The Paranoid Chronotope: Power, Truth, Identity

This book explores the prevalence of paranoia in contemporary American society and culture, focusing on power, truth, and identity in three contexts: society, literature, and critique. It argues that paranoid thinking has increased due to the rise of control systems and neoliberal ascendency and explores how it manifests in various forms of media and literature. Frida Beckman introduces the concept of the paranoid chronotope to analyze social, literary, and critical practices in the twenty-first century.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 256 pages
Publication date: 22 March 2022
Publisher: Stanford University Press

Why does it appear that our daily lives are constantly overshadowed by a sense of foreboding? This book delves into the pervasive presence of paranoia as a defining aspect of contemporary American society and culture. By focusing on three key dimensions – power, truth, and identity – across three distinct contexts – society, literature, and critique – the book explores and elucidates the growing influence of paranoid thinking in American society during the second half of the twentieth century and the early decades of the twenty-first century. This period has witnessed the rise of control systems and the ascendancy of neoliberalism.

Inquiring into the dominance of white, male, American subjects in paranoid culture, Frida Beckman acknowledges the antagonistic preservation and reinforcement of a notion of the autonomous individual that perceives itself as under threat. Recognizing such paranoia as arising from an increasingly disjunctive relationship between this conception of the subject and the evolving nature of the public sphere, she develops the concept of the paranoid chronotope as a valuable tool for the theoretical analysis of social, literary, and critical practices in the present day.

Through an in-depth investigation of twenty-first-century paranoid fictions, New Sincerity novels, conspiracist online culture, and postcritique, Beckman demonstrates how the paranoid chronotope persists as a recurring motif in modern consciousness.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781503631601