The Role of Conspiracy in Democratic Life
This course was available in the past and may be presented again as part of the Open Enrollment curriculum.
In the 21st century, few issues have caused as much controversy as the central role of conspiracy and conspiratorial thinking in democratic life. A portion of the course will focus on recent theoretical approaches to the place of conspiracies and conspiracy theories in democratic life. But most of it will be devoted to finding new and creative ways to think about the conspiratorial as a way of making speculative, critical claims about the hidden routes that power can take in a democracy. We will look at how problems of oikonomia --financialization, grey markets, the reproductive control of women, family wealth, and household labor--get troped in conspiratorial terms in the classical thought of democratic Athens and in modern media. How does conspiracy function as a critical, not just descriptive, language for analyzing democratic politics?
Course Outline
Course SyllabusNotes
Online registration deadline: April 10, 5PM CT