Conspiracy Theories as Secularized Demonology

Though of course this is a blog, what is truly rare around here are short, off the cuff blog posts. This will hardly amend that deficit, yet here we go--an actual short (and perhaps ill-conceived) post! A thought crossed my mind today regarding conspiracy theories and an avenue of future research. I should note that this post is partially tongue in cheek (though actually I think there is something to this as well):

Conspiracy theories are a secularized form of demonology.

Now there are a few immediate things to be said about this, the first being that this is in no way a commentary on the legitimacy or not of any given theory. Some could be true; some could be false. This is merely a commentary on the form and function they take.

The second point is to note that this in some sense mimics Karl Popper's famous analysis that conspiracy theories come about "from abandoning God and then asking: who is in His place?" (Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, 165).

And yet, Popper's analysis, though having some profound insights, has always struck me as slightly off. For there can never, properly speaking, be a replacement analogue for God unless we veer into conspiratorial proportions of Lovecraftian "cosmic horror" dimensions, where the structure of the universe  is quite literally malevolent and populated with deities hellbent on control, awe, and terror. But the conspiracy theories we encounter (short of the "brain in a vat," or "all of reality is simulated" ones) are less grandiose than all of this. Moreover, there is an extreme disanalogy in Popper's idea since the analogues in history between God/king/people are always characterized through images of glory (as in Giorgio Agamben's Kingdom and the Glory), through the notion of the "King's two bodies" in analogy to the two natures of Christ and the notion of bodily presence and bodily displacement in the eucharist (Kantorowicz, The Kings Two Bodies), the power to declare states of exception in analogy to the potentia ordinata and potentia absoluta of medieval scholastic theorizing (as in Schmidt's infamous Political Theology, or Francis Oakley's Omnipotence, Covenant, and Order), or the entire notion of hierarchy is undone through a trinitarian lateralization of power as in Erik Peterson's famous Monotheism as a Political Problem. The analogies between God and ruler, then, do not rely upon secret orderings or occult manifestations, but are meant to display the very visible power that the analogies are meant to secure (see also David Nicholls, Deity and Domination for more). 

Conspiracies do not function like this. They speak rather in terms of the "they," or networks of misinformation, string-pulling cabals, and the like. To be sure these can be united into a super-network like the Illuminati, or One-World-Order types; yet here too the analogy drawn by Popper fails due to its failure of proximity to the grandiose terms that monotheism (or even henotheism) demands. I think, therefore, that the levels of power and control traditionally given to Satan and the demonic (including witches, warlocks, and so forth) are more akin to the level of power ascribed to the actor networks that "they" usually refers to. Moreover, it also aligns with a school of thought that analyzes witchcraft and demonology not in an essentialist manner of beliefs, practices, or ideas, but rather in terms of patterns of accusation that occur through time--notions of othering, scapegoating, and creating false catharsis through condemnation allow us to immediately see a family resemblance between demonology, witchcraft, and conspiracies at a formal level (Russell and Alexander, A History of Witchcraft, 42) the Witch's secret sabbat to enact networks of primal powers beyond normal human ken or understanding is not just an analogue with secret cabals, however, but we must keep in mind conspiratorial orders are often directly equated with occultism, demonic or at least religious symbolism, etc. It should also be noted that historically witchcraft, demonology, etc. run in disanalogy with visible powers, the Inquisition seeking to route out its opposite, so to speak, the roots of a hidden power that wind through the towns and make up the dark side of the very visible Church qua "legitimate" or "open" institution.

So, lets clarify a few things. By "conspiracy theory" I simply mean any theory that posits control or intent to an event other than those immediately on offer. If a doctor is prescribing medication, for example, it would not be a conspiracy to say they are wrong about the nature of what they are describing. This is simple error. It would be a conspiracy to say that they are prescribing something in full knowledge of its deleterious effects in order to achieve a goal other than that explicitly stated at the behest of a known or unknown corporate entity. In this sense "conspiracy" need not mean anything fancy, except the implication that two or more people (or forces) have enacted a plan that is not derivable or immediately evident from the surface level meaning of an event. Maybe this isn't a great definition, like I said this is an off the cuff post. Leave a better definition in the comments below.

Second, what do I mean by secularization? This is itself tricky, and it could mean one of three things (not necessarily exclusive of one another). Hans Blumenberg's sense of secularization is first: conspiracy theories have reoccupied a territory left vacant by demonological speculations. In other words, for whatever reason, demonology was found wanting as a discourse, but the functions that demonology fulfilled at either formal or material levels still needed tending to within society. So conspiracy theories are what arrived to stand in the gap. 

The second, more interesting meaning (and the one I most intend), is that conspiracy theories are historically related to earlier demonological discourse, one having been transformed into the other due to a series of contingent events (what these are I leave to one side in this short post). In other words, a diligent person could literally trace how demonological discourse was used to explain "behind the scenes" events slowly also (or perhaps only) came to refer to "secular" non-demonic behind the scenes events (though not directly on this topic, see Norman Cohn's Europe's Inner Demons which provides a lot of necessary scene-setting). When one notices, for example, how the figures of "The Watchers" are used in the book of Enoch, having been responsible for giving technology and education to humanity, one can see that this is not too much of a stretch. 

This also leads to the third sense of secularization. Giorgio Agamben refers to a "realm of indeterminacy" between theology and economic discourse, where its not that one is transformed into the other, but rather that concepts can hold a double-duty: economic concepts (like "economy" itself) can be used directly in theology, and theological terminology can (and has) directly been used in economics.

Thus (and this is also a sense of what I mean by our thesis that conspiracy theories are secularized demonology) the transformations spoken of in the second sense are complimented by the fact that there has always been a realm of indeterminacy between demonological and conspiratorial language. As Ephesians 6:12 puts it: "Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against rulers, against authorities, against the power of this dark world, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms ..." Now, for those confused, the references to "rulers" and "authorities" and "powers" and "principalities" are the names of angelic/demonic agencies, but also actual rulers and authorities. We must remind ourselves that "angel" and "demon" do not name a genus of creatures, but a function of agency (angelos being the Greek word messenger, as does is the Hebrew malak).  Thus conspiracy theories and demonologies have always indwelled a mutual realm of indeterminacy, where there can be a direct and mutual application of terms between them, in Agamben's sense.

There is a third realm of indeterminacy here--not just between demonology and conspiracy, but now also monsters with both, and so we can get Bigfoot and Nessie in on this action. For in Latin monstrare means "to portend," and monsters were in ancient literature not called such just for their aesthetic appearance, but also because they were thought to be agencies or omens of a higher power. There is an entire sequence of neo-Platonic Christian discourse, for example, that names "monsters" as the most perfect revelations of God because their hybrid nature (being, say, both man and horse with the centaur) means they evade natural categorizations and so serve as a negative or apophatic reference to God (see David William's Deformed Discourse: The Function of the Monster in Medieval Thought and Literature, or at other literature pointing to how blackness was equated with darkness/sin/evil/demons in certain medieval situations.). There is a reason that monsters often line the edges of maps: neither inside nor outside they are the boundary guardians, the secret keepers, the "they."

But further than this, when one realizes how often the demonic and the monstrous is used to characterize marginalized groups as the "they" the notion of conspiracy immediately comes to the fore again (see: Bettina Bildhauer, "Blood, Jews, and Monsters in Medieval Culture" in Bildhauer, ed. The Monstrous Middle Ages).

So, there you have it. Enough proof to proceed as a paradigm of research?