regular episode with the two of us actually talking to each other, which does help things somewhat. But until then, I'm going to say goodbye and assume that M says something else now.
00:49:13
Speaker
Ah, Istings, you are but a slave. Like everyone else, you were born into the bondage. Born inside a prison you cannot smell, taste or touch. A prison for your grey selves. Unfortunately, Istings, no one can be told what exactly the Matrix is. You have to experience it for yourself. This is your last chance, Istings. After this, there is no turning back.
00:49:43
Speaker
You take the blue pill, and you'll still hint a stings. You will wake up in the bed, and you will believe what it is you want to believe. You take the red pill, and you stay in Po'o's wonderland, and I will show you how deep the criminal rabbit hole goes. Remember a stings? All I am offering you is the truth. Nothing more mon ami. The podcaster's guide to the conspiracy is Josh Anderson and me, Dr. M.R.X.Denter.
00:50:12
Speaker
You can contact us at podcastconspiracyatgmail.com, and please do consider supporting the podcast via our Patreon. And remember, they're coming to get you, Barbara.