Dancing Trump
Why language critique can't explain the American president, whereas masks and music can
Donald Trump sees himself as the Ernest Hemingway of the social media platform X, formerly Twitter. Yet the question of what lies beneath or behind Trump’s words is misleading. Language critique and hermeneutics slide off him, as do categories such as lies and fake news. As a political entertainer, Trump is not a speaker; he is a dancer and musician. Trump’s truth is basically what he is performing at the moment (and only as long as he is performing it). Trump speaks and dances, just as the Roman god Janus looks in one direction, and the other, at the same time.
This is how Trump undermines the possibility of making him the subject of jokes and satire. Whether Trump appeals to truthfulness or rescues AI-generated kittens, contradiction and caricature go nowhere. For social media, reacting to Trump means applauding. The final irony of the age of retweets and memes, which Trump helped to create and accelerate enormously, is the self-abolition of irony.
Image by Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America - Donald Trump, CC BY-SA 2.0
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- rightsYou must give appropriate credit , provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original. The images and resources contained in this work are subject to the same license unless licensed otherwise or taken from another source.
- isbn978-2-919844-05-0
- publisherMelusina Press
- publisher placeEsch-sur-Alzette
- restrictions
- rights holderThe Authors
- rights territoryLuxembourg
- version1
- doi
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