Trumping the Personality of Power

Part 1 is a discussion of Trump’s post-truth discourse and post-normative persona, interpreted not simply as lack of coherence but as a particular affective regime in which social media plays the central role. Traditional theories of fascism in terms of charismatic leadership and the cult of personality are called into question on the grounds that the very meaning of personhood has undergone a change. The contemporary “personality of power” cannot be understood without fundamentally rethinking the concept of the person. Notions of collective personhood and collective expression are necessary to account for today’s “fascisizing tendencies” (movements in the social field leading in the direction of fascism). Expressions of gender now oscillate between hyper-normative and post-normative poles, requiring a new theory of “ornamental masculinity” to replace the figure of the traditional strong man. This is theorized in terms of the Man-Standard—the model of whiteness, located at the intersection of gendering and racialization.