PhD Candidate, Faculty of English, University of Cambridge

Rhona Jamieson is final-year doctoral candidate in the Cambridge Faculty of English, focussing on conspiracy theories and contemporary fictional narratives. Her research identifies how unreasonable conspiracy theories have the specific effect of calling into question the relationship between the thinker and disciplinary structures of knowledge. Such conspiracy theories tend towards a scepticism that isolates the thinker from societal structures and behaviours within which knowledge is produced and shared. Her doctoral project deploys a novel approach to conspiracy – normally studied from a social science perspective – by using narrative theory, and the philosophy of Wittgenstein, in particular his idea of a hinge, that is, a belief that must be held certain if valid suspicion is to be possible. Her work looks at how fictional narratives provide insight into how ‘hinges’ are challenged by unreasonable conspiracy theories. Narratives model how doubting hinges leads to an isolation of thought, and accumulative suspicions that cannot be tested - for example, disbelieving scientific authority – which leaves the individual without a framework of trusted expertise with which to make valid judgements.