ABSTRACT
‘At the heart of conspiracy theory,’ Mark Fenster observes, is ‘a gripping, dramatic story’ of the desperate efforts of a lone investigator or a small group of heroes to expose and foil the devious schemes of powerful enemies (2008: 119). Plots, that is, complots and intrigues, therefore make for exciting plots, that is, storylines in works of art. Hence conspiracy scenarios have been an important element in fiction of all kinds for many centuries, ranging at least from the intrigues of Shakespeare’s villains via the cabals of secret societies in Schiller and his contemporaries to the plots of governments and powerful organisations in the novels of Robert Ludlum and Tom Clancy. After all, fictional representations of conspiracy hold at least two advantages over their – allegedly – factual counterparts. First, outside of fiction, conspiracy theorists can only ever postulate the existence of a conspiracy by offering what they consider conclusive evidence. Inside of fiction, by contrast, conspiracies can be real beyond any doubt, as readers and audiences witness the evildoings of the conspirators directly. Their suspicions are confirmed and become established facts within the diegetic world. Second, the function of allegedly factual conspiracist discourse is to expose the conspirators and move the audience to take action against them. Fictional texts, by contrast, often do not only dramatise the exposure of the conspiracy but also its defeat. The optimism that, despite its generally bleak outlook on the world, informs conspiracy theorising (Butter 2018: 110–11) comes to the fore here more explicitly than in conspiracist texts outside fiction.
