Trump, A Psy Fi Story: On American Germanicity

Featherstone

Abstract

My purpose in this short reflection is to think the rise of Donald Trump through Laurence Rickels’ theory of American Germanicity, which shows that there is an unconscious connection between the American way of life and its Nazi other, in the name of historicising the contemporary psychoanalytic critique of The Donald. My objective here is to show that the Frankfurt inspired critiques of Trump’s neo-fascism are founded in more than the application of psycho-critical-theory to a new case on the basis of potential comparison and that it is possible to develop a historical lineage from Nazi Germany, through the Frankfurt critique of the American culture industry, to a psy fi story of Trump that reveals his true horror that some would prefer to ‘not see.’

• Acceptance Date: Dec 1, 2016
• Publication Date: Dec 16, 2016
• Journal: CTheory
• Print ISSN: 1190-9153
• Publisher URL: https://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/ctheory/article/view/16675/7054