Conspiracy Theory as Therapy in Philip Roth’s “The Plot Against America”?

By focusing on a passage in Philip Roth’s book, this paper strives to outline how conspiratorial beliefs can have a therapeutic function for the community which has experienced a traumatic event. Fictitious groups depicted in such texts serve as the ultimate causes of humanity’s misgivings: from natural disasters and diseases that plague it to the inherent flaws of political and social systems. Such beliefs, however, are likely to become as dangerous as the cure, a threat Roth hints at in his work. The second part of the paper will look at the viability of conspiracism as a means to address traumatizing issues, in the context of the postmodern condition and the diffusion of motifs until recently present only in the radical texts of popular culture