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Paranoia within Reason: A Casebook on Conspiracy as Explanation

Like the McCarthy era of the 1950s, there is a strong current of paranoid social thought as the end of the century approaches. Conspiracy theories abound, not only in extremist ideologies and groups, but in commerce, science, and economics-arenas where a paranoid style is least expected. A curiosity about paranoia at its most reasonable is at the root of this volume.

Some pieces develop conversations that reveal the post-Cold War situations of countries such as Italy, Russia, Slovenia, and the United States where conspiratorial explanations of national dramas seem to make sense. Other pieces tackle paranoia as a style of debate in such diverse realms as science, psychotherapy, and popular entertainment, where conspiracy theories emerge as a compelling way to address the inadequacies of rational expertise and organization in the face of immense changes that undermine them. Like all of the volumes in the Late Edition series, Paranoia Within Reason offers a provocative challenge to our ways of understanding the ongoing watershed changes that face us.

"...We believe that there are at least two broad contexts or conditions of contemporary life that make the paranoid style and conspiracy theories an eminently reasonable tendency of thought for social actors to embrace. The first derives from the fact that the cold-war era itself was defined throughout by a massive project of paranoid social thought and action that reached into every dimension of mainstream culture, politics, and policy. In this volume, the palpable legacies of paranoid histories can be found most strongly in those pieces that deal with actors who have experienced changes in governing regimes in places where cold-war disciplines and interventions shaped the experience of civil society. ...The second broad context that defines a contemporary paranoid style within reason arises from the much discussed crisis of representation - also a base rationale for the entire Late Editions series - keenly experienced over the past decade, and not only in academic life but in many other realms of professional middle-class activity. Controversies related to this context are also discussed throughout the volume.

- George Marcus

1. Kathleen Stewart. Conspiracy Theory's Worlds.

2. Jamer Hunt. Paranoid, Critical, Methodological: Dali, Koolhaas, and...

3. John Kadvany. The Extraterritorriality of Imre Lakatos.

4. Michael Fortun. Entangled States: Quantum Teleportation and the "Willies".

5. Myanna Lahsen. The Detection and Attribution of Conspirasies.

6. Michael F. Brown. The New Alienists: Healing Shattered Selves at Century's End.

7. Kim and Michael Fortun. Due Diligence and the Pursuit of Transparency: The Securities and Exchange Commission, 1996.

8. Andrea Aureli. The Usual Suspects.

9. Luiz E. Soarez. A Toast to Fear: Ethnographic Flashes and Two Quasi-Aphorisms.

10. Bruce Grant. The Return of the Repressed: Conversations with Three Russian Entrepreneurs.

11. Tatiana Bajuk. Udbomafija and the Rhetoric of Conspiracy.

12. Robin Wagner-Pacifici. The Judas Kiss of Giulio Andreotti: Italy in Purgatorio.

13. Douglas R. Holmes. Tactical Thuggery: National Socialism in the East End of London.

14. Kim Fortun. Lone Gunmen: Legacies of the Gulf War, Illness, and Unseen.

15. James D. Faubion. Deus Absconditus: Waco, Conspiracy (Theory), Millennialism, and (the End of) the Twentieth Century.

16. Scott A. Lukas. An American Theme Park: Working and Riding Out Paranoia in the Late Twentieth Century.