Narrating Conspiracy Theories: A Paradoxical Ethics of Otherness, Propaganda and Mistrust
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Date
2024
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Milan Publisher
Abstract
ENG: Reflecting conspiracy theories in contemporary fiction actualises conspiratorial
thinking as a specific sociocultural phenomenon and narrative. Four symptomatic novels –
George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Ahmed Khaled
Towfik’s Utopia, and Stephen King’s The Institute – have been analysed from a conspiratorial perspective to illuminate the most efficient ways of shaping the human perception
of reality. For this purpose, the following conspiracy elements have been delineated to be
the basis of the novels’ poetics: otherness, propaganda and mistrust. They affect the authors’ strategies of storytelling in the books written in the era of the end of truth. Following an interdisciplinary approach that primarily includes the method of narrative construction and semiotic analysis, the article focuses on the conspiracy elements for plotting the
selected novels and explicates the conspiracy narratives for manifesting the paradoxical
ethics of truth as fiction. Conceptualising this idea in the sociocultural context confers to
such a kind of literature a new ethical dimension.
Description
O. Bohovyk: ORCID 0000-0003-4315-2154; A. Bezrukov: ORCID 0000-0001-5084-6969
Keywords
untruthfulness, troubled Society, conspiracy discourse, fictionality, escapism, КФП
Citation
Bohovyk, O., Bezrukov A. Narrating Conspiracy Theories: A Paradoxical Ethics of Otherness, Propaganda and Mistrust. Enthymema. 2024. No. 34. P. 164–179. DOI: 10.54103/2037-2426/18614.