Paranoid space: Conspiracy theory and the new politics of logistics

At the contiguous ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, dockworkers frequently deploy conspiracy theories to explain the securitized, containerized, and automated spaces in which they live and work. Contra extant explanations of conspiracy theory as irrational, deviant, or simply shoddy epistemology, this article argues that longshore paranoia should be taken seriously as an expressive form of political critique and spatial praxis. Drawing on 16 months of ethnographic research carried out at the L.A./Long Beach port complex, the argument plays out in four parts. First, I situate longshore paranoia in relation to existing scholarship on conspiracy theory. Second, I analyze instances of paranoid expression at L.A./Long Beach, describing how dockworkers use conspiracy theory to make sense of their increasingly mediated working environments. Third, I argue that longshore paranoia effectively transforms the port into what I call a paranoid space. Finally, fourth, I briefly take up the crucial political dimensions of conspiracy theory, showing how dockworkers’ spatial praxis shifts responsibility for logistical violence onto capitalist shipping companies and terminal operators. Longshore paranoia can thus be understood as a critical effort to hold logistical power to account.