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ABSTRACT
In this article I consider Donald Trump as an “antisemantic” president, and link antisemanticism to broader forms of populism. Drawing on Stuart Hall’s analysis of Thatcherism, I explore the political and discursive domains as intrinsically linked in the Trumpian moment. Second, I turn to a theory of the antisemantic, showing its difference from the Orwellian universe. Where the Orwellian model depends on the inversion of meanings, the Trumpian paradigm (“Truth isn’t truth”) attacks the foundations of meaning itself. In the Trumpian age the internet also acts as a dark multiplier, thinning out meaning through its distortions and profusion. As counterpart to these patterns, I show how the antisemantic rests on certain symbolic fixities, especially around boundaries and the “uber” symbol of the wall. I end with some notes on how to reconstruct a sense of accountability in meaning, and to think of boundaries that are transitive and generative rather than singular and walled.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Sources for these epigraphs: Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, vol. 1, 47; Conrad, Heart of Darkness, 72; Smith, Winter, 125.
2 I am grateful to Jean Comaroff and Mazen Naous for comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
3 Davison et al, eds, “Introduction,” 9.
4 For more on this, see Hall, “Thatcherism,” 7, 18, 19.
5 These quotations, respectively: Hall, “Racism and Reaction,” in Political Writings, 153, 152. Further references to essays by Hall are from this same volume.
6 Hall, “The Great Moving Right Show,” 177.
7 Ibid., 184, 185.
8 Ibid., 185–6.
9 Ibid., 186 (both quotations).
10 Hall, “The Empire Strikes Back,” 202. Hall opens the essay by saying, “Empires come and go. But the imagery of the British Empire seems destined to go on forever” (200).
11 Hall, “The Empire Strikes Back,” 204.
12 Blake, “Trump’s Gripe-Filled.” For video, see “Trump: I’m the Most.”
13 “‘To watch what happened in the White House would make your jaw drop,’ [Schumer] said.” (Baker et al, “Rebuking Pelosi,” A1).
14 Snyder, Road to Unfreedom.
15 Pinkham, “Zombie History”; Laruelle, “Is Russia Really ‘Fascist’?’”
16 Snyder, Road to Unfreedom, 208. See also Pomerantsev, “Rudy Giuliani.”
17 Snyder, Road to Unfreedom, 11.
18 Ibid., 28.
19 Ibid., 145, 151.
20 Ibid., 81.
21 “Rudy Giuliani: ‘Truth isn’t Truth’.”
22 Snyder, Road to Unfreedom, 269.
23 Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, 5.
24 For Frege’s puzzles, see Zalta, “Gottlob Frege,” 3.1, 3.2.
25 Kessler et al, “President Trump.”
26 It is part of the logic of what I am saying here that there is an overflow of information on all of these matters. For one reference per item see the following: Morin, “Trump Today”; Shear and Karni, “Trump Says”; “Trump Claims Mueller Report”; Pilkington, “Trump v. Pelosi.”
27 Mueller, “Britons Pause.”
28 The Senator was Clyde Chambliss: Benen, “Sponsor of Alabama Abortion Ban.”
29 For video of Trump’s aggressive defense of the alt-right/neo-Nazi marchers in Charlottesville, see “Trump On Charlottesville.” See also Thrush and Haberman, “Trump Gives White Supremacists”; “Trump Again Blames Charlottesville”; and innumerable other reports.
30 Trump is not alone in this: witness Viktor Orban’s practice as Prime Minister of Hungary. See Kingsley, “Orban Plays a ‘Double Game’.”
31 For one report among many, see Davenport and Landler, “In Climate Fight.”
32 As always, there are multiple reports of Trump’s mockery of Serge Kovaleski, a reporter for the New York Times, in November 2015. For one rendition, see “Trump Mocks Reporter.”
33 See Baker, “The Profanity President”; also “Trump Twitter Archive: Profanity.”
34 Dawsey, “Trump Derides Protections.”
35 The comment on comparison and equation is adapted from Singer, “Reflection,“ 86.
36 Adorno, Minima Moralia, 108–9. The section from which this comes is titled Pseudomenos, which appropriately enough refers to the liar paradox of Eubulides.
37 Fisher et al, “Pizzagate.”
38 See for instance the marriage between Facebook and cryptocurrency (Isaac and Popper, “Facebook Plans”), or the fact that human “influencers” are no longer human (Hsiu, “These Influencers”).
39 Adorno and Horkheimer write of the surrogate identity of the inferior work. “In the culture industry this imitation finally becomes absolute. Having ceased to be anything but style, it reveals the latter’s secret: obedience to the social hierarchy” (Dialectic, 131).
40 “If Adorno was right, then Trumpism cannot be interpreted as an instance of a personality or a psychology; it would have to be recognized as the thoughtlessness of the entire culture” (Gordon, “Authoritarian Personality Revisited”).
41 This duality was evident during the coronavirus outbreak of 2019–20, which has unfolded after the substance of this article was completed. Certainly the internet provided online solace and connection; but at the same time, Trump used it first of all to deny the reality of the threat and then to claim that he knew all along it was a pandemic. Yet again we have been left gasping for a hold on reality in the antisemantic universe.
42 See Adorno and Horkheimer, chapter on “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception,” in Dialectic, 120–67.
43 For one indication of the long history of these associations, see O’Toole, “Vile Bodies,” especially p. 42. It is worth bearing in mind the analysis by the Comaroffs that the contemporary “commonweal appears to demand, but is also threatened by, both openness and closure”: Comaroff and Comaroff, Theory from the South, 98.
44 For more on aphasia (relevant for my analysis here), see Jakobson, “Two Aspects.” For the contraction of “wall,” see Marshall, “We Need Wall.”
45 Jakobson, “Two Aspects”; for further consideration of the implications for self and identity, see Clingman, Grammar of Identity, especially. 11–16.
46 von Humboldt, On Language, 91; see also Pinker, Language Instinct, 75.
47 Clingman, Grammar of Identity, 23.
48 Ibid., 21–6, and Conclusion.
49 Levinas, “Martin Buber,” 72–3. For further discussion on Levinas and questions of dwelling and hospitality, see Clingman, “Fugitive/Narrative.”
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Stephen Clingman
Stephen Clingman is Distinguished University Professor of English and former Director of the Interdisciplinary Studies Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He has held fellowships at a variety of institutions internationally, including Yale University, Cornell University, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. His books include The Novels of Nadine Gordimer: History from the Inside and an edited collection of essays by Gordimer, The Essential Gesture: Writing, Politics and Places, translated into a number of languages. Bram Fischer: Afrikaner Revolutionary, a biography of the lawyer and political figure who led Nelson Mandela’s defense at the Rivonia Trial, was co-winner of the Sunday Times Alan Paton Award, South Africa’s premier prize for non-fiction. Stephen’s most recent books are The Grammar of Identity: Transnational Fiction and the Nature of the Boundary, and Birthmark, a memoir/autofiction. He is currently at work on issues of refuge, fugitive narrative, and dwelling.