JFK assassination or how not to be paranoid in the enlightened age of conspiracies

Šterk, Karmen (author)

In the article, we compare the interpretational paradigms of conspiratorial, magical and scientific reasoning. We conclusively demonstrate that rationalism, scientific progress and the postmodern condition did nothing to prevent people from mystical, irrational and paranoid reasoning, which is embodied in conspiratorial thought. To the contrary, it is our thesis that the conspiratorial ideation is, in the final analysis, actually a full blown realization of the ideals of the scientific Enlightenment, one of the few still ordered, uniform and internally coherent ways of thinking in disenchanted societies of the West. There exists a greatly generalized paranoid attitude that, as we will show, can contextualize and/or elucidate the tendency of an ever rising conspiratorial ideation.

• Language: English
• Work type: Not categorized
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FDV - Faculty of Social Sciences
• Year: 2013
• Number of pages: Str. 847-862, 909
• Numbering: Letn. 50, št. 5/6
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-85325
• UDC: 572:316.7Kennedy J. F.
• ISSN on article: 0040-3598
• COBISS.SI-ID: 32432989
• Publication date in RUL: 20.09.2016

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Teorija in praksa : revija za družbena vprašanja
• Shortened title: Teor. praksa
• Publisher: Fakulteta za družbene vede
• ISSN: 0040-3598
• COBISS.SI-ID: 763652

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian

Abstract

V članku primerjamo interpretativne paradigme zarotniškega, magičnega in znanstvenega sklepanja. Dokazujemo, da racionalizem, znanstveni napredek in postmoderno stanje v ničemer niso prispevali k redukciji mističnega, iracionalnega in paranoidnega razmišljanja, ki ga utelešajo teorije zarote. Ravno nasprotno: članek zagovarja tezo, da je zarotniška ideacija pravzaprav do konca razvit ideal razsvetljenske znanstvene misli, saj predstavlja enega redkih še koherentnih, urejenih in enoznačnih načinov razmišljanja v odčaranih zahodnih družbah. V članku podajamo pojasnitev tendence vzpona zarotniške ideacije s kontekstualizacijo v vsesplošnem paranoidnem stanju duha.