Fake president: Telemorphosis and the performance of grotesque power

Laurie Ouellette

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-25670-8_2

Fake president: Telemorphosis and the performance of grotesque power

Laurie Ouellette

Communication Studies

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

This chapter situates the rise and fall of the Trump presidency within the polymorphous technologies of truth and fakery associated with reality TV and social media: experimentation, verification, spectacularization, affect, and performativity. Drawing from but also complicating Baudrillard’s late diagnosis of the total telemorphosis of social life, I parse the contradictions of “post-truth” media culture, and show how the staging of governance as a reality show in which we are all compelled to play a part activates new mechanisms for contesting Trump’s presidential performance. Recalling Foucault’s notion of grotesque sovereignty as a manifestation of political power that operates in spite of its discrediting as “odious, despicable, or ridiculous”, I ask what bearing Trump’s declining ratings might have on the structural violence of racism, misogyny and market neoliberalism in the United States today.

Original language	English (US)
Title of host publication	Post-Truth and the Mediation of Reality
Subtitle of host publication	New Conjunctures
Publisher	Palgrave Macmillan
Pages	15-37
Number of pages	23
ISBN (Electronic)	9783030256708
ISBN (Print)	9783030256692
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25670-8_2
State	Published - Jan 1 2019

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019. All rights reserved.

Keywords

Baudrillard
Media studies
Neoliberalism
Sovereignty

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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10.1007/978-3-030-25670-8_2

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Fake president: Telemorphosis and the performance of grotesque power

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

UN SDGs

Publisher link

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