Dr. Joel Crombez has a new article in the Journal: Fast Capitalism

KENNESAW, Ga. (Jun 22, 2020) — Title: The United States of Trump Corp.: The ‘Not Normal/New Normal’ Governing Style of a Personal Brand

 

Article Summary: What is “not normal” about President Donald Trump is that his governing style is irreducible to conventional statecraft and political goals because Trump is not just a celebrity/businessman-turned-politician. Rather, Trump the person is inherently tied to Trump the personal brand, and the governing style of President Trump follows the market-oriented logic of personal brands, which is primarily oriented towards maximizing symbolic capital. Therefore, we cannot separate an analysis of Trump the Man from Trump the Brand, meaning that psychological and political analyses that fail to approach the Trumpian mode of governance from a sociological perspective rooted in political economy will fail to fully account for how this mode diverges from and reconstitutes what passes today as the new “normal” in American statecraft. Rather than position Trump’s governing style as motivated to achieve self-adulation, white supremacy, an authoritarian state, or neoliberal utopia, we reconsider Trump’s governing style as an attempt to capture the attention of the collective consciousness and focus it on Trump as a personal brand.

 

Journal: Fast Capitalism is a journal of political economy and critical theory that is devoted to analyzing the impact of information and communication technologies on self, society and culture in the 21st century. It bridges the social sciences and humanities and publishes both disciplinary and interdisciplinary work.

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