Join us for the next installment in our "No More Than A Page" series. This series gives an opportunity for faculty and advanced graduate students to receive feedback on their research in process. Presenters provide attendees with a one-page summary of their current research and attendees engage in a lively discussion.
This installment will feature Helen Murphey, Postdoctoral Scholar at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies, presenting "The Politicization of Conspirituality: Unpacking Its Elective Affinities."
Conspirituality – the intersection of conspiratorial worldviews and new religious and spiritual movements – has received significant attention in recent years, but the phenomenon has deep historical roots. Scholarship has highlighted conspirituality’s past and present imbrications with alternative and extreme political projects, seemingly facilitated by common imaginaries surrounding ideas of nature, health, and individuality. This paper complicates the notion of a pipeline or elective affinity by highlighting the construction and contestation of these concepts within new religious movements employing conspiratorial rhetoric.
This event is free, open to the public and welcoming to everyone. Co-hosted by the Center for the Study of Religion, the Department of Comparative Studies and the Humanities Institute.
The Politicization of Conspirituality: Unpacking Its Elective Affinities
Conspirituality – a portmanteau for conspiracy theory and spirituality, referring to the adoption of conspiratorial beliefs within alternative spiritual and wellness movements – has attracted significant academic and public curiosity and has spawned books, a popular podcast, and numerous feature articles. The movement’s political associations have been of particular interest, as these groups were highly visible in protests against COVID-19 health measures across the globe. Heřmanová suggests that the pandemic represented a turning point radicalizing groups that previously appeared apolitical.
This has been popularly conceptualized through metaphors. The “crunchy to far-right pipeline” analogy suggests a radicalization of alternative milieus that had been largely harmless. The horseshoe metaphor, on the other hand, implies that the movement was already inclined towards extreme politics and simply moved from occupying one extremity to another. The theory that this development represents a cross-cutting diagonalism offers similar conclusions. Each of these metaphors implies that there is an elective affinity between these movements and extreme politics premised on their tendency towards conspiratorial worldviews as well as other attributes resulting from shared imaginaries.
Another approach unpacks the concept of affinity by aiming to understand what conspiracy theory represents. As Parmigiani argues, conspiratorial beliefs often function as a re-enchantment of the world. Crockford similarly finds that conspiracy theories provide an explanation for why conspiritualists’ vision of a future spiritual awakening has not yet materialized. This research highlights the importance of conspiratorial epistemologies – and the modes of legitimacy they rely upon – for understanding these movements’ worldviews.
Drawing on scholarship on populism and conspiracy theories, my research undertakes a comparative analysis of how authority is assumed and constructed in both past and present case studies of conspirituality. As Asprem and Dyrendal illustrate, conspirituality has been a recurrent phenomenon throughout the history of Western esotericism. While there are many differences across time and between movements – and concepts like health, nature, and legitimacy are heavily contested – my findings suggest that these movements, from the nineteenth century to the present, continually draw on epistemic populism in their construction of authority. In other words, they claim legitimacy based on their opposition to mainstream epistemic authorities.
This dynamic is present in how various new religious and spiritual movements have conceptualized health. For example, critics of vaccine mandates within these milieus in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries displayed anti-elitist predispositions and suggested that mainstream medical experts and governmental officials were colluding to advance their own interests. Authority was often conceptualized as commonsensical; at the same time, however, esoteric and new religious movements’ interest in ancient wisdom also caused them to position their authority as the product of rigorous learning, albeit in a heterodox tradition. As one Theosophical periodical wrote in the early 1900s, “Evidently we are a long way still from a recognition that the universe is governed by laws and that suffering results from the violation of those laws – not sometimes, but always.”
Using the framework of epistemic populism also helps make sense of contestations within the movement surrounding how authority is acquired. Appeals to common sense and appeals to specialized knowledge may, at times, come into conflict. These findings complexify the elective affinity framework by highlighting how foundational concepts within conspirituality have been constructed and contested in the past and present.
The Humanities Institute and its related centers host a wide range of events, from intense discussions of works in progress to cutting-edge presentations from world-known scholars, artists, activists and everything in between.
We value in-person engagement at our events as we strive to amplify the energy in the room. To submit an accommodation request, please send your request to Cody Childs, childs.97@osu.edu