• Islamophobic Conspiracism and Neoliberal Subjectivity: The Inassimilable Society

    Author(s):
    S. Jonathon O'Donnell (see profile)
    Date:
    2018
    Group(s):
    American Studies, Cultural Studies, Religious Studies
    Subject(s):
    Culture--Study and teaching, United States, Islam, Neoliberalism, Economics, Politics and government, Subjectivity
    Item Type:
    Article
    Tag(s):
    conspiracy, islamophobia, Prejudice, American cultural studies, Political economy, Politics
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/9801-1h87
    Abstract:
    This article analyses the confluence of Islamophobia and anti-government conspiracy theory in the works of the far-right think tank, the Center for Security Policy (CSP). He argues that, rather than only being a contemporary form of the religious and racialized demonologies that code ‘Islam’ as being the constitutive outside of ‘the ‘West—irrational, religious and authoritarian versus rational, secular and democratic—Islamophobic conspiracism should also be examined in the context of anxieties over the erosion of personal and state sovereignty under neoliberalization. Mobilizing an Islamophobic demonology that constructs ‘Muslims’ as inassimilable to ‘American’ subjectivity, the CSP’s Islamophobic conspiracism projects this construction of absolute alterity on to American social and state systems. In doing so, the article contend, Islamophobic conspiracism takes neoliberalization’s estrangement of the state and its citizens to its logical conclusion, transfiguring the societal processes that impact on the freedom of the individual—notably the state and civil society—into something inassimilable to that individual’s claims to self-ownership and self-mastery.
    Metadata:
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    Published as:
    Journal article     Show details
    Pub. DOI:
    10.1080/0031322X.2017.1414473
    Publisher:
    Informa UK Limited
    Pub. Date:
    2018
    Journal:
    Patterns of Prejudice
    Volume:
    52
    Issue:
    1
    Page Range:
    1 - 23
    ISSN:
    0031-322X,1461-7331
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    3 years ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved
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