COMPLOTISME, POST-VÉRITÉ ET POUVOIR INTELLECTUEL : CRITIQUE DE L’APPROCHE COGNITIVISTE DE GÉRALD BRONNER
CONSPIRACY THEORIES, POST-TRUTH AND INTELLECTUAL POWER: A CRITIQUE OF GÉRALD BRONNER’S COGNITIVIST APPROACH

Summary/Abstract: Are academic and media discourses on conspiracy theories grounded in scientific inquiry or in rhetorical disqualification? This article critically examines Gérald Bronner’s cognitivist approach to conspiracy theories by testing its epistemological assumptions and argumentative coherence. Bronner interprets conspiracy theories as irrational collective beliefs rooted in desires for omniscience and omnipotence. Against this view, the article argues that conspiracy thinking should not primarily be understood as an expression of credulity but rather as a symptom of generalized distrust toward political, media and scientific authorities. Conspiracy theories emerge less from an excess of belief than from a crisis of belief, fostered by historical experiences of deception, the growing opacity of social systems, and the increasing dependence of ordinary citizens on expert knowledge they cannot directly verify. The article further challenges the idea that conspiracy theories reflect fantasies of absolute knowledge and power. Instead, it suggests that they express a feeling of political and cognitive powerlessness within societies increasingly shaped by technoscientific and economic mechanisms that escape democratic control. Conspiracy narratives thus appear as inadequate attempts to restore intelligibility and agency in a world perceived as opaque and uncontrollable. More broadly, the study questions the role played by contemporary anti-conspiracist discourse. It argues that certain academic and media approaches to conspiracy theories may function less as scientific explanations than as instruments of intellectual normalization. In a context marked by post-truth, the denunciation of conspiracy theories risks becoming a means of policing heterodox opinions and narrowing the boundaries of legitimate public debate, thereby reproducing some of the very dynamics it claims to oppose.

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