Empire of Conspiracy: The Culture of Paranoia in Postwar America [Paperback]

Timothy Melley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1999

Why, Timothy Melley asks, have paranoia and conspiracy theory become such prominent features of postwar American culture? In Empire of Conspiracy, Melley explores the recent growth of anxieties about thought-control, assassination, political indoctrination, stalking, surveillance, and corporate and government plots. At the heart of these developments, he believes, lies a widespread sense of crisis in the way Americans think about human autonomy and individuality. Nothing reveals this crisis more than the remarkably consistent form of expression that Melley calls "agency panic"--an intense fear that individuals can be shaped or controlled by powerful external forces. Drawing on a broad range of forms that manifest this fear--including fiction, film, television, sociology, political writing, self-help literature, and cultural theory--Melley provides a new understanding of the relation between postwar American literature, popular culture, and cultural theory.

Empire of Conspiracy offers insightful new readings of texts ranging from Joseph Heller's Catch-22 to the Unabomber "Manifesto," from Vance Packard's Hidden Persuaders to recent addiction discourse, and from the "stalker" novels of Margaret Atwood and Diane Johnson to the conspiracy fictions of Thomas Pynchon, William Burroughs, Don DeLillo, and Kathy Acker. Throughout, Melley finds recurrent anxieties about the power of large organizations to control human beings. These fears, he contends, indicate the continuing appeal of a form of individualism that is no longer wholly accurate or useful, but that still underpins a national fantasy of freedom from social control.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Empire of Conspiracy brilliantly diagnoses the dynamics underlying the proliferation of conspiracy theories in contemporary American society. 'Agency panic' is the paradoxical formation that tries to salvage liberal individualism by reinvesting agency in a malign super-force. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in contemporary American literature and culture." -- N. Katherine Hayles, University of California at Los Angeles

"Empire of Conspiracy has much to offer its readers. The topic is central to contemporary fiction. Timothy Melley writes with truly admirable lucidity. He supplies theoretical background when it is useful, but retains his focus on literature. This is an extremely teachable book that opens many discussions and gives a useful entry into what may be meant by postmodernism." -- --Kathryn Hume, Distinguished Professor of English, Pennsylvania State University --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 239 pages
• Publisher: Cornell Univ Pr (December 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801486068
• ISBN-13: 978-0801486067
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6.6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #920,992 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Correction., April 10, 2005

By 

J. Beckstrand - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Empire of Conspiracy: The Culture of Paranoia in Postwar America (Paperback)

This is merely a response to counteract the review given by the only other reviewer of this book.

"Epistomonical" is not a word. I think there was a gesture at "epistomological." But not to nitpick...

This book is an exploration of the way paranoia in post-WWII America functions, specifically citing literary case studies. It is not concerned with reconciling conspiracy theories with mainstream historical accounts, or anything of that nature.

In the author's own words, "this book is concerned with a broad cultural phenomenon, a pervasive set of anxieties about the way technologies, social organizations, and communication systems may have reduced human autonomy and uniqueness."

And the way "conspiracy theory, paranoia, and anxiety about human agency, in other words, are all part of the paradox in which a supposedly individualist culture conserves its individualism by continually imaging it to be in immminent peril."

It is not a book of conspiratorial intrigue. It is, however, academic. Boring? No. Just academic (is there a difference? sometimes...sometimes not). The "trite and utter nonsense" and "pseudoscientific" quality of the book results from exhaustively situating paranoia and conspiracy with the work of Saussure, Althusser, Foucault, Freud, Lacan, Baudrillard, Derrida and a host of other post-modern/structural thinkers and other conspiracy theory scholars. So i guess it really depends on your understanding/appreciation for their work. And familiarity/love of post-modern fiction--which is really what the book is about anyway.

I'm not really here to recommend this book--just to give it a somewhat fair representation.

Thanks for your time.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Have to agree, November 1, 2011

By 

Dr. Michael A. Rinella (Albany, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Empire of Conspiracy: The Culture of Paranoia in Postwar America (Paperback)

Melley points out, for example, that Derrida's reading of the Phaedrus draws Plato into the present, arguing the same Platonic fantasy consisting of "the dream of a self hermetically sealed from the external world" is reflected in the "contemporary American logic of addiction" (Page 171).

I see bad reviews all the time. One of the classic forms is "I hate this because they didn't write the book that I wanted them to write."

If that "one-star" reader had wanted to read a work on conspiracy panics that digs more deeply into the conspiracy theories themselves he ought to have read the book by Jack Z. Bratich "Conspiracy Panics: Political Rationality and Popular Culture." Bratich argues that conspiracy theories are portals into the major social issues defining U.S. and global political culture. These issues include the rise of new technologies, the social function of journalism, U.S. race relations, citizenship and dissent, globalization, biowarfare and biomedicine, and the shifting positions within the Left. Using a Foucauldian governmentality analysis, Bratich maintains that conspiracy panics contribute to a broader political rationality, a (neo)liberal strategy of governing at a distance through the use of reason.

5 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Pseudoepistemonical, and, did I mention boring?, June 15, 2003

By 

Takis Tz. (InYourHead) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Empire of Conspiracy: The Culture of Paranoia in Postwar America (Paperback)

Classic case where I'm forced to give one star because Amazon doesnt offer the option of giving "minus stars".
You would think (and i certainly fell for it) that with the topic such as the one this book deals with you would have a tremendous reading ahead of you, or at least, a very good shot at one.
Not even close. Melley, the author, takes this juicy issue and devoids it of all its substance. He goes on a tiring, ultraboring diatribe made up of wooden language and a pseudoscientific approach and by the time you reach (if you manage) page 50 you're about to quit and go watch some paint dry. I quit about 100 pages after that, but only because i spent money on this and i wanted to at least go as far as i could possibly tolerate it.

This author deals with conspiracies as if they dont, offhand, exist, as if it's a given that it's all the product of paranoiacs and dellusionals and based on this assumption which he doesnt bother anywhere to explain he goes on to a ride of incredible trite and utter nonsense employing psychology and sociology thinking that makes it all sound plausible and argumentative.

This, of course, doesnt cut it.
If you want to examine the culture of conspiracy theories, and what's more, show that it is all indeed paranoia, you would have to take the high profile theories and take them apart for what they are, or what you want to show that they are.
Like the JFK conspiracy theory for example. Melley cant seem to be bothered with the tons of evidence available anywhere from Jim Garrison's book to other books as well and websites for good measure that show that the official theory is a joke. Nope. It's all paranoia, paranoia, paranoia, and if you dont believe mr. Melley it is very possible you're paranoid too.

This is exactly how this book builds up, literally on thin air, with extremely weak arguments and with an approach that a CIA agent would be proud of if he'd written such a book.

While it is a fact that there IS a strong paranoia factor involved in the conspiracy theory culture, it is also a FACT that many conspiracy theories are not "theories". Anybody with a serious interest in history will attest to that.

And that is exactly my point. Since conspiracy theories and their analysis involve a good backround grasp of history spend your money on some other book. The author of this one seems to have a very poor understanding as well as knowledge of history and he'll waste your time like there's no tomorrow. If you anyway think in the lines of this book you dont need to read it anyway. Just watch the news every day, rest assured you're being told the truth and go to sleep. Applying sciences to build up a nonsensical theory is an old trick in itself and a poor one at that.
Back to my paint-drying watching...