| My dissertation examines the literary development of "conspiracy" into the modern phenomenon of "conspiracy theory," and I argue that the latter is an offshoot of the former (so that in contemporary literature we find both conspiracy and conspiracy theory narratives). Although "conspiracy" can be defined in a number of ways, in using the term "conspiracy" I mean the ontologically-confirmed relationship between two or more people secretly united to commit an unlawful act. Conversely, a "conspiracy theory" narrative only "theorizes" that a conspiracy exists. For various reasons, final confirmation remains elusive and, in general, conspiracy theory narratives tend to emphasize the indeterminacy of their claims and the highly suspicious or clinically paranoid nature of their central conspiracy theorist.; How did literary conspiracy narratives develop into conspiracy theory? What historical events significantly contributed to this development? What is the role of paranoia---both in the clinical and modern "commodified" sense---in this development? And, what is the aesthetic value of conspiracy narratives in general---i.e., why should we as reflective readers bother to read them in the first place?; Taking the mid- to late-Victorian novel as my case study, these are the questions that my dissertations confronts. I situate my chosen Victorian conspiracy novels (especially The Moonstone, Great Expectations, The Woman in White, Villette and The Secret Agent) in relation to one another, and among a number of broad social, historical and political developments such as the European revolutions of 1848, urbanization, the rise of the police and detective forces, the growth of the press, the "disappearance of God," Fenian terrorism, and the birth of modern espionage. I also devote considerable space to twentieth-century conspiracy theory narratives, including those of Proust, Kafka, Foucault, Pynchon and DeLillo.; The critical approaches I use are four: historical, structuralist, psychiatric and "aesthetic." By the last term, however, I do not mean the Kantian aesthetic, that "universal" beauty that stands apart from any historical context. Rather, using the work of Eve Sedgwick on affect theory and Martha Nussbaum on "political objectivity" (objectivity based on democratic consensus), I develop a new conception of the aesthetic, one that inverts the "hermeneutics of suspicion" by stressing how a given text can advocate the need to respect human rights and liberty. |
