Ep. 6 - Agency panic, conspiracy, and paranoia in literature – with Timothy Melley

In this final episode in the current run of the podcast, my guest is someone who was a strong influence on my own research – I’ll be talking with Timothy Melley about his research on depictions of paranoia and conspiracy in literature and film. We discuss the idea of ‘agency panic’, how it can help us to interpret films like The Manchurian Candidate, Oliver Stone’s JFK, and we also touch on Donald Trump’s use of conspiracist language.

Tim Melley is Professor of English and Geoffrion Family Director of the Miami University Humanities Center. He writes on the cultural politics of security, and is the author of Empire of Conspiracy: The Culture of Paranoia in Postwar America, as well as The Covert Sphere: Secrecy, Fiction, and the National Security State.

The views expressed in this series are solely those of the presenter or guest and do not reflect the opinions of WISERD or Cardiff University.

 

For Tim's work on this topic, see:

Empire of Conspiracy by Timothy Melley | eBook | Cornell University Press

Brainwashed! Conspiracy Theory and Ideology in the Postwar United States