Is the 9 I 11 truth movement, then, another instance of the convergence of conspiracy thinkg and the Internet, another manifestation of the desire to make the links, to enact the fantasy of publicity by revealing the secrets? No. Something diferent is going on. The movement associated with 9 I n truth manifests a shift in conspiracy thinkg, a shift from questioning to certainty and from a logic of desire to a logic of drive. And this shift isn't confined to the conspiratorial fringes. On the contrary, it is symptomatic of a larger sociocultural development that involves a new constellation of questionig, doubt, credibility, and certainty.
To make this argument, I turn again to Lacan, Zizek, and Santner. I explain the shift as one from the discourse of the hysteric to a new form of psychotic discourse, a shift that replaces a logic or economy of desire with one of drive. As chapter 3 explains, the discourse of the hysteric is one of four kinds of social link. Its primary characteristic is questioning. The hysteric constantly asks the master, '�m I what you say I am? What are you saying and why are you saying that?" The discourse of the hysteric can thus be understood as providing the basic form of democratic discoursewhich reminds us that these Lacanian terms are ofered as analytical categories, not means of pathologization. Like the hysteric, democracy challenges claims coming from a master. It is motivated by desire, a desire enabled by the very law that seems to block its fulient. By way of an example, we might note how various Democrats and journalists contested the Bush administration's classifying of previously public knowledge, its removal of all sorts of documents from the Internet after 9 I u. It's unlikely that th�se Democrats and journalists knew or even cared about this information while it was public. After it was secretized, however, then they desired it.
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