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Beschreibung

Facts and established truths are regularly denied in contemporary life. This situation has brought paranoid politics into the mainstream, from conspiracy theories like QAnon, to sex panics and assaults on public health measures, to election denialism and the rise of vigilante militias. Paranoid Publics analyzes these phenomena as psychosocial realities enmeshed with emerging ways of determining truth.
Today's paranoia cannot simply be blamed on the rise of social media or the recent surge of populist anger. Rather, as Chaudhary shows, both are fueled by preexisting psychosocial processes. Applying psychodynamics to analyze truth and politics, Paranoid Publics foregrounds unconscious demands, wishes, and compulsions. Against the hope that progressive economic policies might dispel widespread disorientation and disillusionment, Chaudhary reveals how psychic realities mark politics as deeply as do self-interest and class dynamics.
Chaudhary takes up and reinvents psychoanalytic concepts to analyze how, for example, the personal liberty exercised through vaccine exemptions is paradoxically grounded in submission to the authority of the family and the state. Such politically consequential attitudes concerning truth emerge from a social order that they proceed to challenge. Making a case for psychosocial understandings of our current historical juncture, Paranoid Publics radically expands our notion of the political.

Facts and established truths are regularly denied in contemporary life. This situation has brought paranoid politics into the mainstream, from conspiracy theories like QAnon, to sex panics and assaults on public health measures, to election denialism and the rise of vigilante militias. Paranoid Publics analyzes these phenomena as psychosocial realities enmeshed with emerging ways of determining truth.
Today's paranoia cannot simply be blamed on the rise of social media or the recent surge of populist anger. Rather, as Chaudhary shows, both are fueled by preexisting psychosocial processes. Applying psychodynamics to analyze truth and politics, Paranoid Publics foregrounds unconscious demands, wishes, and compulsions. Against the hope that progressive economic policies might dispel widespread disorientation and disillusionment, Chaudhary reveals how psychic realities mark politics as deeply as do self-interest and class dynamics.
Chaudhary takes up and reinvents psychoanalytic concepts to analyze how, for example, the personal liberty exercised through vaccine exemptions is paradoxically grounded in submission to the authority of the family and the state. Such politically consequential attitudes concerning truth emerge from a social order that they proceed to challenge. Making a case for psychosocial understandings of our current historical juncture, Paranoid Publics radically expands our notion of the political.

Über den Autor
Zahid R. Chaudhary is Associate Professor of English at Princeton University. He is the author of Afterimage of Empire: Photography in Nineteenth-Century India.
Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction: Psychopolitics of Truth 1

1 Exposure 31

2 Paranoia 54

3 Freedom 82

4 Hysteria 109

Coda 145

Acknowledgments 149

Notes 151

Index 175

Details
Erscheinungsjahr: 2025
Fachbereich: Grenzwissenschaften
Genre: Importe
Produktart: Nachschlagewerke
Rubrik: Esoterik & Anthroposophie
Medium: Taschenbuch
Inhalt: Einband - flex.(Paperback)
ISBN-13: 9781531511876
ISBN-10: 1531511872
Sprache: Englisch
Einband: Kartoniert / Broschiert
Autor: Chaudhary, Zahid R.
Auflage: New
Hersteller: Fordham University Press
Verantwortliche Person für die EU: Libri GmbH, Europaallee 1, D-36244 Bad Hersfeld, gpsr@libri.de
Maße: 138 x 216 x 16 mm
Von/Mit: Zahid R. Chaudhary
Erscheinungsdatum: 03.12.2025
Gewicht: 0,264 kg
Artikel-ID: 134215255