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Counterfeit Politics

Secret Plots and Conspiracy Narratives in the Americas
  • ISBN-13: 9781611485875
  • Publisher: ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS
    Imprint: BUCKNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS
  • By David Kelman
  • Price: AUD $119.00
  • Stock: 0 in stock
  • Availability: This book is temporarily out of stock, order will be despatched as soon as fresh stock is received.
  • Local release date: 14/06/2015
  • Format: Paperback 202 pages Weight: 0g
  • Categories: Folklore, myths & legends [JFHF]
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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 Menchu, and Angel 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."
Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Usurpations, or the End of Politics 1. Reading for the Complot A Secret History of the Word "Plot" The Complot Effect (Piglia) The Unsaid (Hemingway) Waiting for Something or Other (Reed) 2. Politics in the Age of the Imaginative Leap The Imaginative Leap (Hofstadter and the HSCA Report) Catachrestic Tales, or What is a Political Event? (DeLillo) Kennedy Assassinations, or What (Un)makes a Political Event? (Volpi) 3. Why Hidden Figures Matter for Politics Pynchon's Parasite (The Crying of Lot 49) Menchu's Political Traps (I, Rigoberta Menchu) 4. The Discovery of Politics The Tloenian Invasion, or Politics at Risk (Borges) The Ruins of Politics (Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow) Epilogue: Counterfeit Politics (Piglia's The Absent City) Bibliography
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