1) Conspiracy narrative more accurately describes what these conspiracy "theories" usually do. They tell a story about the past and present, that may be wholly fictional and largely true, wholly fictional and partially true, wholly fictional and wholly false, or wholly fictional and baring some resemblance to reality. (For the purposes of this email one should assume scare quotes around the words, fictional, true, false, verifiable, real and reality.) A conspiracy narrative may match large portions of reality and still be wholly fictional. A conspiracy narrative is always wholly fictional, much like a novel. 2) Conspiracy narratives do not provide institutional analysis or analysis of political and economic "structures" no matter how accurately they tell about real and verifiable events. Conspiracy narratives when told, even about verifiable events, do not focus on what we always know but only on the secret cabals that go on behind our backs. Thus it simply should be common knowledge that the FBI operates as the national political police. But since it is not common knowledge, conspiracy narrativists focus on singular and extraordinary abuses of power that were given secret names to explain to themselves why what "should" be obvious is not obvious. Thus once again take COINTELPRO: What is spectacular is how "normal" COINTELPRO was, and given its normality how surprising it seemed to the political class and the fifth estate. All powerful states have programs like COINTELPRO. The FBI was created for the explicit reason (among others) so that it could operate as the national political police. When the state and the FBI do what they normally do why do we need to resort to a conspiracy narrative. COINTELPRO incorporated many conspiratorial acts, but the conspiracy narrative is particularly unhelpful as an explanation for those acts.
3) The proliferation of the use of the term "theory," is premised on what I think Ravi would call a "scientistic" assumption. Is as if the very use of the word magically creates a rational hypothesis and automatically indicates the formulation of a theoretical model. (Even though the use of the word "theory" he is just supposed to mean something like "good guess" it is precisely the difference between its everyday use and its more restricted scientific use, that provides this word its "gravitas." ) Also the use of the word "theory" is a bow to "science," as if the only legitimate way to understand the world is the scientific way, and as if the aura of science can be imported by using the word.
Thus I use the term "conspiracy narrative" to indicate my belief that even when the narrative is true it is both unhelpful, in analyzing society, and fictional in its creation of a story to fit verified, speculative, and/or absurd "facts".
On 7/12/07, ravi <ravi at platosbeard.org> wrote:
>
> On 12 Jul, 2007, at 13:30 PM, Charles Brown wrote:
> >
> > Anti-conspiracy theorists should stop using the terminology
> > "conspiracy
> > theory". It is employed in vapid generalization. They should just do
> > concrete analysis of each discussion , a case by case analysis.
> >
>
> Or alternatively, decline to examine the issue based on any
> legitimate or pragmatic criteria such as lack of time, expertise,
> interest, value by one's system/goals, etc. This dismissal by
> terminology/association is at best intellectual laziness and
> impoliteness and at worst an unconscious adoption of (or inability to
> set aside) the dominant (and right-wing) methods of analysis and debate.
>
> --ravi
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
-- Jerry Monaco's Philosophy, Politics, Culture Weblog is Shandean Postscripts to Politics, Philosophy, and Culture http://monacojerry.livejournal.com/
His fiction, poetry, weblog is Hopeful Monsters: Fiction, Poetry, Memories http://www.livejournal.com/users/jerrymonaco/
Notes, Quotes, Images - From some of my reading and browsing http://www.livejournal.com/community/jerry_quotes/