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Counterfeit Politics
Secret Plots and Conspiracy Narratives in the Americas
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2012
Summary
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. Kelmangoes 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.”
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Bibliographic data
Copyright year
2012
ISBN-Print
978-1-61148-414-4
ISBN-Online
978-1-61148-415-1
Publisher
Lexington, Lanham
Language
English
Pages
193
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Book Titles
Table of contents
ChapterPages
Contents No access
Acknowledgments No access
Introduction: Usurpations, or the End of Politics No access Pages 1 - 16
A Secret History of the Word “Plot” No access
The Complot Effect (Piglia) No access
The Unsaid (Hemingway) No access
Waiting for Something or Other (Reed) No access
The Imaginative Leap (Hofstadter and the HSCA Report) No access
Catachrestic Tales, or What is a Political Event? (DeLillo) No access
Kennedy Assassinations, or What (Un)makes a Political Event? (Volpi) No access
Pynchon’s Parasite (The Crying of Lot 49) No access
Menchú’s Political Traps (I, Rigoberta Menchú) No access
The Tlönian Invasion, or Politics at Risk (Borges) No access
The Ruins of Politics (Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow) No access
Epilogue: Counterfeit Politics No access Pages 159 - 178
