ABSTRACT
This chapter situates conspiracy culture in a broader context of disputes over knowledge and truth. Like many other societal groups have done, conspiracy theorists challenge the epistemic authority of science to define and explain reality. Scientists, and science’s supporters, retaliate and fight back with arguments as to why their knowledge and ways of knowing are superior. Taking a non-essentialist understanding of science (the historical product of boundary work), this chapter studies the rhetorical strategies deployed by both parties: what arguments and tropes do they use to delegitimize each other’s claims to truth? I firstly use the works of academics who pathologize conspiracy theories as data to analyze their rhetorical techniques, show how they frame conspiracy theories as modernity’s dark counterpart, and argue that this operates as boundary work. Drawing on my interview material, I then study how and why people in the Dutch conspiracy milieu attack the epistemic authority of science by challenging its public image as skeptical, objective and egalitarian. Ironically, this mimics academic critiques of science, making conspiracy theorists perform pop-sociology. The chapter concludes by arguing how the science wars, once purely academic, are now democratized: battles for the nature of real knowledge are played out in the open by a variety of actors.
