Conspiracy Theories and Latin American History

Conspiracy Theories and Latin American History
Author: LUIS. SENKMAN RONIGER (LEONARDO.)
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2021-09-10
Genre:
ISBN: 9781032052373

This book is a systematic inquiry of conspiracy theories across Latin America. Conspiracy theories project not only an interpretive logic of reality that leads people to believe in sinister machinations, but also imply a theory of power that requires mobilizing and taking action. Through history, many have fallen for the allure of conspiratorial narratives, even the most unsubstantiated and bizarre. This book traces the main conspiracy theories developing in Latin America since late colonial times and into the present, and identifies the geopolitical, socioeconomic and cultural scenarios of their diffusion and mobilization. Students and scholars of Latin American history and politics, as well as comparatists, will find in this book penetrating analyses of major conspiratorial designs in this multi-state region of the Americas.

Conspiracy Theories and Latin American History

Conspiracy Theories and Latin American History
Author: Luis Roniger
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 279
Release: 2021-09-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000438724

This book is a systematic inquiry of conspiracy theories across Latin America. Conspiracy theories project not only an interpretive logic of reality that leads people to believe in sinister machinations, but also imply a theory of power that requires mobilizing and taking action. Through history, many have fallen for the allure of conspiratorial narratives, even the most unsubstantiated and bizarre. This book traces the main conspiracy theories developing in Latin America since late colonial times and into the present, and identifies the geopolitical, socioeconomic and cultural scenarios of their diffusion and mobilization. Students and scholars of Latin American history and politics, as well as comparatists, will find in this book penetrating analyses of major conspiratorial designs in this multi-state region of the Americas.

Conspiracy Theory in Latin Literature

Conspiracy Theory in Latin Literature
Author: Victoria Emma Pagán
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 199
Release: 2012-12-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0292749791

Conspiracy theory as a theoretical framework has emerged only in the last twenty years; commentators are finding it a productive way to explain the actions and thoughts of individuals and societies. In this compelling exploration of Latin literature, Pagán uses conspiracy theory to illuminate the ways that elite Romans invoked conspiracy as they navigated the hierarchies, divisions, and inequalities in their society. By seeming to uncover conspiracy everywhere, Romans could find the need to crush slave revolts, punish rivals with death or exile, dismiss women, denigrate foreigners, or view their emperors with deep suspicion. Expanding on her earlier Conspiracy Narratives in Roman History, Pagán here interprets the works of poets, satirists, historians, and orators—Juvenal, Tacitus, Suetonius, Terence, and Cicero, among others—to reveal how each writer gave voice to fictional or real actors who were engaged in intrigue and motivated by a calculating worldview. Delving into multiple genres, Pagán offers a powerful critique of how conspiracy and conspiracy theory can take hold and thrive when rumor, fear, and secrecy become routine methods of interpreting (and often distorting) past and current events. In Roman society, where knowledge about others was often lacking and stereotypes dominated, conspiracy theory explained how the world worked. The persistence of conspiracy theory, from antiquity to the present day, attests to its potency as a mechanism for confronting the frailties of the human condition.

A Culture of Conspiracy

A Culture of Conspiracy
Author: Michael Barkun
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2003
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 9780520248120

Unravelling the genealogies and permutations of conspiracist worldviews, this work shows how this web of urban legends has spread among sub-cultures on the Internet and through mass media, and how this phenomenon relates to larger changes in American culture.

The Nature of Conspiracy Theories

The Nature of Conspiracy Theories
Author: Michael Butter
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 146
Release: 2020-10-06
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1509540830

Conspiracy theories seem to be proliferating today. Long relegated to a niche existence, conspiracy theories are now pervasive, and older conspiracy theories have been joined by a constant stream of new ones – that the USA carried out the 9/11 attacks itself, that the Ukrainian crisis was orchestrated by NATO, that we are being secretly controlled by a New World Order that keep us docile via chemtrails and vaccinations. Not to mention the moon landing that never happened. But what are conspiracy theories and why do people believe them? Have they always existed or are they something new, a feature of our modern world? In this book Michael Butter provides a clear and comprehensive introduction to the nature and development of conspiracy theories. Contrary to popular belief, he shows that conspiracy theories are less popular and influential today than they were in the past. Up to the 1950s, the Western world regarded conspiracy theories as a legitimate form of knowledge and it was therefore normal to believe in them. It was only after the Second World War that this knowledge was delegitimized, causing conspiracy theories to be banished from public discourse and relegated to subcultures. The recent renaissance of conspiracy theories is linked to internet which gives them wider exposure and contributes to the fragmentation of the public sphere. Conspiracy theories are still stigmatized today in many sections of mainstream culture but are being accepted once again as legitimate knowledge in others. It is the clash between these domains and their different conceptions of truth that is fuelling the current debate over conspiracy theories.

Counterfeit Politics

Counterfeit Politics
Author: David Kelman
Publisher: Bucknell Studies in Latin American Literature and Theory
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015-04-15
Genre: Conspiracy in literature
ISBN: 9781611485875

In Counterfeit Politics, David Kelman reassesses the political significance of conspiracy theory. Traditionally, political theory has sought to banish the "paranoid style" from the "proper" domain of politics. But if conspiracy theory lies outside the sphere of legitimate politics, why do these narratives continue to haunt political life? Counterfeit Politics accounts for the seemingly ineradicable nature of conspiracy theory by arguing that all political statements ultimately take the form of conspiracy theory. Through careful readings of works by Ernest Hemingway, Ricardo Piglia, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Jorge Luis Borges, Ishmael Reed, Jorge Volpi, Rigoberta Menchú, and Ángel Rama, Kelman demonstrates that conspiracy narratives bear witness to an illegitimate or "counterfeit" secret that cannot be fully recognized, understood, and controlled. Even though the secret is not authorized to speak, this "silence" is nevertheless precisely what gives the secret its force. Kelman goes on to suggest that all political statements--even those that do not seem "paranoid"--are constitutively illegitimate or counterfeit, since they always narrate this unresolved play of legitimacy between an official or authorized plot and an unofficial or unauthorized plot (a "complot"). In short, Counterfeit Politics argues that politics only takes place as "conspiracy theory."

Enemies Within

Enemies Within
Author: Robert Alan Goldberg
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2008-10-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0300132948

divdivThere is a hunger for conspiracy news in America. Hundreds of Internet websites, magazines, newsletters, even entire publishing houses, disseminate information on invisible enemies and their secret activities, subversions, and coverups. Those who suspect conspiracies behind events in the news—the crash of TWA Flight 800, the death of Marilyn Monroe—join generations of Americans, from the colonial period to the present day, who have entertained visions of vast plots. In this enthralling book Robert Goldberg focuses on five major conspiracy theories of the past half-century, examining how they became widely popular in the United States and why they have remained so. In the post–World War II decades conspiracy theories have become more numerous, more commonly believed, and more deeply embedded in our culture, Goldberg contends. He investigates conspiracy theories regarding the Roswell UFO incident, the Communist threat, the rise of the Antichrist, the assassination of President John Kennedy, and the Jewish plot against black America, in each case taking historical, social, and political environments into account. Conspiracy theories are not merely the products of a lunatic fringe, the author shows. Rather, paranoid rhetoric and thinking are disturbingly central in America today. With media validation and dissemination of conspiracy ideas, and federal government behavior that damages public confidence and faith, the ground is fertile for conspiracy thinking. /DIV/DIV

The Development Century

The Development Century
Author: Stephen J. Macekura
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 367
Release: 2018-09-06
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1316515885

Offers cutting-edge perspectives on how international development has shaped the global history of the modern world.

Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theories in American History [2 volumes]

Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theories in American History [2 volumes]
Author: Christopher R. Fee
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 869
Release: 2019-05-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 144085811X

This up-to-date introduction to the complex world of conspiracies and conspiracy theories provides insight into why millions of people are so ready to believe the worst about our political, legal, religious, and financial institutions. Unsupported theories provide simple explanations for catastrophes that are otherwise difficult to understand, from the U.S. Civil War to the Stock Market Crash of 1929 to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. Ideas about shadowy networks that operate behind a cloak of secrecy, including real organizations like the CIA and the Mafia and imagined ones like the Illuminati, additionally provide a way for people to criticize prevailing political and economic arrangements, while for society's disadvantaged and forgotten groups, conspiracy theories make their suffering and alienation comprehensible and provide a focal point for their economic or political frustrations. These volumes detail the highly controversial and influential phenomena of conspiracies and conspiracy theories in American society. Through interpretive essays and factual accounts of various people, organizations, and ideas, the reader will gain a much greater appreciation for a set of beliefs about political scheming, covert intelligence gathering, and criminal rings that has held its grip on the minds of millions of American citizens and encouraged them to believe that the conspiracies may run deeper, and with a global reach.

Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theories

Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theories
Author: Michael Butter
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 1090
Release: 2020-02-17
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0429840586

Taking a global and interdisciplinary approach, the Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theories provides a comprehensive overview of conspiracy theories as an important social, cultural and political phenomenon in contemporary life. This handbook provides the most complete analysis of the phenomenon to date. It analyses conspiracy theories from a variety of perspectives, using both qualitative and quantitative methods. It maps out the key debates, and includes chapters on the historical origins of conspiracy theories, as well as their political significance in a broad range of countries and regions. Other chapters consider the psychology and the sociology of conspiracy beliefs, in addition to their changing cultural forms, functions and modes of transmission. This handbook examines where conspiracy theories come from, who believes in them and what their consequences are. This book presents an important resource for students and scholars from a range of disciplines interested in the societal and political impact of conspiracy theories, including Area Studies, Anthropology, History, Media and Cultural Studies, Political Science, Psychology and Sociology.