“Reading meaning and depth into Trump” (Maggie Haberman): On the topology of surface and depth

The concept of representation, on the other hand, without which the “crisis of representation”⁴¹ cannot be understood, has both a semiotic and a hermeneutical dimension. The most important conceptual figure of ‘representation’ is the idea of a text or sign surface that is open to view and a more or less hidden depth of meaning underneath. It can be said that “depth” in the “hermeneutic”, i.e. “meaning”-centered tradition is nothing other than the distinction “between a material signifier as surface and an immaterial meaning as depth.”⁴²

There are an array of theories (which either reject the idea of profundity outright or ostentatiously celebrate the surface for other reasons) that militate against this idea of depth (in which an immaterial meaning is concealed beneath a linguistic or otherwise material surface). One of these critical thrusts comes from pop theory,⁴³ but we can also find this argument, for example, in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s plea, “Look for nothing behind the phenomena, they themselves are the lesson.”⁴⁴

So that there is no confusion here: The idea of a pure surface, behind which there is nothing (Danto: “zero”) and behind which one should therefore look for nothing, is not an ingenious idea of Goethe’s, but a topos that Trump also falls back on.⁴⁵ Historically, it appears again and again where polemics are made against meaning in depth or against ‘profundity’. Sometimes surface aesthetics claim exoteric or even ‘inclusive’ low-thresholdness; this is linked to the accusation against deep hermeneutics that it is esoteric or hieratic and claims exclusivity.

Friedrich Nietzsche polemicized against depth with particular virtuosity. In his “polemic” On the Genealogy of Morals, he writes: “[T]here is no ‘being’ behind the doing, working, becoming; ‘the doer’ is merely added to the doing—the doing is everything.”⁴⁶ This is a life-affirming plea for superficiality. For according to Nietzsche, it is historical depth that inhibits and damages life, depriving it of its Trumpian élan vital, so to speak. For “we” “moderns”, as “walking[] encyclopaedias”, are incapable of living in the present because “we” are obsessed with a “historical sense”, “in which the living is damaged and ultimately perishes”.⁴⁷

Maggie Haberman, White House Correspondent for the New York Times, also draws on the topos of surface and depth. In conclusion to her 500-page book Confidence Man. The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, she writes, “He works things out in real time in front of all of us. [...] I spent four years of his presidency getting asked by people to decipher why he was doing what he was doing, but the truth is, ultimately, almost no one really knows him. Some know him better than others, but he is often simply, purely opaque, permitting people to read meaning and depth into every action, no matter how empty”—or “superficial” or perhaps, using Trump’s own expression, “musical”—“they may be.”⁴⁸

Notes

1. ⁴¹Cf. fundamentally Kerstin Behnke: Krise der Repräsentation, in: Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, vol. 8: R-Sc, ed. by Joachim Ritter and Karlfried Gründer, Darmstadt 1992, pp. 846-853.
2. ⁴²Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht: Production of Presence. What Meaning Cannot Convey, Stanford 2004, p. 29.
3. ⁴³Cf. for example Olaf Grabienski, Till Huber and Jan-Noël Thon: Auslotung der Oberfläche, in: ibid. (ed.): Poetik der Oberfläche. Die Deutschsprachige Popliteratur der 1990er Jahre, Berlin and Boston 2011, pp. 1-10, and Ingo Niermann: Oberfläche, in: ibid., pp. 227-229.
4. ⁴⁴Johann Wolfgang Goethe: Maximen und Reflexionen, in: Goethe: Sämtliche Werke nach Epochen seines Schaffens. Munich edition, vol. 17: Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre. Maximen und Reflexionen, ed. by Gonthier-Louis Fink, Gerhart Baumann and Johannes John, München 1991, pp. 715-953, p. 824.—Similarly to Eckermann on February 18, 1829: “‘[T]he sight of a primal phenomenon [Urphänomen] is usually not enough for people, they think it must go further, and they are similar to children who, when they look into a mirror, immediately turn it around to see what is on the other side’.” Johann Wolfgang Goethe: ibid., vol. 19: Johann Peter Eckermann: Gespräche mit Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens, ed. by Heinz Schlaffer, München, Wien 1986, pp. 288f.
5. ⁴⁵“One of the things that marked Trump’s speeches from the beginning of his political career had been his noted lack of interest in attempting the personal background stories that all other politicians seem compelled to include. ‘That’s phoney stuff. Everybody sees through that bullshit,’ he’d told Steve Bannon in 2016.” Wolff, All of Nothing, p. 291.
6. ⁴⁶Friedrich Nietzsche: Zur Genealogie der Moral. Eine Streitschrift, in: Werke in drei Bänden, edited by Karl Schlechta, vol. 2, München 2/1960, pp. 761-900, p. 790.
7. ⁴⁷Friedrich Nietzsche: Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen, in: ibid., vol. 1, München
   2/1960, pp. 135-434, pp. 233 and 213.
8. ⁴⁸Haberman, Confidence Man, p. 507f. (emphasis not in original).