Thursday, November 04, 2004
Expanding on my post yesterday, one reason I think many of my professors and fellow graduate students are prone to accepting liberal conspiracy theories comes from current literary theory.
Nearly all current literary theory is based on terms such as "hegemony" (from Marxist and post-Marxist theories) to "patriarchy" (from feminist theories) to "eurocentrism" (from post-colonial and other "multi-cultural" theories) to "heterocentrism" (From queer theory). There are other terms besides those I just listed, but they all have the same features of a conspiracy theory. They are fungible: everyone is complicit in hegemony making, all men are part of the patriarchy, etc.; and irrefutable: when I dispute the idea of hegemony, for example, I am informed that I am part of the process whether I believe it exists or not - that in fact, hegemony can't be proven or refuted (it just is) because it both conceals and discloses itself at all times and at no times (that's a near exact quote from a recent theory class I took).
Obviously, I have simplified these theories somewhat - but at their core, I believe that basically the theories many of my colleagues subscribe to are, at their core, conspiracy theories.
Nearly all current literary theory is based on terms such as "hegemony" (from Marxist and post-Marxist theories) to "patriarchy" (from feminist theories) to "eurocentrism" (from post-colonial and other "multi-cultural" theories) to "heterocentrism" (From queer theory). There are other terms besides those I just listed, but they all have the same features of a conspiracy theory. They are fungible: everyone is complicit in hegemony making, all men are part of the patriarchy, etc.; and irrefutable: when I dispute the idea of hegemony, for example, I am informed that I am part of the process whether I believe it exists or not - that in fact, hegemony can't be proven or refuted (it just is) because it both conceals and discloses itself at all times and at no times (that's a near exact quote from a recent theory class I took).
Obviously, I have simplified these theories somewhat - but at their core, I believe that basically the theories many of my colleagues subscribe to are, at their core, conspiracy theories.
