 |
 |
"Trumped: The President and Conspiracy Theories" Speculations Seminar Series 18:00-19:30: Thursday 27th April, K0.31, King’s College London, Strand Campus. Dr Clare Birchall, Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Culture in King's College London, and Carleigh Morgan, PhD candidate in KCL's Department of English. The event is free, open to all, and wine and snacks will be provided! For some years, academics and cultural commentators have been questioning how we can be certain of the difference between reasoned speculation and conspiracy theorising, official stories and “paranoid” speculation, legitimate knowledge and popular knowledge. In the midst of this deconstructive exercise, the possibility of rational paranoia was mooted as a logical response to living in an overwhelmingly complex, late capitalist system, and a covert security state. In this talk, Clare Birchall will ask what new challenges a figure like Trump and his “post-truth” conspiracism pose to an already epistemologically uncertain paradigm. Following on from a discussion of conspiracy, paranoia, and the conservative disavowal of expertise, PhD student Carleigh Morgan will discuss neoreactionary movements and their relationships to the production, reinforcement, and creation of conspiracy theories as a political logic. Guided by currents from neoreactionary (NRx) thinking, new right-wing political platforms have emerged that rely on popularising the idea that political discourse, pop culture, and academic thought are influenced by the Cathedral, a potent intersectional power structure that unites and indicts the “liberal media”, pop culture, and the neoliberal institution in a project to eradicate anti-left logic in contemporary culture. ---- About the speakers: Dr Clare Birchall is a Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Culture in the English Department in King's College London. Dr Birchall is the author of Knowledge Goes Pop: From Conspiracy Theory to Gossip (Berg, 2006) and co-editor of New Cultural Studies: Adventures in Theory (Edinburgh University Press, 2007). She has also edited special issues of the journals Theory, Culture and Society (Dec 2011) and Cultural Studies (Jan 2007). Her new book, Shareveillance, is forthcoming with the University of Minnesota Press later this year. Carleigh Morgan is a 2013-2014 Fulbright scholar and current PhD candidate at King’s College, London. Her dissertation explores the relationships between bodies and machines, with emphasis on the digital mechanisms that program subjects as legible by computer technologies. In 2016 she graduated from KCL’s MA in Contemporary Literature, Culture, and Theory programme, completing a dissertation on algorithmic error and accident in digital artworks. She is also a research assistant at the Centre for Digital Culture, where she organises and moderates events that examine digital technologies, political futures, and post-capitalist imaginaries. --- 'Speculations' engages in current research in speculative and science fiction, but with a particular interest in intersections across a spectrum of disciplines which engage in varieties of speculative thought. 'Speculations' is supported by the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at King's College London. -------------------------------------------------------- MeCCSA mailing list -------------------------------------------------------- To manage your subscription or unsubscribe from the MECCSA list, please visit: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=MECCSA&A=1 ------------------------------------------------------- MeCCSA is the subject association for the field of media, communication and cultural studies in UK Higher Education. This mailing list is a free service and is not restricted to members. It is an unmoderated list and content reflect the views of those who post to the list and not of MeCCSA as an organisation. MeCCSA recommends that the list be used only for posting of information (for example about events, publications, conferences, lectures) of interest to members or to promote discussion of current issues of wide general interest in the field. Posts to the MeCCSA mailing list are public, indexed by Google, and can be accessed from the JISCMail website (http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/meccsa.html). Any messages posted to the list are subject to the JISCMail acceptable use policy, which states that users should avoid engaging in unreasonable behaviour, or disrupting the general flow of discussion on a list. For further information, please visit: http://www.meccsa.org.uk/ --------------------------------------------------------