Tom Sykes | University of Portsmouth (original) (raw)
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We are living in a time when conspiracy theories have never been more maligned by those who occup... more We are living in a time when conspiracy theories have never been more maligned by those who occupy the centre ground of politics. Liberal critics and journalists accuse conspiracy theorists to their left and right of paranoia, irresponsibly excessive rhetoric, and fallacies such as strawtargeting, 'anomaly hunting' and 'determined flexibility'. At the same time, major liberal institutions from the BBC to CNN emphasise the risks that such conspiracy theories pose to public order, safety and trust – and to the very future of what they call 'our democracy'. However, we argue that many of the same threats, flaws and fallacies have characterised hegemonic liberal analyses of contentious recent political events in the West from Trumpgate to the British Labour Party's anti-Semitism 'crisis'. With a proclivity for ad hominems, deliberate misrepresentations of evidence and other dubious methods, liberal conspiracy theories have had harmful societal impacts...
Searching for Manila: Personal and Political Journeys in an Asian Megacity is an autobiographical... more Searching for Manila: Personal and Political Journeys in an Asian Megacity is an autobiographical travelogue based on a period I spent living and working in Manila, the Philippines in 2009-10, and on two subsequent visits to the city. The book, which is slightly abridged for this submission, addresses themes both personal (such as the difficult processes of deciding what to do with my life, of falling in love and of becoming a surrogate father) and political (the struggles of marginalised communities against official oppression, the impact of neo-liberalism on various aspects of Philippine society and the ideological reasons why Filipinos selectively remember national traumas). I interweave my lived, empirical experiences of people and places with data researched from other Manila-focused texts both historical and contemporary: novels, memoirs, travel books, media reports, statistical surveys and historiographical analyses. The critical commentary element of my thesis begins with an...
Two years ago I had the honour of co-editing the first ever anthology of travel stories about Mal... more Two years ago I had the honour of co-editing the first ever anthology of travel stories about Malaysia. If we take Derek Neale’s definition of travel writing as ‘a form of autobiographical writing which is ostensibly focused on place’, then Sini Sana scores highly, even if I say so myself! Reading the book is like watching a cinematic tracking shot across Malaysia’s nature and culture. In a hair-raising piece entitled ‘Storming Gunung Tahan’, Lee Yu Kit treks up Malaysia’s toughest mountain and into a colossal storm. In ‘Ladies of the Longhouse’, Polly Szantor whisks us off to the remote village of Pa’Umor for ethnographic insight into one of the smallest tribes on Borneo. Marc White’s ‘Lessons at the Night Market’ lingers on the gastronomic pleasures of OUG. I challenge anyone not to feel hungry reading it, although be warned: the story ends on a cautionary note. When Zhang Su Li encounters an old Chinese woman in ‘Postcards from All Over the World’, we stop moving through space an...
New Formations
We are living in a time when conspiracy theories have never been more maligned by those who occup... more We are living in a time when conspiracy theories have never been more maligned by those who occupy the centre ground of politics. Liberal critics and journalists accuse conspiracy theorists to their left and right of paranoia, irresponsibly excessive rhetoric, and fallacies such as strawtargeting, 'anomaly hunting' and 'determined flexibility'. At the same time, major liberal institutions from the BBC to CNN emphasise the risks that such conspiracy theories pose to public order, safety and trust – and to the very future of what they call 'our democracy'. However, we argue that many of the same threats, flaws and fallacies have characterised hegemonic liberal analyses of contentious recent political events in the West from Trumpgate to the British Labour Party's anti-Semitism 'crisis'. With a proclivity for ad hominems, deliberate misrepresentations of evidence and other dubious methods, liberal conspiracy theories have had harmful societal impacts...
Searching for Manila: Personal and Political Journeys in an Asian Megacity is an autobiographical... more Searching for Manila: Personal and Political Journeys in an Asian Megacity is an autobiographical travelogue based on a period I spent living and working in Manila, the Philippines in 2009-10, and on two subsequent visits to the city. The book, which is slightly abridged for this submission, addresses themes both personal (such as the difficult processes of deciding what to do with my life, of falling in love and of becoming a surrogate father) and political (the struggles of marginalised communities against official oppression, the impact of neo-liberalism on various aspects of Philippine society and the ideological reasons why Filipinos selectively remember national traumas). I interweave my lived, empirical experiences of people and places with data researched from other Manila-focused texts both historical and contemporary: novels, memoirs, travel books, media reports, statistical surveys and historiographical analyses. The critical commentary element of my thesis begins with an...
Two years ago I had the honour of co-editing the first ever anthology of travel stories about Mal... more Two years ago I had the honour of co-editing the first ever anthology of travel stories about Malaysia. If we take Derek Neale’s definition of travel writing as ‘a form of autobiographical writing which is ostensibly focused on place’, then Sini Sana scores highly, even if I say so myself! Reading the book is like watching a cinematic tracking shot across Malaysia’s nature and culture. In a hair-raising piece entitled ‘Storming Gunung Tahan’, Lee Yu Kit treks up Malaysia’s toughest mountain and into a colossal storm. In ‘Ladies of the Longhouse’, Polly Szantor whisks us off to the remote village of Pa’Umor for ethnographic insight into one of the smallest tribes on Borneo. Marc White’s ‘Lessons at the Night Market’ lingers on the gastronomic pleasures of OUG. I challenge anyone not to feel hungry reading it, although be warned: the story ends on a cautionary note. When Zhang Su Li encounters an old Chinese woman in ‘Postcards from All Over the World’, we stop moving through space an...
Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction