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Paper short abstract

In this paper I make use of Lévi-Strauss' concept of bricolage as a kaleidoscopic social technique to consider the constant recombination of old tropes in the activity of conspiracy theorising, as a means of exploring the creative or aesthetic capacity of this activity to captivate and persuade.

Paper long abstract

"This logic," suggested Lévi-Strauss of bricolage, "operates rather like a kaleidoscope: another instrument that contains odds and ends that serve to realise structural arrangements. The fragments come out of a process of breakage and destruction ... but with the requirement that its products present certain homologies among themselves" (2021: 42). I am inspired by the image of the kaleidoscope to consider the process of conspiracy theory as a form of aesthetic play through recycling old cultural elements and discursive tropes into something that appears both novel and dazzling.

I argue that the dazzling effect of the kaleidoscope is part of what lends conspiracy theorising as an activity its persuasive power, despite - or because of - the fact that there is often very little in conspiracy theory that is actually new. The tropes of child abduction and ritual cannibalism recur in the medieval blood libel, the "Satanic Panic" of the 1980s, and the recent QAnon movement. The idea of fraudulent governments takes forms ranging from hidden histories to witches and aliens occupying high political offices. These homologous forms can be endlessly recombined to create the appearance of new stories that tap into anxieties about political, economic and spiritual power. It is this recombination of old elements into new stories that I describe not only as bricolage, but bricolage as a kaleidoscope whose dazzling effect lends conspiracy theory its power to attract and captivate adherents.