conspiracy theory – Philosophy @Newcastle

The Great Awakening of QAnon’s Weltanschauung: A Psychoanalytic Interpretation of Conspiracy Theory in an Age of ‘Post-truth’

Object: QAnon is an online group consisting of a web of conspiracy theory, with the main premise being that there is a cabal of paedophilic, Satan-worshiping elites known as the ‘deep state’ controlling society from the shadows. The group began when an anonymous user named ‘Q’ started posting cryptic messages (‘Q drops’) on the online messaging board ‘4Chan’.

Territory: A psychoanalytic interpretation through the works of Jacques Lacan and Slavoj Žižek

Aims and Key Concepts:
• Birth of the Internet and the Death of the Author
I aim to investigate the impact the internet has had on conspiratorial thinking. What will also be made apparent is the fact that ‘Q drops’ present the implications of what Barthes calls “the death of the author”.
• ‘Q drops’ as a Text bound to jouissance
Through Barthes and Lacan, it will be shown that framing the ‘Q drops’ as a Text allows us to see how they are bound to the Lacanian term jouissance: a term linked to the ‘death-drive’ that is beyond the pleasure principle.
• QAnon: The Ultimate Hysteric Discourse?
With the help of Lacanian psychoanalysis, it is evident that the hysteric discourse is at play for particular QAnon members. Moreover, there will be an exploration of how the discourse of the hysteric causes cynical distancing to hegemonic master signifiers, leading to what Žižek defines as the “demise of symbolic efficiency.”
• The Paranoic Fantasy of the ‘Deep State’
Within QAnon, it is evident that there is a combination of perversion, psychosis and neurosis. I will attempt to show how the psychotic – the paranoid subject – formulates the belief in an ‘Other of the Other’ (the ‘deep state’), and this will be done with the aid of Slavoj Žižek.

Sources:
• Roland Barthes, Image-Music-Text (1977)
– The Pleasure of the Text (1975)
• Jacques Lacan, The Other Side of Psychoanalysis: Seminar XVII (1991)
• Slavoj Žižek, The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology (1999)
– ‘The Matrix, or, the Two Sides of Perversion’ (2006)

In this project, I will start out by analysing the origin and structure of conspiracy theories in general. I will then conduct an analysis of the data regarding public opinion on various issues within the pandemic, using the previous sections to create assertions which aim to explain the statistical trends seen in figures 1-4. In search of providing a competent method to demarcate between warranted and unwarranted conspiracy theories — I will appeal to Karl Popper’s falsification principle, with attention also paid to his conception of conspiracy theories. Unintentionally, throughout my research, I have come to speculate that the real concern is not so much these obviously unfalsifiable conspiracies that the media would have you believe are incredibly prevalent — but the deflection away from the competence and authority of the government. I will reference Giorgio Agamben’s thoughts on this emerging structure of totalitarianism present within the government and argue that we ought not propose these unified conspiracy theories which require stretches of the imagination — but simply that we should approach the media and government with an unbiased eye, doing justice to the data in front of us.