The Day it Rains Jellyfish: Conspiracy as Generative Force
Love is contraband in Hell, cause love is an acid that eats away bars.
But you, me, and tomorrow hold hands and make vows that struggle will multiply
That backsaw has two blades. The shotgun has two barrels. We are pregnant with freedom. We are conspiracy.1
1 quoted by Larne Abse Gogarty in What we do is Secret: Contemporary Art and the Antinomies of Conspiracy. Original: Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography (Chicago: Lawrence Hill & Co, 2001), 130.
In this essay we will outline the possibility of conspiracy as a generative force. While conspiracy has a legitimized negative connotation, we have also recognized its potential to open doors for alternative thinking. Rooted in the similarity we see within speculative practices, we investigate if conspiracy can be used as a tool to generate proposals for different ways of living together and the possibility to come up with alternative structures for society. Our initial string of thoughts started with the investigation of the imagined line between speculation and conspiracy within artistic practices and our skepticism towards the existence of this boundary in general. We were intrigued by the exponential growing number of artists that decide to work with speculation as a tool in their practice. It must be noted that surprise here, did not revolve in this observation. It seems logical that more and more artists use speculation especially as a means to anticipate a seemingly dystopian future. The current state of the world is hostile for a great number of individuals, groups of people and more-than-humans and at times the only thing that seems left for us to do in order to deal with it all, is to imagine better worlds or alternatives. We recognized that artists or other individuals who work with speculation are differentiated from those who work with conspiracy, as the first one is generally applauded while the later is usually frowned upon. We found that the line between speculating and conspiracy is generally drawn through the amount of known facts that is involved. Speculation usually is based on some known facts but leaves some of it open, it builds towards an assembled answer, by asking questions and proposing hypotheses, while conspiracy heavily relies on narrative, and any possible truth is mostly more concealed. In addition, speculation has become a marketing term while conspiracy lacks to name itself at all. If we adhere to this definition, a lot of artistic practices that are defined to be speculative would have a tendency towards conspiratorial practice.
Social and Narrative Truth
2 Umberto Eco, Chronicles of a Liquid Society, Translated by Richard Dixon (New York, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017), The Conspiracy of Conspiracies, e-book.
The idea of speculation, being based on partial possession of ‘needed facts’, is rooted in a binary understanding of truth and untruth and ignores the nuances of the matter. If we look at it more critically, conspiracy usually does involve truths. However, they might be more based on the emotional state of people or groups rather than facts. In many conspiracy theories, there is an underlying cultural, societal or social fear that functions as the driving force behind the conspiracy. Conspiracy theories promise knowledge that others do not have, which latches onto the human drive to decipher secrets.2 In doing so, they hold the promise to transcend the masses through the unique Conspiracy as Generative Force
knowledge that only a few may obtain.3 They might also be a counteract to the proposed truth; whenever there is a disbelief or dissatisfaction to the information and portrayed image of the world given to us, we might turn to conspiracy theories as an alternative truth.4 They are thought to be a method of attempting to make sense of the world.5 It is a means of trying to get a hold on things that seem too big, too advanced, too complicated to comprehend. We do not like feeling lost so we desperately attempt to get a hold on things, we make attempts to apprehend, so that we can take back some agency that was surrendered when we did not understand anymore. In the face of complex issues, conspiracy theories propose a hope to still get a hold on these issues that ceased to make sense to us. Anxiety, a lost sense of perceived control or security and feeling powerless additionally add to the vulnerability of adhering to conspiracy theories.6
3 Larne Abse Gogarty, What We Do is Secret: Contemporary Art and the Antinomies of Conspiracy (London: Sternberg Press, 2023) 33 - 34.
4 Eco, Chronicles of a Liquid Society, Conspiracies and plots.
5 Zaria Gorvett, “What we can learn from conspiracy theories,” BBC, May 25, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/future/ article/20200522-what-we-canlearn-from-conspiracy-theories.
6 Daniel Jolley, Rose Meleady, and Karen M. Douglas, “Exposure to Intergroup Conspiracy Theories Promotes Prejudice Which Spreads Across Groups,” British Journal of Psychology 111, no. 1 (March 2019): 17–35. https://doi. org/10.1111/bjop.12385.
7 Gorvett, “learn from conspiracy.”
8 Gogarty, What We Do Is Secret, 26.
9 The conspiracy theory Gogarty refers to can be summarized as follows: ‘Pizzagate’ is a conspiracy theory that states the existence of a pedophile network that is run by members of the USA government’s Democratic Party. Hillary Clinton was said to be involved in the network which had a pizzeria as one of its locations, giving the conspiracy theory its name.
According to Zaria Gorvett in What we can learn from conspiracy theories, when looking at conspiracy theories we can learn a lot about what is happening in our society.7 Through analyzing these theories and understanding them as, what we would call, a mirroring mechanism, we can look at them as pointing at social, societal, economic or political issues or impairment. This is what Larne Abse Gogarty also explains in the introduction of What We Do Is Secret: Contemporary Art and the Antinomies of Conspiracy, if we do not disregard conspiracy theories as being illegitimate, they can give us valuable insight into the struggles that are faced and battled in all levels of society: “As an (increasingly) popular form of comprehending the world, we need to reckon with what these narratives can tell us: for example, how might the phantasmagorical preoccupation with pedophilia indicate a desire to “protect” the innocent and guarantee a better future on behalf of those who are wounded and disempowered, despite the stupidity of the pizza parlor narrative?”8 When understanding the Pizzagate conspiracy9 through the mirror mechanism, we can understand the narrative of the pedophile network here as a metaphor of the predator that is out for an innocent to fall prey to their violence. Seeing conspiracies as a mirror mechanism and reading them as such, not only gives us a deeper understanding of the issues that are embedded in our society, or the fear we have when looking at the world, they also point at the inclusion of a certain truth in these theories. Umberto Eco in his book The Liquid Society states that whenever the truth in conspiracy theories is discovered, they stop being conspiracy theories. If a conspiracy theory would never come to light, the narrative must consist of a very empty truth since, according to Eco, truth always has a way to reveal itself to the surface in some way or another. He claims Conspiracy as Generative Force
that it is not in the human nature to conceal a secret and that mainly in conspiracies that rely on the secret to be kept from people or society at large, it would be impossible to uphold the farce of a pedophile network ran from the basement of a pizzeria for example.10 Eco here mainly relates to narrative truth, which is different from the social truth that can only be perceived in the mirror of the mechanism, and not in the narrative of the conspiracy theory itself. It needs our interpretive capacity to be laid bare. While Hillary Clinton might not actually run a pedophile network from the basement of a pizza chain, there is a social fear for the ‘wounded and disempowered’ to fall prey to people who seek to implicate violence on them. And even without a narrative truth, truth also uses narrative as mediator, so truth always contains some level of falsification, it relies on the narrative. This is true for conspiracy but can also be recognized in for example newspaper stories, they never state merely facts, they are always interwoven in a narrative. All these narratives carry some level of falsification in it, as it is always a rational interpretation of what is, on an irrational level, experienced and what is included in the narrative creation.11
Conspiracy Theory and Conspiracy Syndrome
To further understand the nature of conspiracy, Umberto Eco proposes the categorization of conspiracy into two domains: conspiracy theories and conspiracy syndromes. Conspiracy theories propose the concealment of a secret behind day to day operations. This secrecy is often believed to be led by a powerful organization, proposed to be acting against the wishes of the one who believes the conspiracy. It is in the nature of a conspiracy theory to undermine the given truth that is adopted by the mass collective. Conspiracy syndrome on the other hand, is proposed to be of an overarching scale; it is the belief that there is a force that is deeply embedded in, among others, theology’s, the world and the cosmos. These conspiracies propagate an almighty secret and absolute power that steers all political and societal structures in the world as pawns in a game of chess. Eco compares conspiracy syndrome with social paranoia. In contrast to psychiatric paranoia, where an individual would believe that the whole world is against them as an individual, Eco sees those who struggle with social paranoia as more dangerous since the social paranoiac believes their whole group, nation or religion is targeted and that this empathy is shared by the mass majority.12 The polarizing mechanisms that can be recognized in the latter, are also to be found in conspiracy theories and their contextualisation.
10 Eco, Chronicles of a Liquid Society, Conspiracies and plots.
11 Ursula K. Le Guin, Dancing at the Edge of the World:Thoughts on Words, Women, Places (New York: Grove Press, 1989), Some Thoughts on Narrative. e-book.
12 Eco, Chronicles of a Liquid Society, Fine Company.
In this essay we will go back and forth between conspiracy and conspiracy theories as most of the available literature is related to Conspiracy as Generative Force
conspiracy theories. We lack a healthy discourse on conspiracy as its own domain. While only being an example or form of conspiracy, conspiracy theories provide us with the most fertile ground of critical analysis as there is an ongoing discourse perceiving conspiracy theories and their place in society and social dynamics. However, conspiracy theories also correlate with their negative associations of being built on illegitimate claims or fabricated disinformation that are geared to further polarize groups of people and target others into becoming a common enemy. We will investigate these disruptive mechanisms and will try to find a way to dismantle them. In doing so we hope to clear a safer path towards an approach of conspiracy as a tool. To obtain a deeper understanding of conspiracy as a generative force, it is essential that we abandon or at the least look critically at our pre-existing understanding of the matter. In this essay we will outline some of the traps and downfalls that come with talking about and working with conspiracy, while trying to navigate to a thesis of conspiracy as generative force to be used in artistic practices that focus on world-building.
Traps and Downfalls
Before we go any further in our reasoning or in exploring conspiracy as a tool, we want to map out some of the traps and possible downfalls that we pointed at in the introduction of this essay. We want to inquire towards the possibility of utilizing conspiracy as a tool without falling into the patterns of suppressing, excluding or marginalizing groups or individuals, mechanisms that can be recognized within conspiracy theories and their discourse. The ignorance towards racism and other types of discrimination that have been promoted through adherence to conspiracy theories and within the research that contextualizes them, is in need of closer evaluation. In our investigation we should not only look at the effects of polarization and discrimination they contain but especially at the mechanisms that enable it. In the following part we will mainly focus on two types of discrimination that are common in the discourse around conspiracy and that are characteristic for conspiracy theories themselves: classism and racism.
Classism in Research Towards Conspiracy
Conspiracy theories can contain discriminatory mechanisms, as well as the discourse that investigates conspiracy has brought about classist and racist notions in itself. Jia-Yan Mao, Shen-Long Yang and Yong-Yu Guo, claim that belief in conspiracy theories is higher for individuals with lower educational levels which, according to them, correlates with lower analytical thinking skills which would result in the belief in simple
Traps and Downfalls
solutions, leading to belief in conspiracy theories. In addition, a lower perceived control would lead to belief in conspiracy theories through the need for structure theory. Lower perceived control is proposed to be influenced by an environment of affluence, personal freedom, and social opportunity by the study.13 While the study ascribes lower educational levels and lower perceived control directly to lower social class, we propose to instead look at the origin of the belief in conspiracy theories. This classist approach to the investigation of conspiracy theory is reminiscent of Frederic Jameson’s definition that classifies conspiracy as “the poor person’s cognitive mapping in the postmodern age.”14 15
The allocation of cognitive mapping to class assumes a hierarchy in rational ability that proposes a hierarchy in cognitive power according to the ‘higher’ class. Jameson himself tried to move away from this classism in later writings, but did not completely succeed to part from the hierarchical view of his own ‘superior’ theory of cognitive mapping according to Gogarty: “By the time Jameson revisited this argument in his Postmodernism book two years later, he had amended the classism of his first diagnosis but remained at pains to distinguish conspiracy as a “degraded” and “garish” version of the cognitive map’s superior attempt to “think the impossible totality of the contemporary world system.””16 Conspiracy thinking is disregarded as inferior knowledge, as an inferior attempt to make sense of the world; Jameson fails to really part from looking down on conspiracy theories and those who believe in them. While trying to not attribute receptiveness to believing in conspiracy theories to class, by perceiving conspiracy as inferior, a hierarchy is still maintained. To remove classism from the equation would mean to not start with an assumption of inferiority towards them and to understand heightened belief in conspiracy theories to have an origin in a need for structure and control as well as lower analytical thinking skills without attributing either of those directly to social class. This also removes unnecessary generalization and takes into account exemptions from either side.
Discrimination through disinformation campaigns
13 Jia-Yan Mao, Shen-Long Yang and Yong-Yu Guo, “Are individuals from lower social classes more susceptible to conspiracy theories? An explanation from the compensatory control theory,” Asian Journal of Social Psychology 23 no.4 (December 2020): 372-383. https://doi. org/10.1111/ajsp.12417
14 Jameson Fredric, “Cognitive Mapping,” in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 356.
15 We believe that the study fails to take into account its own definition of social class through not properly reviewing the educational level (as all were the same), an economic factor (as only the income of parents was tested) or political preferences during the data collection, while all three were listed to have influence on social class.
16 Gogarty, What We Do Is Secret, 77.
17 Gorvett, “learn from conspiracy.”
The discrimination of conspiracy theories might have an origin in the need of a ‘convincing culprit’ for a conspiracy to catch on as described by Zaria Gorvett.17 Rivalism between groups that prescribe to different truths and understand these truths as the only possibility, is the second downfall to navigate. This brings us to the exploration of multiplicity or abundance in truths. The multiplicity in beliefs that allows conspiracy to occur might conflict in social relationships when individuals or groups are put Traps and Downfalls
at two ends of the argument. The battle between different ideologies that is part of conspiracy’s relationship to multiplicity in knowledge streams magnifies the polarization between in-group and out-group, which Zaria Gorvett describes as ‘tribalism’.18 While normally we would say that the creation of in-group and out-group strengthens bonds within the own group but promotes conflict between them, recent study has found that in case of conspiracy theories it can impair intergroup relations as well.19 In addition, Daniel Jolley, Rose Meleady and Karen M. Douglas found in their research that the prejudice of the in-group towards the group that is targeted by the conspiracy can spread to other out-groups as well, making the adverse attitude towards other groups and adaptation of a scapegoat larger.20 Furthermore, the study proves that this prejudice resulted in discriminatory action towards the targeted out-group.21
In the podcast Does Not Compute, one of the researchers of the paper, Daniel Jolley, enters into dialogue with Deen Freelon, the host of the podcast. He elaborates on the research regarding promotion of prejudice to groups of people through conspiracy theory. He underlines in the conversation with Freelon how the predisposal to prejudice towards a certain group might promote the engagement with conspiracy theories that target this group: “I do think these two things go hand in hand, which may go back to that first assumption at the start, where if you’re predisposed to be prejudiced towards a certain group, you indeed may engage in conspiratorial theorizing because you’ve got to the same point due to the same kind of psychology, in essence, the high need for control, or the thinking your group’s oppressed, thinking the other group is out to get you. Yes, of course, conspiracy beliefs are intergroup as well by the fact that you want to see yourself as different from another group, that the other group is conspiring against you, and is a way for you to help your self-esteem of you and your group, believing in a conspiracy that the other group is involved in fraud will be really appealing.”22 This is what Jacquelyn Mason later in the podcast also describes as a tool for political gain, for example, in the 2020 elections in the USA, pre-existing prejudice towards Black people and anti-blackness were used as a means to swing votes to non-democratic.23 This targeting of groups of people or individuals confirms to Zaria Gorvetts claim that a conspiracy always needs a convincing culprit, by taking an already established scapegoat that has been previously targeted by another group, it is easier for the conspiracy theory to catch on. This mechanism therefore uses racism as an integrated part of its advertisement campaign and actively engages with it for its own benefit.
18 Gorvett, “learn from conspiracy.”
19 Jolley, Meleady and Douglas, “Exposure to Intergroup Conspiracy.”
20 Jolley, Meleady and Douglas, “Exposure to Intergroup Conspiracy.”
21 Jolley, Meleady and Douglas, “Exposure to Intergroup Conspiracy.”
22 Deen Freelon, “Conspiracy and Racism,” June 29, 2021, in Does not Compute, produced by Center for Information Technology and Public Life at the University of North Carolina, podcast, 27:46, https://citap.unc.edu/does-notcompute/episode-2/.
23 Freelon, “Conspiracy and Racism.”
and Downfalls
While the start of the podcast episode mainly focuses on this type of correlation between racism and conspiracy theory that is rooted in the admissibility towards conspiracy theory through pre-existing engagement in prejudice with a certain out-group, in the last part of the episode white-surpremacy and its inherent racist structures and behavior are formulated by Dr. Alice Marwick to be a dis-information campaign, or conspiracy theory on its own: “There is, I think, a really cogent argument for that idea that white-surpremacy is a dis-information campaign. And that historically and cyclically media has been extremely complicit in promoting, defining and recycling ideas of white-supremacy. But that undercurrent has always been there.”24 We need to disengage with conspiracy theories when they target groups of people and portrays them as the cause of societal or economic issues because of their race. When perceiving conspiracy theories we need to actively seek out who or what is targeted as the common enemy in order to be able to expose the racist dynamics that are used in mechanisms of persuasion that rely on pre-existing prejudice to promote conspiracy theories.
Our own proposals of conspiracies as generative force, is used as a method to come together in imagining alternatives for the currentcurrent societal structures, political-social dynamics of exclusion, hyperindividuality, marginalization, singularity in truth and the glorification of material value; structures that are non-sustainable and do not propose an inclusive current nor future. To obtain this, we must not fall in the same traps as conspiracy theories themselves, we need to be mindful and critical to not appropriate all the methods that are the driving force behind the current conspiracy theories. Especially the tendency of precomposed classicism and pointing out a scapegoat is one to steer away from as it only allows for further polarization. While we extensively commented on creating culprits, we did not yet come up with a way to circumvent this. According to Gogarty, conspiracies “emphasize the subject rather than the system,”25 and we believe that this allows for groups of people to be targeted into becoming a culprit or scapegoat. Rather than indicating a group of people as the common enemy that is targeted in the conspiracy, we should focus our efforts to conspire against the aforementioned current structures and systems that are non-inclusive and unsustainable.
Abundance of Truths and How to Navigate Them
Multiplicity in truth is characteristic for conspiracies, as they mostly contradict the reigning narrative that is adhered to by the mass. We described how this can cause and promote tribalism. In the following reasoning we will present a way that allows multiplicity in truth to exist
24 Freelon, “Conspiracy and Racism.”
25 Gogarty, What We Do Is Secret, 24.
Abundance of Truths and How to Navigate Them
without directly resulting in tribalism. To go towards a non-binary understanding of truth, we have to look at the recent move of multiplicity in knowledge streams and highlighted attention for personal truths. Boris Groys exemplifies the easy-access to multiplicity of ‘truths’ or streams of knowledge that come with the internet: “These [internet] followers follow public figures—their public actions but also their private affairs. And without moving away from their computer, a follower can follow very different figures, be they politicians, religious leaders, football players, artists, or princes from the English royal house. In the “real world,” the followership of such different public figures would lead to contradictions and conflicts.”26 Through the abundance of streams of knowledge, it might be hard to find a pathway without contradictions. Angela Dimitrakaki in From Postmodernism to the Alt-right extends on these contradicting truths; according to Dimitrakaki we find ourselves in an age where there is a dominating skepticism towards the existence of an objective reality which begs the legitimacy of science as the provider of this objective reality: “In our present, in Earth Year 2021, there is a battle between interpretative systems. This can be said about any era of human history, to the extent such human history has been recorded. The question of science has been central to this battle. Science is connected to a question precisely because of its alleged connection to offering access to the objective reality.”27 Dimitrakaki further prompts that in our current age, belief has taken over argument. Through the possibility to divert from what was originally seen as the ‘objective truth,’ the terminology Groys uses or ‘objective reality,’ as Dimitrakaki prefers, there is a complication brought about to obtain it. In Groys’ view, this lies a steady foundation for conspiracy to flourish.
26 Boris Groys, “Discourses of Distrust: Conspiracy Theories and the Critique of Ideology,” e-flux Journal, March, 2021, https://www.e-flux.com/ journal/116/380839/discoursesof-distrust-conspiracy-theoriesand-the-critique-of-ideology/.
27 Angela Dimitrakaki, “From Postmodernism to the Altright: Notes on the Loss of Objective Reality,” Making & Breaking, 2021, https:// makingandbreaking.org/article/ from-postmodernism-to-thealt-right-notes-on-the-loss-ofobjective-reality/.
28 Tyson Yunkaporta, Right Story, Wrong Story: Adventures in Indigenous Thinking (Melbourne: Text Publishing Melbourne Australia, 2023), The Wrong Canoe, e-book.
If we were to adhere only to generally accepted truth that is the dominant narrative complied to by the mass, or always massively adhere to the proposed ‘objective truth’, we would subject ourselves to ‘Wrong Story’ as Tyson Yunkaporta calls it.28 The so-called ‘objective truth’ in science perhaps meets the validity of the physical world but lacks the ability to find stable ground within the social.29 In his line of thought we would do right to listen, honor, include and respect everyone’s story, even if they were to be contradicting or mutually excluding each other. This is what Yunkaporta described to be ‘Right Story’, a collective web of truths shaping our reality.30 By sharing and imagining each other’s stories as equally valid truths, we are yarning together as a way to actively, respectfully and openly listen to each other, which is a vital part of building relations: “In my community, yarning is like conversation, but with the futile and passive-agressive parts removed.”31 It seems to be a Abundance of Truths and How to Navigate Them
method of collective thinking by filling the gaps and differences between each and everyone’s individual subjective truths, realizing that our own perception of reality can never be absolute or more important than the other. Truth in this line of thought is an ever transforming subjective entity interrelated to a world in motion: “We need right story more than ever as the world becomes less complex and more complicated, as it becomes increasingly difficult to know what is true, or whether truth even exists at all. The idea that there is no such thing as truth is true, but it’s only half - true. There’s no such thing as one truth. For every right story there are a hundred other right stories that contradict it, and we need to be comfortable with that.”32 Yunkaporta illustrates this by proposing to picture a group of people experiencing the full moon in the middle of the night shining over the horizon of the sea. Everyone in this group will have a different experience while looking at the scene from a different angle. Each individual in the group could discuss endlessly, with defending arguments, that their truth is legitimate, or come to the conclusion that everyone’s view of the truth is right as long as it is combined together.33 This is how truth operates. It is an illusion to think of truth as objective, absolute or static, and the same has to be said of our relations, groups, society, the world and their relatedness to context, time and space.
Conspiring as a Counteract to Individualism
29 Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee, “An Interview with Tyson Yunkaporta,” February 19, 2024, in Deep Time Diligence, produced by Emergence Magazine, podcast, 38:00, https:// emergencemagazine.org/ interview/deep-time-diligence/.
30 Yunkaporta, Right Story, Wrong Story, The Wrong Canoe.
31 Yunkaporta, Right Story, Wrong Story, The Wrong Canoe.
32 Yunkaporta, Right story, Wrong story, Twelve Rules for Avoiding Lists of Rules in the Anthropocene.
33 Yunkaporta, Right story, Wrong story, Twelve Rules for Avoiding Lists of Rules in the Anthropocene.
34 Eco, Chronicles of a Liquid Society, Fine Company.
35 Gogarty, What We Do Is Secret, 158.
We have commented on collectivity several times before in this essay but we will have one last venture into it to clarify our understanding and need for it once more. Eco describes how conspiracies have always been part of our societies and are all around us.34 Whenever we come together, whenever we plan as a group with a certain undermining aim, we are a conspiracy, we conspire. Daring to dream alternative futures is a conspiracy, forming alliances is a conspiracy, our protest is a conspiracy. In the final chapter of her book Larne Abse Gogarty connects the etymology of consciousness to the one of conspiracy in order to obtain a new way of thinking about conspiracy: “Consciousness means “to know together,” and “conspire,” from the Latin conspirare, literally means “to breathe together” at its root.”35 At the core of our re-examination of conspiracy lies this etymology of ‘breathing together’. The emphasis on collectivity through this focus, the highlighted need for multiplicity in truth in order to obtain the ‘Right Story’, as well as the reliance on a group of believers for a conspiracy to occur or be viable, is what leads us in our belief of the fruitful ground this understanding proposes. It is after her investigation towards conspiracy as a criminal act, a political plot and a theory of history that Gogarty comes to this definition. This Conspiring as a Counteract to Individualism
last part of the book seems more poetic and ideological, and therefore maybe more conspiratorial. Going beyond the more damaging notions of conspiracy, Gogarty introduces this final part in the preceding chapter with: “recognizing the forms of life that emerge when individual autonomy is ditched for a stab at collective freedom, a space where real beauty unfurls.”36 Making this poetic indication of what will follow more concrete, she later writes: “what it means to breathe together under these conditions, foregrounding improvisation and mutuality, shared consciousness, and an insistence on unconditional emancipation, rather than the perpetual reinscribing of the sovereign subject, and submission to the system.”37 Gogarty’s focus on context here is essential, we need to relate to our environment when thinking about conspiracy as a generative force as this world of uncertainty is what we previously described to be our ignitor to conspire.
Understanding conspiracy as ‘breathing together’ promotes mutual aid and will help us in our pursuit of alternative societies that are inclusive and sustainable. Judith Butler proposes an understanding of collectivity that is fundamental and irrevocable: “There is a more general conception of the human with which I am trying to work here, one in which we are, from the start, given over to the other, one in which we are, from the start, even prior to individuation itself, and by virtue of our embodiment, given over to an other: this makes us vulnerable to violence, but also to another range of touch, a range which includes the eradication of our being at the one end, and the physical support for our lives, on the other.”38 This understanding of collectivity through vulnerability allows us to better understand the effect we have on each other. We would understand ourselves as being surrendered and vulnerable to each other but also as being receptive for care and love and protection by others. It is our common responsibility then to uphold the multiplicity in truths we envision and create, that take into consideration this vulnerability and use it for good, not for inflicting violence but to touch in different ways.
Probing Conspiracy as Tool
In What We Do Is Secret Gogarty looks at the ‘aesthetic and intellectual affinities’ between conspiracy and contemporary art and in doing so she goes beyond the association of conspiracy solely with conspiracy theories but also addresses its relation to militancy, sociality, and temporality.39 It points at the underutilized aspects of conspiracy and gives input to rethink and re-evaluate the means and modes in which we view and use conspiracy as a tool. Instead of becoming afraid of conspiracy theories, we propose to appropriate its own mechanisms to counter its own system.
36 Gogarty, What We Do Is Secret, 134.
37 Gogarty, What We Do Is Secret, 161.
38 Judith Butler, Violence, Mourning, Politics (New York: CUNY Academic Works, 2022), 6.
39 Gogarty, What We Do Is Secret.
Probing Conspiracy as Tool
While it might be too simplified to assume that we can outmaneuver racist and discriminatory or polarizing effect that are proven to be interlinked with conspiracy theories, through a dissection of conspiracy we might be able to use some of its strategies within our attempts. We will dissect the mechanisms of conspiracy into further detail below as a way to get a better hold on how we could potentially adapt it into our own tool as a generative force.
According to Zaria Gorvett, as said earlier, convincing culprits as well as tribalism are often recognized in conspiracy theories and allow for it to catch on. In addition she names collective anxieties, uncertainty, knowledge gaps and ulterior motives.39 Collective anxiety was already discussed in relation to conspiracy as being a mirroring mechanism to social, societal, economic or political issues. The remaining three factors, being uncertainty, knowledge gaps and ulterior motives, have been implicitly interwoven in this essay but we will make them more explicit below.
Knowledge gaps have been described to be one of the causes for conspiracies to catch on as usually in times of crises or uncertainty, conspiracies provide the much-wanted answers. Where previously Groys mainly focused on the danger of the loss of an objective truth and its cause of conspiracy theories to arise, we see this loss or gap as a possibility to adapt a multiplicity of truths and use this as a method to imagine, adapt and anticipate worlds that are viable, sustainable and inclusive. This adaption of multiplicity in truth is also the proposed tool for navigating tribalism as earlier noted. These knowledge gaps, both of our individual and collective understanding not only allow for alternatives and multiplicity to arise, it can also be seen as the cause of the second factor: uncertainty. These two factors, in our view, largely relate to each other as they have a mutualistic relationship. Not knowing and the anxiety this might give us when thinking of both the current and (near) future is the ignitor for our attempts. We aim to gather alternatives to existing prompts that are proposed through these knowledge gaps which are indicated by their dysfunctionality; to the social, societal and economic systems that are failing us, those that are exclusive or oppressive, those that create hierarchies amongst us. This relates to the last factor: ulterior motives. This method has been popping up throughout the essay through our discussion of conspiracy and re-examining it in a way to appropriate it in our quest to foster inclusive and sustainable societies. This is our ulterior motive.
40 Gorvett, “learn from conspiracy.”
Conspiracy as generative force is to imagine or dream collectively. It is a proposal that will persist to exist as long as we collectively believe in it. It is a conspiracy that relies on our willingness to keep on breathing together. And uptill the point that it becomes a truth, and the conspiracy will cease to exist as such, we will subscribe to it not as the only truth but as one of many.
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Lennart Creutzburg and Julia Fidder
The Day it Rains Jellyfish
Conspiracy as Generative Force
Published independently online
Typeface
4 Fromages (downloaded fonderie.download)
Bodoni 72 Oldstyle
© 2024 Lennart Creutzburg, Julia Fidder
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without prior written permission from the authors.
This publication was produced during a working period at SÍM residency in Reykjavik, Iceland.
We want to thank the people that were part in the creation of this narrative and chose to, even temporarily, become part of our conspiracy: Kris, Rik, Myriam, Geertje, Ana and Ana, Oskar, Sam, Chili, Katrin, Junior, Bogna, Catriona, Eetu, Matieu, Kim, Jennifer, Marlene, Martynas, Anna, Michaela, Riet, Micol, Scienthya.