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Interestingly, one of his major themes is that powerful people and institutions are themselves driven by various "conspiracy theories," neuroses, and fiction.

by mbrock 13y ago

Interestingly, one of his major themes is that powerful people and institutions are themselves driven by various "conspiracy theories," neuroses, and fiction. In this post, he describes how the MI5 and other spy organizations need ideological support from authors like Le Carre. In "The Power of Nightmares," this is also the primary theme, but focused on the mythical and paranoid ideology that drives the "War on Terror." So, Curtis is maybe not a conspiracy theorist, but a conspiracy theory theorist... I see him as something like a humanist: he wants to the reveal the "humanity" (pettiness, confusion, imagination) of powerful actors which present themselves as serious.

purephase 13y ago
I agree with you. It particularly resonates in this piece as he repeatedly tears into the intelligence services (specifically MI5) as being completely incompetent. I find his work to be a constant reminder of how fallible the human species is, how much we try to convince ourselves otherwise (some are better at it than others) and the utter inanity that it almost always leads to. If only it were humourous endings to these reports.
spenuke 13y ago
Agreed. I was introduced to his work by watching The Trap in a seminar on Michel Foucault, interestingly enough. I was surprised how much depth there was in Foucault's work, despite his reputation as a fudging post-structuralist. Much of it complementary to Adam Curtis's work. One of the important things we find in both (as well as in the last in my trifecta of organizational theory -- The Wire) is that conspiracy theories are almost impossible, because people are mostly either too stupid or too petty and shortsighted to pull off a true Illuminati-style conspiracy. It might be tempting to call Adam Curtis a conspiracy theorist because his notion of how power is distributed and wielded is somewhat arcane -- for instance, it's at first odd to say that the populace is controlled by propping up freedom as the guiding ethos and removing arbitrary forms of control by implementing statistical guidelines, since these things are nominally in place to remove top-down control -- but such analyses, arcane though they may be, are not conspiracy theories, because a conspiracy requires a coordinated effort. Adam Curtis describes situations in which there is no coordinated effort, and no secret cabal. Just struggles of power and agreed upon fields of debate/combat which are then exploited after the fact by those who are able to do so.
- steveklabnik 13y ago
  > I was surprised how much depth there was in Foucault's work, despite his reputation as a fudging post-structuralist. While I want to make some snarky comment about how maybe this tells you what you've heard about those 'fudging post-structuralists' is incorrect, what I'll say instead is that out of that group, which, incidentally, he did not consider himself a part of, Foucault is widely considered the least-fudgy. Consider Chomsky, for example: his (silly and vapid, in my humble opinion) beef with many continental philosophers basically excluded Foucault: "I find Foucault really interesting but I remain skeptical of his mode of expression." I highly recommend watching the debate between the two of them: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myy3vL-QKI4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myy3vL-QKI4 (and the five-second summary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0dM6j7pzQA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0dM6j7pzQA )
  - spenuke 13y ago
    Oh, you don't need to convince me one way or the other. I spent my undergraduate career in a philosophy department that was extremely continental-heavy, as well as dedicated to reading only primary texts. After having read many volumes of Frenchies, my opinion on the two most famous is that Derrida fudged beautifully, even if he was ultimately a one-trick pony, while Foucault cherry picked some history but built a system of questions that were and are worth exploring.
    - steveklabnik 13y ago
      :) I'm currently making my way through Derrida now, though I've put him down to take up some Kafka...
  - calibraxis 13y ago
    Hmm, what should I get from that debate? I just re-read the transcript [1], and seems they just had a minor disagreement over the notion of justice. (And a couple other little "differences" which we could consider clarifications.) I currently don't see why it's so heavily cited; some others (not you) seem to consider it some legendary heavyweight fight in the history of philosophy. But it was just... an interview. As for his disagreements with certain philosophers... he makes a cogent point, that perhaps he simply doesn't understand it, but much of it seems to him written in a kind of gibberish, which can understandably lead to a lot of mistakes. [2] Imagine if I wrote hopefully useful code, but it was extremely hard to read and poorly documented... What properties would we expect that code to have? [1] http://www.chomsky.info/debates/1971xxxx.htm http://www.chomsky.info/debates/1971xxxx.htm [2] http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/chomsky-on-postmodernism.html http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/chomsky-on-pos...

by mbrock 13y ago

purephase 13y ago

I agree with you. It particularly resonates in this piece as he repeatedly tears into the intelligence services (specifically MI5) as being completely incompetent. I find his work to be a constant reminder of how fallible the human species is, how much we try to convince ourselves otherwise (some are better at it than others) and the utter inanity that it almost always leads to. If only it were humourous endings to these reports.

spenuke 13y ago

Agreed. I was introduced to his work by watching The Trap in a seminar on Michel Foucault, interestingly enough. I was surprised how much depth there was in Foucault's work, despite his reputation as a fudging post-structuralist. Much of it complementary to Adam Curtis's work. One of the important things we find in both (as well as in the last in my trifecta of organizational theory -- The Wire) is that conspiracy theories are almost impossible, because people are mostly either too stupid or too petty and shortsighted to pull off a true Illuminati-style conspiracy. It might be tempting to call Adam Curtis a conspiracy theorist because his notion of how power is distributed and wielded is somewhat arcane -- for instance, it's at first odd to say that the populace is controlled by propping up freedom as the guiding ethos and removing arbitrary forms of control by implementing statistical guidelines, since these things are nominally in place to remove top-down control -- but such analyses, arcane though they may be, are not conspiracy theories, because a conspiracy requires a coordinated effort. Adam Curtis describes situations in which there is no coordinated effort, and no secret cabal. Just struggles of power and agreed upon fields of debate/combat which are then exploited after the fact by those who are able to do so.

steveklabnik 13y ago
> I was surprised how much depth there was in Foucault's work, despite his reputation as a fudging post-structuralist. While I want to make some snarky comment about how maybe this tells you what you've heard about those 'fudging post-structuralists' is incorrect, what I'll say instead is that out of that group, which, incidentally, he did not consider himself a part of, Foucault is widely considered the least-fudgy. Consider Chomsky, for example: his (silly and vapid, in my humble opinion) beef with many continental philosophers basically excluded Foucault: "I find Foucault really interesting but I remain skeptical of his mode of expression." I highly recommend watching the debate between the two of them: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myy3vL-QKI4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myy3vL-QKI4 (and the five-second summary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0dM6j7pzQA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0dM6j7pzQA )
- spenuke 13y ago
  Oh, you don't need to convince me one way or the other. I spent my undergraduate career in a philosophy department that was extremely continental-heavy, as well as dedicated to reading only primary texts. After having read many volumes of Frenchies, my opinion on the two most famous is that Derrida fudged beautifully, even if he was ultimately a one-trick pony, while Foucault cherry picked some history but built a system of questions that were and are worth exploring.
  - steveklabnik 13y ago
    :) I'm currently making my way through Derrida now, though I've put him down to take up some Kafka...
- calibraxis 13y ago
  Hmm, what should I get from that debate? I just re-read the transcript [1], and seems they just had a minor disagreement over the notion of justice. (And a couple other little "differences" which we could consider clarifications.) I currently don't see why it's so heavily cited; some others (not you) seem to consider it some legendary heavyweight fight in the history of philosophy. But it was just... an interview. As for his disagreements with certain philosophers... he makes a cogent point, that perhaps he simply doesn't understand it, but much of it seems to him written in a kind of gibberish, which can understandably lead to a lot of mistakes. [2] Imagine if I wrote hopefully useful code, but it was extremely hard to read and poorly documented... What properties would we expect that code to have? [1] http://www.chomsky.info/debates/1971xxxx.htm http://www.chomsky.info/debates/1971xxxx.htm [2] http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/chomsky-on-postmodernism.html http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/chomsky-on-pos...