What is conspiracy theory?

This is a question that people have asked me at all stages of my project: what do you mean by conspiracy theory? For many years, the answer seemed obvious: it's what they talk about on the X-Files, it's a belief that the Kennedy assassination was rigged, it's a belief that a secret society is running the government. Recently, though, I've begun giving thought to a narrower, more useful definition: conspiracy theory is the belief that some clandestine group--whether governmental, corporate, upper-class--have rigged some segment of history. Often--though of course not always--this group is composed of men. In part, this implication rests with the historical power accorded men--and the R.W. Connell argument that powerful institutions continue to have a masculine character. In a theoretical sense, this group is imagined as masculine actors, people who act upon history and are not acted upon by history, people who make themselves and their world, and who are not made by the world.

Take, then, the recent study that showed 40% of Republican voters have doubts about Barack Obama's citizenship. Well, is that a conspiracy theory? On the surface, no--it's an expression of doubt that "he's one of us," the xenophobia of the immigration debate grafted onto the figure of the first African-American president, it's the longstanding mistrust between American whites and American blacks. But if one considers the implications of this belief--that Obama somehow ran around a key provision of the Constitution, that he was aided in such by presumably powerful people, and that his election was manipulated by such forces--then we're in the realm of conspiracy theory. Moreover, the the only people who know about this pseudo-coup are a select few right-wing analysts--so we also have a powerful identification, or self-aggrandizement occurring around this conspiracy theory. Asserting that Obama is not a US citizen, and that I have the evidence, is a rhetorically powerful move, even if such rhetoric is not always persuasive to all audiences. (Something similar happened with the 2004 election and Diebold, where a few left-wing analysts believed they had found evidence of a coup.)

Why, though, would such a group be comprised of men? Certainly, the names that come up on Glenn Beck's chalkboard are frequently men, and the names that appear in the video promoted by WND. But my argument rests upon a more general proposition (one that may unfortunately fall into the realm of "common sense"): that when "one" imagined a small room of conspirators, the occupants of that room are wearing ties, not dresses, and that the color of their skin is white, not brown. Certainly, some conspiracy theorists--Texe Marrs, for example--explicitly name the conspirators as male. But I'd argue that even when the designation is not explicit, the implication is that the conspirators are men, because, to paraphrase Connell in a rough approximation of the way the world works (itself a weak argument), powerful actors are men. There's also the argument, I suppose, that the conspirators' room is a markedly non-domestic place, and that part of the imaginary around it derives from historically male-only spaces: secret societies, smoke-filled back rooms, the Presidential "war room." Conspiracy theory validates the logic of such spaces, even as it questions the need for their existence.

While, as Connell observes, the history of masculinity, like the history of any social category, is fraught with "dominant, subordinated, and marginalized masculinities are in constant interaction, changing the conditions for each others' existence and transforming themselves as they do" (198), nevertheless, the association between masculinity and financial, social, and political power persists. Even if "patriarchy" is a too-narrow and too-simple way to understand the gender order, the uneven distribution of power between men and women, and between white men and men of color is an inarguable reality. Indeed, as Connell argues, while feminist, gay, and other activists have worked to disrupt the notion of a naturalized masculine power, the upper-class men of metropolitan countries now possess a greater percentage of wealth and power than at any point in history. The question for my study is what role conspiracy theories--theories that affirm and reinforce the notion that powerful men control the world (is this news?) play in negotiating the stark facts of power imbalances between powerful men and everyone else.

Another question for my study is this: what does the knowledge of that coup mean to the people that "uncover it." Even if, in many cases, the people doing so are women (Orly Taitz), what gendered version of the world is promoted by the assertion of such knowledge? I'm going to argue that it means several things: first, that the world is populated by Oliver Norths and Jack Bauers, men willing to commit clandestine acts for some higher cause; ironically, of course, North and Bauer are working for the other team in this case, but still, this is how the world works. It also means that the world is somewhat fixed and limited, that in place of all the complexities of late-capitalist politics, we have the immediate, graspable problem of men behaving like men. Finally, it means that I have a place in the world, that I can participate in politics and power in a direct, meaningful way: by exposing the actions of North and Bauer. In this way, the distanced, fragmented, shifting world of late capitalism, post-Fordism and post-civil rights is distilled into coherent, recognizable structures--structures bound up in a reactionary view of gender.