초록 열기/닫기 버튼
Aiming to criticize the Cold War American society and the notion of American Innocence that it claims, Doctorow heavily invests in The Book of Daniel (1971) on the autonomous and marginalized individual, through which the critical impulse of the book can be articulated. By choosing to marginalize himself from the society that is believed to be conformed to the Cold War logic and thus to reject any possibility of social changes within social boundaries, Daniel aspires to be “a psychic alien,” whose psychological revolt is identified with his desire of political subversion. According to Sacvan Bercovitch, this kind of political dissensus of the individual against the social has become a culturally consented form in the American imagination, and therefore it displays a radical gesture against the society in such a way to affirm American individualism as one of the fundamental ideas sustaining the nation. Then, why is the individual dissensus presented as the only viable form of political criticism in The Book of Daniel? One possible answer can be found in the fact that the text utilizes the structure and political premises of conspiracy theory. In spite of various subjects and ideological intentions, a common denominator in these narratives is the quest for “Americanness”: they commonly ask what American liberal democracy represents, and lament how far the conspiracy- ridden reality strays from the national identity. That is to say, conspiracy theory alarms the nation by envisioning an evil conspiracy at work, yet the alarming also provides a great opportunity to harness national ideals. Against the conspiracy that threatens individual rights and freedom, conspiracy theory resorts to liberal individualism as a way not only to imagine a way of resisting social co-option but also to ameliorate social defects. This essay examines how the individual dissensus espoused in The Book of Daniel actually conforms to the logic and political effect that conspiracy theory produces.
