Reading the (identity politics) market: Articulating the forest past the trees post-Trump

Introduction

On the evening of the 2016 US election, as it became increasingly clear to those along the Western Coast that Donald Trump would soon be declared President-elect, Alain Badiou (2016) delivered the following at the University of California, Los Angeles:

… for me, but I think for many people, it has been, in some sense, a sort of surprise. And we are often, in that sort of surprise, under the law of affects: fear, depression, anger, panic, and so on. But we know that philosophically, all these affects are not really a good reaction, because in some sense, it’s too much affect in front of the enemy. And so, I think it’s a necessity to think really beyond the affect, beyond fear, depression, and so on – to think the situation of today, the situation of the world today, where something like that is possible, that somebody like Trump becomes the president of the United States. And so, my goal this evening is to present, not exactly an explanation, but something like a clarification of the possibility of something like that, and also some indications, submitted to discussion, concerning what we must do after that; what we must do, which is not precisely to be under the law of affect, of negative affect, but at the level of thinking, action, political determination, and so on.

During events of significant duress, there can be a kneejerk tendency to encourage a bombardment of mantras propagating, ‘there is no time to reflect: we have to act now’ (Žižek 2008: 6). Amidst these reactionary moments, such expressions – all be they well-intentioned – can be superficial in their potential for substantive change. While cathartic in their spontaneous upshot, the substantive impact can be, as witnessed during the post-2016 US election protests, marginal at best and counterproductive at worst. Introspective claims are rather encouraged, which suggest a delay from subscribing to these ‘fake sense[s] of urgency’ or even ‘hypocritical sentiment[s] of moral outrage’ (Žižek 2008: 6–7; see also Butler 2015). ¹ Now that a chance to breathe has transpired, a new moment has emerged to move beyond thinking about the President and around what has taken place, extending the dialogue of ‘how did we get here’ to a cognizant direction pointed at ‘what is to be done’. It could be suggested that it is within this negation or movement beyond affect – and embrace of strategic analysis – that a process to better engineer and navigate an essential response may materialize, first through informed thought followed by collective articulation.

There are a variety of ways in which this discussion can (and should) be posed, one of which includes the sociological. Within this discipline lies a long tradition devoted to teasing-out the manner in which persons uniquely shelter and express their identity depending on the social location(s) they find themselves. Mannerisms, tastes, language, opinions, and so on can be impacted by, and possibly deviate from, those with whom a person is in company or even within a given physical environment. For example, an individual may speak, behave, or interact differently with colleagues at a workplace or adjust their demeanor when among acquaintances during a social function than they will with a personal friend, intimate partner, warm relative, or child. It is within such contexts that various theorists have acknowledged differing expressions or manifestations through which individuals socially test the waters of interaction and practice amidst select societal engagement(s). Over the past century, analyses related to this thematic have enthralled sociologists and theorists across the social sciences and humanities seeking to bracket how individuals or even blocs of people will take on certain scripts and behave ‘on the outside’ in ways that may not be fully authentic to their internal character, as might be expressed in relation to those closest to them or even one’s self. The work of Charles Horton Cooley (1998) describes how a person’s sense of self may be derived from and through the perceived responses of those external to them. People, therefore, assess their persona through a reading of that reflected by another and adjust their actions accordingly. Expanding this insight, George Herbert Mead (2009) and later Herbert Blumer (1986) refine the hypothesis through symbolic interactionism or the importance of how people interpret and adopt social relations through a multiplicity of expressive behaviors depending on time and space. Transfiguring the concepts developed in this discursive field, Erving Goffman’s (1990, 1963) influential work posits how select roles are performed and projected by those within society through both context and relational surroundings. The writings of Pierre Bourdieu, too, become important in the discussion of presentation and practice. Challenging Goffman’s insightfulness, Bourdieu (1977: 94) frames how social actions between actors may (and can) exist beyond determined mediations of scripted expression, housing a potential for highly conscious interactions of intelligent purposeful (inter)actions with – and of – strategic intent (see also Bourdieu 1980: 140).

Looking at this dynamic of deceptive performance within the context of President Donald Trump (2017), the following situates how the current leader of the United States manipulated both his own and other’s material class relations through a well-read and staged script of identity politics. An analysis of this phenomenon underscores how substantive social change comes not through proximal address or recognition but rather a unified class consciousness centered on responding to the distal relations of power. It is through an interrogation of the aforementioned that one may make better sense of the circumstances surrounding the events witnessed in the United States (and world) during 2016 and how a concerted effort can be solidified so as to move forward in response.

Trump the capitalist entrepreneur

While it may appear silly to correlate a collective of dead Sociologists to the successful entrenchment of Trump as the United States’ Commander in Chief, it is important to compartmentalize aspects of the identity surrounding the latter and how his deportment as a capitalist fosters a cognitive linkage to how the oval office was garnered. Fundamentally, Trump is party to a specific stratum that house control over the means of production (be it financial and speculative capital, real-estate and land-based resources, or communicative mediums of ideological dissemination). Within this context, even prior to him becoming the President-elect, he was an active participant in the exercise of looking at-and-for economic trends with the potential to translate into increased rates of profit maximization. A traditional avenue to enact such interests is to partake in mediums through which a modicum of investment is directed toward a precise stream of ‘the market’ with the intent of a greater rate of return derived in comparative relation to the initial investment: a pseudo-neo-mercantilist practice of buying cheap and selling dear, so to speak (see Wood 2016: Chap. 4). An exercise on which much of the contemporary capitalist market is based, Trump is familiar with observing and entering into a practice of plausible exploitability where the prospective of a heightened yield exists for the investor. It could be argued that during the past decade such a reading was to be found within the United States. The target of attention within this market was not, however, one based in speculative capital returns via immediate monetary venture but rather one centered in a tentative politics, represented through select sociopolitical elements very much under-formed but nevertheless increasingly expressive through dis-amalgamated silos traversing the country.

Political fragmentation in America: an untapped market?

While long entrenched within the acumen of US politics, the second term of the George W. Bush presidency (2001–2009) witnessed a rise in the presence of factions who were less reticent to restrict their support for an ideological push to the Right of a structural neoconservative ethos present within Washington (Callinicos 2009; Foster 2006). It was from this period that some echoed ‘there seems to be no end’ to the rising tide, albeit slow, of a mass of supporters endorsing heighted measures of domestic stability regardless of human price or targeted preemption toward perceived threats that may deter select interests (see Mojab 2006: 62). As the decade edged to a close, such sentiment did not give way under the affective polychromatic variegated posters designed by ‘street artist’ Frank Shepard Fairley. While plastered across the country underscoring ‘hope’ below a stoic picture of the neo-charismatic authority of President Barak Obama (2009–2017), an ever-present intolerant strata remained effervescent. It was at this time that sizable domestic support broadened behind a foreshadowing outsider expressed through the (sexualized) ‘maverick’ Sarah Palin (Beail & Longworth 2013). Rather than declining amidst national defeat and an outpouring of support toward a new administration, this band far from lapsed, witnessing an increasing identity take shape through an even more grounded political expression and spatial breadth. Demonstrating a unique upward mobility, even amidst the decline of Palin, a more resolute coalition of engagement swelled through a pseudo-organized body via the Tea Party (Horowitz 2013). It was amidst this climate that, as a capitalist, a speculative eye looked at the potential of what appeared to be a rising market – a market that could provide a sound return if recognized and nourished. Basing its foundation on the rhetoric and performance of an explicit identity, Trump invested in 2015.

Such intuition was not lost on others. Two years earlier, Ingar Solty noted that today’s political-economic realities leave ajar a gap or opening for problematic entities to intervene so as to harness the latent power that rests alongside instability. It is during ‘the broad simultaneity of economic, ideological, and social crises’ (accompanied by ‘the failure of the Left to benefit from the crisis politically’) that a ‘discernible political articulation of the crisis’ interjects itself to take full advantage of catastrophe (Solty 2013: 94). Building upon Nicos Poulantzas’ interpretations toward the development of fascist practice, Solty (2013) highlighted how a

combination of economic and political crisis (and, as a result, a crisis of representation) leads the middle classes/petty bourgeoisie to leave the traditional parties behind, resulting in the emergence of … an independent political force. At the same time, this fragmentation of the political parties and of the political coherence of the historic bloc jeopardizes the bourgeoisie’s ability to manage the crisis. (p. 95)

While a substantive shift or Badiouan event has been shown not to emerge post-Trump, the density of content within Solty’s analysis is sound. It is through such a reading that the President clearly deciphered a market ripe for venture. In the effort to capitalize on ‘the no end in sight’ thesis, a clear recognition was pointed toward the growth potential that could be derived from the influx of a disorganized yet politicizing mass within the population, which the traditional parties would not (dare to) overtly recognize. Distinguishing the upward trend of this particular identity, the key to insuring the greatest possible return was to harness and exploit the angst therein by first gaining access. Through the adoption of a strategic performative identity, Trump spotted how he could insert himself into this market in the hopes of reaping the returns of the presidency.

Performing everyday life and the Trump technique?

In his appraisal of the market, Trump saw the rising tide of increasing intransigence stemming from issues of dense political-economic complexity and maneuvered said anxieties around an even more succinct belligerent reactionism than that witnessed during the preceding decade, himself. Riding the swell of the post-Bush neo-conservativism that corralled peoples around actors such as Palin and mobilizations like the Tea Party, Trump openly doubled-down on this largely untapped bloc of American society. Moreover, rather than abiding by the conventional libretto of a well-oiled machine of political and economic representations of power, he made a conscious decision to place a bet on how well sociologists genuinely understand the actual existing climate of everyday life as practiced by many within US society. Disregarding the established script(s) of articulate and respectful performance, balanced pragmatism, and tolerant fortitude, Trump called the bluff on customs that have long normalized how those in power ought (not) to behave and speak in public, at the subaltern rather than like them. The President opted for the antithesis. Successfully cloaking his elite status, Trump mimicked the world that actually exists for so many by highlighting numerators of distinction rather than enabling light to be shown on the structural common denominators that impact the vast majority. What enabled this strategy to be so successful was the replication of a communicative echo-chamber of social nuance. Base-level mores and language, indifference in demeanor, and a performance where the practices cloaked by so many – when no one is watching – were unambiguously celebrated; the inward opinions that many clandestinely restrict were converted to an outright expression of outward appearance. In short, Trump openly performed in a way that many social scientists suggest persons do only when behind the security of closed doors. Ironically, by replicating many of those whom his nose has so consistently descended toward, Trump spoke the way, sadly, many, in fact, speak; trolled the way many troll, bullied the way many bully; slandered the way many slander and thus shook off the objective reality of bourgeois effects so as to subjectively shawl himself in the garb of a select segment ‘of the people’.

One of the paradoxes of this praxis is that the reverberation of what occurred can, in some ways, be found rooted within the most unlikely of places: critical theories related to the achievement of emancipatory power. One can look at the ideological architectural blue-print for such a strategy through an adoption, albeit a perverted revision, of much contemporary social and political thought. Can one not look at the ‘screams’ argued by John Holloway, or multitudinal mobilizations akin to Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, the commentary surrounding ‘que se vayan todos’ via Marta Harnecker, the ‘lines of flight’ and micro-politics described in Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guatarri, and Claire Parnet’s work, and so forth to see similar – all be they misappropriated – expressions of challenge grounded in pseudo-structural rejections of dissenting voices aimed at conventional power? What has been further troubling, specifically for (neo)liberal reformists, is that such exhibitions have been assumed as scripts specifically written for a progressive echelon of society to play-out; non-governmental organizations, lefty-public policy think-tanks, activist reading groups, and many others who symbolically speak-out against injustice, write for mediums of compliant-dissent by offering ‘critical’ insight, or are active in periodical moments of participatory protest. The common thread linking the aforementioned and, arguably, some that aligned with Trump is the optimism of sustaining what minimal measures of social democracy still exist within a capitalist rubric that (falsely) accepts the notion that substantive change is incapable. What is further problematic for these progressives is that the concepts of-and-within identity politics were perceived as belonging to a specific sociopolitical encampment, never to be expressed outside those forward thinkers in promotion of ‘peace with social justice’. An undertone taken from the pre-election period was something that certain theorists were ill-prepared for. Through everyday cultural expressions of both language and discourse, large swaths of the US population identified with that encapsulated by and through Trump, as ‘one of us’. He spoke, acted, and played a script on which many practice and thus, woefully, relate. As the lifetime of Martin Seymour Lipset’s broad work alluded, social movements do not simply exist on one side of the fence erected under capitalism.

How to understand the events of 2016?

In making this argument, however, detailed analysis is important. Enclosing Trump as a solitary force for bigots, racists, misogynists would be politically tragic, as it is naïvely simplistic, in that it fails to recognize the schematic of such narratives. Noting this when she wrote that one cannot universally categorize ‘everyone who voted for Trump (or even everyone who did not vote for Clinton) to be racist, sexist, and homophobic’, Jodi Dean (2016) argued that such ‘extensions are not accounts of the structures of US society. They are projections of attitudes onto others, ways of imagining others as enemies and rivals [italics added]’. There is, then, a more imperative underscore of why and who elected this candidate that must be teased-out.

Particularly unique to its empire, the United States has promoted the adoption of a unique sociocultural tendency that individualizes power through a singular-form personification (i.e. communism equates to Stalin; fascism equates to Hitler; terrorism equates to Bin Laden; and so forth). Here, again, the ‘problem’ is manipulated through the mediation of a centralized figure, this time taking shape as Trump. This is an unfortunate and tragic hegemonic metaphor, as it dissuades recognition of a (more profound and entrenched) structure beyond an easily identified subject. During various rallies prior to the election, it was not uncommon to see select individuals wielding signs that collectively read ‘the silent majority stands with Trump’. It is now known that a certain truth was presaged through these posters, writ large by many (so-called) everyday US citizens. The importance is then to evaluate how segments of a population, at times, work in contradiction to their own sociopolitical, cultural, and economic interests. Here, one may do well to revisit the well-known publication of Stanley Milgram’s 50-plus year-old ‘Behavioural Study of Obedience’. Recognized as one of the most renowned research projects of the 20th century, the study attempted to understand how fascistic exercise becomes socially acceptable and how such conditions could transpire within democratic societies (Milgram 1963; see also Arendt 2006). A profound subtext within the study is often overlooked, however. The greater the distance that emerged between the teacher and the learner, the more likely the former was to accept repressive and potentially fatal outcomes toward the latter – all under the authoritative direction of the experimenter. Much can be deduced from this secondary reflection. One is able to ascertain how, contrary to social impulse, everyday people were and are purposely dissuaded from naturally empathizing with the ‘other’. Is this not exactly what has been taking place? Scripts faithfully followed that direct antagonisms toward one’s peers, thereby distorting class consciousness, as directed (by the experimenter). Such a strategy is of logical deduction if there is a minority that would benefit from directing large sectors of society away from recognizing or acting in mutual favor of each ‘other’. By identifying this methodology, however, a juncture is provided for consequential emancipatory gains to be made through a heightened articulation of class consciousness. If the manufactured ‘distance’ between marginalized populations under capitalism is decreased, so, too, will an increase in a shared solidarity deflate the power of those that would encourage (and benefit from) said partitions. ²

Where is class now in America?

Alluding to the increased representations of recalcitrant-angst, yet absent of material antagonism, various scholars have called attention to those in sociopolitical contestation to that which has emerged within the United States. Žižek (2016a: 376) highlights that contemporary culture, if political at all, offers ‘an outburst with no pretense to vision’. There exists an inability to authenticate or enunciate an awareness of what such vibrant discord is aimed toward or in contestation of. ³ An aberrant perversion of Rosa Luxemburg’s thoughts toward spontaneous sedition, today’s reactionism is based in the absence of ‘particular demands’ with ‘only an insistence on recognition, based on a vague, nonarticulated, ressentiment’ (Žižek 2016a: 376–377). ⁴ Dalia Gebrial (2016) echoes such insight by suggesting that, at present, ‘solidarity has been supplanted in favour of “allyship” and “standing aside”. Creating spaces of self-determination has been neutralised into creating spaces of safety. Only the personal can be political’. Identity is increasingly appreciated through a slim-window of classification proliferating a false solidarity due to differentiated singularities that do little more than create isolated unions outside, external, and apart from the many shared relations ‘others’ authentically house. Looking again to Dean (2016), this plethora of identities is not hampered but rather praised by distal relations of powers. While such celebrations may seem contradictory or paradoxical, upon deeper deconstruction, one can make sense of why such divisions are embraced and promoted under current capitalist forms. Most important to her work is how identity politics, while appearing progressive or in recognition of a select group, increasingly negates a particular singularity. She offers how ‘one specific feature’ is consistently highlighted ‘out of a given set of demographic features’ and that when one looks ‘at the arsenal of identities – sex, race, gender, sexuality, ability, ethnicity, religion, citizenship’, the identity of class is glaringly left absent (Dean 2016). In turn, ‘the investment in identity is intense. It shores up a fragile individuality. It provides a location for political righteousness. It prevents the formation of the solidarities opposition to capitalism requires’ (Dean 2016). One’s relation to the means of production is the root, the most potent, identity. It is upon this premise that peoples can subsequently foster and build shared relations across a diversity of singularities. Solitary identity politics fundamentally divide. A movement must be made beyond the inability to recognize the universal identity of class, as all share in more than that which can (be exploited to) divide.

It is this alienated climate of class consciousness, and the expressions therein, where those (differentially) marginalized must move beyond the itemized subject to an articulate common denomination of shared conditions. At such time, an acknowledgment can emerge to identify the configuration of ‘authentic enemies’ at the core of capitalist society (Žižek 2016b). Solace is provided through Henry A. Giroux’s proposition of the need for a medium through which to (re)direct active or dormant antipathies in a direction of effectual substantive social change.

The good news here is that when you look at the anger in the United States and you look at the anger that has emerged in England over these broken economic-political systems, the real question is how would one now direct the needs of that anger away from the discourses of hate, bigotry, and racism into a labor and political movement that actually recognizes and can articulate what the conditions are that people are facing in a way that people can recognize the possibility for individual and collective agency. (as quoted in Samphir 2016)

It is of worth to recognize the value that even an inch of consciousness has when actively rebuffing facets of the capitalist structure. Not wishing to underplay the severity of its current proximal direction, the actions carried out by certain blocs of the working-class within the United States provide a larger example of the potential for very real cracks to further emerge within the fortified conventions of dominant class power. If the pathway onto which current expressions of class consciousness are sustained, dire outcomes have a potential to emerge. However, if an expanded understating of the common denomination of capitalist exploitation intersects to deepen present expressions as mediated through #BlackLivesMatter, Idle No More, Occupy, Standing Rock, and other important struggles of late, a gravitational pull toward critique and constructive action can prevail, an intrinsic depiction of anxiety and distrust aimed in the direction of power at a distal level. While such movements appear to be markedly different in substance, the ethos of each is authentically found within the ownership over the means of production and the sociopolitical relations therefrom. The step forward is located in a movement beyond immediate ill-informed reactionism of (an easily exploitable) undeveloped class consciousness of the present to a more protracted effort that transitions power to the hands of the marginalized, negating the external class-based xenocentrism that has befallen the proletariat for a politics of internal solidarity. ⁵

Conclusion: an opportunity for the mobilization of class consciousness?

Synthesizing politics around a specified identity proved to work well in dissuading the rising attention of class as the common denomination of marginalized populations, thereby alienating the articulation of consciousness – accelerating blame throughout the working class itself while simultaneously shielding it from observing Trump as a member of the bourgeoisie. While work needs to be done on how to articulate its power, now is the time to decide in what fashion class consciousness should move. As Yanis Varoufakis (2016) expressed, ‘Trump’s triumph comes with a silver lining. It demonstrates that we are at a crossroads when change is inevitable, not just possible’. The issue is in what direction shall the proletariat work to collectively guide this change. As troubling as the immediate climate may appear, there remains a hope that must be recognized amidst this inarticulate ethos. While it is undoubtedly difficult to see positives through the current despondency within the United States, the absence of such positivity should not be framed by the outcome of a conventional process of liberal democracy as defined by electoral politics. Nor is this languishing a consequence of a singular momentary absence of an ‘oppositional’ candidate coming to office (had the inverse of said process emerged and Hilary Clinton arrived at the White House, there, too, would remain many giving shelter to a sense of emptiness). This dearth of joy is centered in the structural reality the majority find themselves in. A nucleus of hope can, nevertheless, be mustered. Difficult though it may be to imagine, a prospect can be found through the expression of a mobilization largely made of workers that has shown an utterance of power. The world has been witness to an open, yet uniquely hushed, dynamic where certain elements within the working-class re-scripted aspects of an entire ideological and political-economic machine through autonomous-collective action (see Žižek 2016b). ⁶ While this statement may appear, on the surface, outlandish, it is important that the underlying basis of such a claim is provided.

As capitalism increasingly demonstrates an incapacity to be ecologically sustained, alongside an expanding scale of exploitation unforeseen, a question remains as to how such a system remains substantively unchallenged. Many on the Left have long associated this absence as a lack of class consciousness. Rather than fully subscribing to this viewpoint, the sociopolitical tsunami delivered to the United States (and world) in late 2016 suggests a parochial awareness has very much emerged toward some understanding of the everyday inequitable realities under the political and economic structure of capitalism. This is not to evoke, in any way, that this class awareness is absolute or even refined, as evidenced through the manner in which sizeable segments of the working-class displayed their latent power by electing Trump to power (or in supporting Clinton for that matter). Nevertheless, of importance is how a measure of class consciousness remains far from lagging but is rather active in its capacity to rally some measure of sentience through an attempt to respond to perceived discrepancies – however misguided and individualized they may be. Rather than a lack of class consciousness, a more accurate assessment is that there exists a lapse in the ability to articulate a collective alienated relation to capitalism and recognize those there with us.

We are not lacking in knowledge of our own oppression. Let’s be sure of that. Oppressive power reveals enough of its violent traces for even a casual cartographer to expose its deception. What we do lack is a rigorous critique of the historical moment and its varied modes of imaginative resistance. (Evans & Giroux 2015: 10)

It is clear, more so than ever, that much work needs/is to be done. An immediate and important aspect of this effort is to recognize how problematic the current expression of contemporary class consciousness is. As evident, class identity is channeled through little more than an autonomous individuation rallied around self-interest rather than a body aware of their collective corresponding estrangement from the means of production and consequential exploitation. It is essential that a clear understanding of where one sits in relation to the distal structures of power be grounded in a recognition of the State and the means of production. What then needs to be taken off the shelf is a class consciousness of shared-relation(s), a collective recognition of alienation as a class rather than a singular by-product or subject. An inversion of the articulate void is needed when concerning the underdeveloped class consciousness of the present. Not moving beyond an affectual reactionism based on emotive dissent will do little to tactically respond to perceived and substantive injustices.