Föreläsning: "The Paranoid Chronotope"

Abstract:

In this talk, I present some starting points, key findings, and conclusions of my new book The Paranoid Chronotope: Power, Truth, Identity (Stanford University Press, 2022; link: https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=33096). I show how the concept of the chronotope, as it emerges from literary theory, and the paranoid chronotope, as it can be construed from post-war American fiction, can be a useful tool in analyzing several dimensions of contemporary society. I will show how this concept has helped me think of paranoia as a cultural phenomenon, especially in a U.S. context, and how this may be related to a crisis in white masculinity that has generated major problems in and beyond this context. I will also touch on the phenomenon of postcritique and how this can be connected with paranoia as a phenomenon in society, fiction, and in the humanities alike. 

Frida Beckman is Professor of Literature at Stockholm University. She is the author of Gilles Deleuze (2017), Culture Control Critique: Allegories of Reading the Present (2016), and Between Desire and Pleasure: A Deleuzian Theory of Sexuality (2013).