https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2385-1946
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ABSTRACT
This essay draws on affect theory to develop an account of Donald Trump's rhetorical methods. Building on the work of other scholars who have linked affect theory to Communication Studies, this paper argues that the success of Trump's rhetoric emerges, in part, through his mastery of a circuit of shame and dignity, in which supporters—especially white supporters—who feel ashamed find, in his verbal and visual style, a repudiation of shame. After discussing how shame constitutes a particular rhetorical field, I assess how Trump's style of communication offers a defiance of shame in the name of rejuvenated racialized self-confidence.
ORCID
Donovan O. Schaefer http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2385-1946
Notes
1 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 64.
2 Many thanks are due to several people who have encouraged this project, first and foremost Gregory Seigworth, who invited me to speak as one of the plenaries at the “Capacious: Affect Inquiry/Making Space” conference in Lancaster, PA, in 2018, then helped me workshop the paper for publication, and to my colleague Anthea Butler for reading the paper and urging its publication. Thanks also to Tat-Siong Benny Liew for the invitation to present this work at the “Religion, Protest, and Social Upheaval” conference at the College of the Holy Cross, and to Kevin O’Neill for an invitation to the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies at the University of Toronto. Participants and audiences at these events provided invaluable feedback, especially J. Kameron Carter and Devin Singh. Thanks to Rob Spicer for calling my attention to the Chuck Todd interview. Lastly, I am very grateful to two anonymous reviewers for this journal who provided generous and focused reports that have significantly shaped this final version.
3 Jessica Roy, “How Pepe the Frog Went from Harmless to Hate Symbol,” Los Angeles Times, October 11, 2016, https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-pepe-the-frog-hate-symbol-20161011-snap-htmlstory.html (accessed March 21, 2019).
4 Angela Nagle, Kill All Normies: The Online Culture Wars from Tumblr and 4chan to the Alt-Right and Trump (Winchester, UK: Zero Books, 2017). Nagle's own conclusions bear passing similarity to my own in this piece, but she is ultimately sympathetic to the Alt-Right's ardent refusal of shame.
5 Roy, “Pepe the Frog.”
6 James Vincent, “Pepe the Frog Is Officially Dead,” theverge.com, May 18, 2017, https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/8/15577340/pepe-the-frog-is-dead-matt-furie (accessed March 21, 2019).
7 Nagle, Kill All Normies, 24.
8 Lawrence Grossberg, Cultural Studies in the Future Tense (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010); Joshua Gunn, “On Speech and Public Release,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 13, no. 2 (Summer 2010): 1–41; Zizi Papacharissi, Affective Publics: Sentiment, Technology, and Politics (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2015); Jenny Edbauer Rice, “The New ‘New’: Making a Case for Critical Affect Studies,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 94, no. 2 (2008): 200–12; Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth, “An Inventory of Shimmers,” in The Affect Theory Reader, ed. Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010: 1–28); Brian L. Ott and Greg Dickinson, The Twitter Presidency: Donald J. Trump and the Politics of White Rage (New York: Routledge, 2019). An excellent introductory survey of the interrelationships between affect theory and communications and rhetorical studies can be found in Brian L. Ott, “Affect in Critical Studies,” in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication, ed. J.F. Nussbaum (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2017).
9 In addition to those listed previously, see Lawrence Grossberg, Under the Cover of Chaos: Trump and the Battle for the American Right (London: Pluto Press, 2018); Joshua Gunn, “On Political Perversion,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 48, no. 2 (2018): 161–86; Robert L. Ivie, “Rhetorical Aftershocks of Trump's Ascendency,” Res Rhetorica 2 (2017): 61–80; Robert J. Ivie, “Trump's Unwitting Prophecy,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 20 no. 4 (Winter 2017): 707–17; Kumarini Silva, “Having the Time of Our Lives: Love-Cruelty as Patriotic Impulse,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 15, no. 1 (2018): 79–84; Marina Levina, “Whiteness and the Joys of Cruelty,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 15, no. 1 (2018): 73–8; Michael Richardson, “The Disgust of Donald Trump,” Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 31, no. 6 (2017): 747–56.
10 See, for instance, Ott and Dickinson, The Twitter Presidency.
11 See, for instance, Richardson, “Disgust of Donald Trump.”
12 Lauren Berlant, “Trump, or Political Emotions,” The New Inquiry, August 5, 2016, accessed July 21, 2019, https://thenewinquiry.com/trump-or-political-emotions/.
13 This restriction is partly owing to space restrictions, and partly to the fact that other aspects of Trump's communicative strategy, such as Twitter, have been amply studied. See Ott and Dickinson, The Twitter Presidency.
14 Sara Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010); Mel Y. Chen, Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012); Ann Cvetkovich, Depression: A Public Feeling (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012); Elspeth Probyn, “A-ffect: Let Her RIP,” Media/Culture Journal 8, no. 6 (December 2005), http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0512/13-probyn.php (accessed March 21, 2019); Donovan O. Schaefer, Religious Affects: Animality, Evolution, and Power (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015).
15 Patricia Ticineto Clough, “Introduction,” in The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social ed. Patricia Ticineto Clough and Jean Halley (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007): 1–33; Erin Manning, Always More than One: Individuation's Dance (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013); Brian Massumi, Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002). See also Gilles Deleuze, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1988).
16 See, for instance, Grossberg, Cultural Studies; Papacharissi, Affective Publics; Rice, “The New ‘New.’” For a discussion, see the oft-cited definitional framework put forward by Eric Shouse: “feelings” are seen as “personal,” “emotions” as social expressions that can be deceitful, and “affects” as prepersonal, preconscious, and fundamentally exterior to awareness, which is what makes them transmissible between bodies. Eric Shouse, “Feeling, Emotion, Affect,” Media/Culture Journal 8, no. 6 (December 2005), http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0512/03-shouse.php (accessed March 21, 2019).
17 Ahmed, Promise of Happiness, 13; Schaefer, Religious Affects, 37.
18 Berlant, “Trump, or Political Emotions.”
19 See, for instance, Rice, “The New ‘New,’” 201. A more detailed vocabulary that draws a procedural distinction between these terms may have utility further down the road in this discussion, but it is not necessary for my purposes in this essay.
20 Benedict Spinoza, Ethics, ed. and trans. Edwin Curley (New York: Penguin Books, 1996), 44.
21 Grossberg, Cover of Chaos, 11.
22 Rice, “The New ‘New,’” 211.
23 Gunn, “Political Perversion,” 173.
24 Ott and Dickinson, Twitter Presidency, 31.
25 Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Doron Taussig, “Disruption, Demonization, Deliverance, and Norm Destruction: The Rhetorical Signature of Donald J. Trump,” Political Science Quarterly 132, no. 4 (2017–18): 641.
26 Ivie, “Rhetorical Aftershocks,” 62.
27 Ivie, “Trump's Unwitting Prophecy,” 708.
28 Gunn, “Political Perversion,” 170.
29 Grossberg, Cover of Chaos, xi.
30 Grossberg, Cover of Chaos, 3.
31 Ibid., 98–107.
32 Ott and Dickinson, Twitter Presidency, 3.
33 Ibid., 29.
34 Ibid., 61.
35 Ibid., 41.
36 Silvan S. Tomkins, Shame and Its Sisters: A Silvan Tomkins Reader, ed. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Adam Frank (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), 133.
37 Ibid., 133.
38 Donald L. Nathanson, “Prologue: Affect Imagery Consciousness,” in Silvan S. Tomkins, Affect Imagery Consciousness: The Complete Edition, ed. Bertram P. Karon (New York: Springer Publishing Company, 2008): xix.
39 Tomkins, Shame and Its Sisters, 134–5.
40 Ibid., 139.
41 Elspeth Probyn, “Teaching Bodies: Affects in the Classroom,” Body & Society 10, no. 4 (2004): 21–43; Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, “Teaching/Depression,” The Scholar and Feminist Online 4, no. 2 (2006), http://sfonline.barnard.edu/heilbrun/sedgwick_01.htm (accessed November 17, 2018); Megan Watkins, “Desiring Recognition, Accumulating Affect,” in The Affect Theory Reader, ed. Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 269–85; Megan Watkins, “Pedagogic Affect/Effect: Embodying a Desire to Learn,” Pedagogies: An International Journal 1, no. 4 (2006): 269–82; Megan Watkins, “Thwarting Desire: Discursive Constraint and Pedagogic Practice,” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 20, no. 3 (May–June 2007): 301–18.
42 Silvan S. Tomkins, Affect Imagery Consciousness: The Complete Edition, ed. Bertram P. Karon (New York: Springer Publishing Company, 2008), xxxvii.
43 Tomkins, Shame and Its Sisters, 153.
44 Sharon Patricia Holland, The Erotic Life of Racism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012).
45 Levina, “Whiteness and the Joys of Cruelty,” 75.
46 Holland, Erotic Life of Racism, 107; Schaefer, Religious Affects, 123.
47 Probyn, Blush, 75.
48 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: Volume Two (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), 10.
49 This is not to claim that shame should be expunged from politics. But it does indicate that left progressivism has become increasingly sophisticated in its understanding of politics without a meta-reflection on the invisible affect/labor economies underwriting this process of sophistication.
50 Sedgwick, Touching Feeling, 64.
51 Berlant, “Trump, or Political Emotions.”
52 Grossberg, Cover of Chaos, 98.
53 “Here's Donald Trump's Presidential Announcement Speech,” Time, June 16, 2015, accessed March 21, 2019, http://time.com/3923128/donald-trump-announcement-speech/.
54 Ibid.
55 Ibid.
56 Ivie's commentaries in “Rhetorical Aftershocks” and “Trump's Unwitting Prophecy” do not mention this feature, for instance.
57 “Trump's Presidential Announcement Speech.”
58 Ibid.
59 Ott and Dickinson, Twitter Presidency, 35.
60 Richardson, “Disgust of Donald Trump,” 747.
61 “The Inaugural Address,” The White House, January 20, 2017, accessed March 21, 2019, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/the-inaugural-address/.
62 “Remarks by President Trump at the 2017 Values Voter Summit,” The White House, October 13, 2017, accessed March 21, 2019, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-2017-values-voter-summit/.
63 Ibid.
64 Ott and Dickinson, Twitter Presidency, 49.
65 ABC News, “Pres. Donald Trump Gives Commencement Speech at U.S. Naval Academy | ABC News,” YouTube video, 3:02:04, May 25, 2018, accessed March 21, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2lmMm47wJ0.
66 Ibid.
67 Ott and Dickinson, Twitter Presidency, 8.
68 Ibid., 46.
69 Sophie Tatum, “Trump: NFL Owners Should Fire Players Who Protest the National Anthem,” CNN, September 23, 2017, accessed May 26, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2017/09/22/politics/donald-trump-alabama-nfl/index.html.
70 “Fox and Friends,” Fox News Network, May 24, 2018, accessed May 26, 2019, https://insider.foxnews.com/2018/05/23/president-donald-trump-fox-friends-thursday-ms-13-north-korea.
71 Ott and Dickinson, Twitter Presidency, 31.
72 Glenn Thrush, “What Chuck Todd Gets about Trump,” Politico, December 30, 2016, accessed March 21, 2019 https://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/chuck-todd-donald-trump-off-message-podcast-233066.
73 Greg Price, “Donald Trump Actually Looks Happy in His New Official Portrait,” Newsweek, October 31, 2017, accessed March 21, 2019, https://www.newsweek.com/trump-portrait-happy-697317.
74 Thrush, “What Chuck Todd Gets.”
75 Jacob Gardenswartz, “What's So Strange about Trump's White House Portrait? Experts Explain,” Vox, January 26, 2017, accessed March 21, 2019, https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/26/14376784/trump-portrait-white-house-experts-explain.
76 Gardenswartz, “Trump's White House Portrait.”
77 Price, “Trump's New Official Portrait.”
78 There is no formal reporting on this, but it seems that as of this writing Trump's official portrait still has not been fully circulated for display in US airports. Conscious decision, or ineptitude?
79 Julian Raven, “The Trump Painting Unafraid & Unashamed The First Presidential Trump Portrait” 2015, accessed July 21, 2019, https://thetrumppainting.com/
80 Gunn, “Political Perversion,” 173; Ott and Dickinson, Twitter Presidency, 44.
81 Ott and Dickinson, Twitter Presidency, 36.
82 J.D. Vance, “Why Trump's Antiwar Message Resonates with White America,” The New York Times, April 4, 2016, accessed July 21, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/04/opinion/campaign-stops/why-trumps-antiwar-message-resonates-with-white-america.html.
83 Ibid.
84 Imani Perry, More Beautiful and More Terrible: The Embrace and Transcendence of Racial Inequality in the United States (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 42.
85 Holland, Erotic Life of Racism; Levina, “Whiteness and the Joy of Cruelty,” 75.
86 James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (New York: Penguin Books, 1963), 54.
87 Ibid., 43.
88 Tomkins, Shame and Its Sisters, 148.