Abstract
Donald Trump’s unlikely rise to the Presidency of the United States has been beguiling for politicians, pundits and scholars alike. In this paper, I argue that Trump’s appeal is best understood through a Lacanian reading of ideological fantasy. Combining a political logic of ideology and antagonism in combination with a Lacanian reading of fantasy, ideological fantasy suggests that while language is infused with materiality, there is an intractable disconnect between the body and the symbolic order. In order to make this disconnect palatable, fantasmatic narratives are constructed that seek to explain away the presence of lack, principally by reproducing antagonisms positioned as responsible for this discontent. In this regard, the power of Trump’s appeal was that he provided compelling explanations for the disruption of the foundational American myth of exceptionalism by isolating antagonisms that explain its apparent fracture, as well as offering the possibility of overcoming these antagonisms to #MakeAmericaGreatAgain!
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