Islamophobic conspiracism and neoliberal subjectivity: the inassimilable society

O'Donnell, S. Jonathon

Abstract

O’Donnell 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, O’Donnell contends, 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.

Citation

O'Donnell, S. J. (2018). Islamophobic conspiracism and neoliberal subjectivity: the inassimilable society. Patterns of Prejudice, 52(1), 1-23. https://doi.org/10.1080/0031322X.2017.1414473

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Online Publication Date: Dec 19, 2017
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2018
• Deposit Date: Jan 27, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 27, 2018
• Journal: Patterns of Prejudice
• Print ISSN: 0031-322X
• Electronic ISSN: 1461-7331
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis Group
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 52
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 1-23
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/0031322X.2017.1414473