Empire of Conspiracy - 9780801486067

Empire of ConspiracyThe Culture of Paranoia in Postwar America\nAuthor(s): Timothy Melley\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Cornell University Press, United States\nImprint: Cornell University Press\nISBN-13: 9780801486067, 978-0801486067\nSynopsis\nWhy, Timothy Melley asks, have paranoia and conspiracy theory become such prominent features of postwar American culture? In Empire of Conspiracy, Melley explores the recent growth of anxieties about thought-control, assassination, political indoctrination, stalking, surveillance, and corporate and government plots. At the heart of these developments, he believes, lies a widespread sense of crisis in the way Americans think about human autonomy and individuality. Nothing reveals this crisis more than the remarkably consistent form of expression that Melley calls \""agency panic\""an intense fear that individuals can be shaped or controlled by powerful external forces. Drawing on a broad range of forms that manifest this fearincluding fiction, .