sorry my post got cut off - it should make sense now.

p.s. did anyone else find freud's analysis of clitoris-knocking particularly amusing?
posted by Jackie at 10:35 PM

I want to start with the idea that conspiracy theories are themselves expressions of a certain "technocultural ideology" which construes freedom as the public's "right to know" (Dean 54). As in the Hardt and Negri selection about Empire and Keenan's piece on humanitarian resistance, this selection of the Dean lays out a form of resistance which has the effect of reinforcing or deleteriously obscuring that which it resists against.

"But conspiracy theory's practices of revelation are of interest insofar as they express the ideology of technoculture...conspiracy theory challenges the presumption that what we see on the screens, what is made visible in traditional networks...is not itself invested in specific lines of authorization and subjection. It rejects the fantasy that the secret has been revealed even as it reinscribes the secret as an object cause of desire” (53).

Here we see Dean arguing that CT, even while rejecting authoritative media’s claims to authentic truth, reinforces the idea that there is some discoverable truth-secret, if we only cut through all the crap to find out what the “politicians, media, and corporations [are] really saying” (78). By making the appropriate links and connections, CT claims, we can figure out what is really going on... “Through its practices of searching and linking, conspiracy theory acts out its fantasy of publicity.” In this way CT bears a striking resemblance to projects like “opengov,” that seek to enhance democracy by providing the internet “public” with the appropriate links and connections with which to make informed, full decisions or opinions about the government. In fact, one might say that opengov’s rhetoric surrounding the TIA agency was fairly conspiratorial (and perhaps well-foundedly). And as we’ve discussed before, opengov construes the Web as the public sphere, as the discourse on CT in digital theory also suggests (77).

I’d be interested to discuss in section how CT and opengov differ, as well as how they function as elements of trust/distrust within the larger network of society.

posted by Jackie at 9:09 PM

From Nazli:

I was really interested in " A case of paranoia running counter to the psychoalaytic theory of the disease". The subject had failed to see her mother as different from herself and intead had identified with her completely. Also, probably because she had lacked a man figure in her life, she had become paranoid about men and was able to trust them. It was also very bizarre that after seeing the two men at the staircase she was reminded of the click sound in the room. If she had not see them she would not make that association, she would not be able to remember that sound to which probably she did not even pay attention to which was hidden somewhere at her blind spot. Certain things make people do certain unconscious associations and this is clearly seen in this case. She was also scared to be photographed, again it is the power of the camera that scares her, the gaze she wants to escape from. It could even be the fact that maybe she secretly desired that to happen and that was!
why she was paranoid at the first place.
posted by whkc at 9:02 PM