Paranoia and the Totalitarian Drift of Modernity

Paranoia and the Totalitarian Drift of Modernity traces the emergence of modern notions of paranoia and the concomitant rise of forms of authoritarianism in Weimar Germany. Drawing equally on the human sciences and on Frankfurt School critical theory, the book demonstrates the productivity of the concept of paranoia for a critique of modernity's political constitution and offers an original approach to the study of totalitarianism and its embeddedness in the modern experience.Following Elias Canetti's definition of paranoia as "an illness of power," Arne Höcker develops an understanding of paranoia as a theoretical figure offering a critical response to two of the central crises of modernity: the crisis of reality and truth and the crisis of authority. Based on empirically rich case studies from literary, psychiatric, journalistic, and philosophical contexts during the Weimar era, Paranoia and the Totalitarian Drift of Modernity analyzes the shifting of the forces of modernity as they slide toward totalitarian forms of power and control.