Symposium

Today we begin publishing our first book forum, a set of essays critically engaged with Zahid Chaudhary’s Paranoid Publics: Psychopolitics of Truth (Fordham 2025). Chaudhary, through a provocative intermingling of

In the Interregnum I am honored by these close engagements with Paranoid Publics, which together read like a conversation even though each author in this book forum was not aware

“It seems to me characteristic of the paranoiac that, though, on account of his persecution-anxiety and his suspicions, he develops a very strong and acute power of observation of the

In Paranoid Publics: Psychopolitics of Truth Zahid Chaudhary offers a finely honed and powerfully illuminating account of the psychosocial operations animating contemporary political culture.  As Chaudhary rightly notes, much political

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice,

“Hate to tell you but the only time ‘real’ comes into it is when they’re shooting at you. In practice, ‘real’ means dead—anything else, there’s always room for some conversation.”

Do you have to be paranoid to know a conspiracy theory when you see one? Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, in her critique of the paranoid disposition of academic writing in the