Insane Clown President: Narratives of the Rise of Trump (Panel / In-Person)

Special Session
Historical and Political Studies / American

Cody Chun (Stanford University)
cody@****.com (Log-in to reveal)

At the heart of Matt Taibbi’s Insane Clown President (2017) is the attempt to rationalize how an event which at first seemed impossible could become not only possible but also very real: the election of an “insane clown president.” What, it asks, were the historical, cultural, and sociological conditions which conspired to make such an event possible? Who, if anyone, is responsible for this newest phase in our history? How did the election of an “insane clown president” controvert or confirm our understandings of our historical moment and our beliefs about historical process? This panel welcomes papers that reflect on the various narratives which purport to explain the rise of Donald Trump and the type of politics that he represents, in the interest of comparatively assessing each narrative’s explanatory potential. In so doing, this panel hopes to cultivate a multifaceted understanding of a phenomenon which cannot be understood except multifacetedly.

The 2016 election of Donald Trump and the institutionalization of the monstrous politics that he represents is an event of the greatest historical significance. The significance of this event is attested to by the sheer number of narratives which have emerged purporting to rationalize, explain, or otherwise account for it: to Ta-Nehisi Coates, Trump is a product of white supremacy, America’s “first white president”; to Michiko Kakutani, Trump is the outcome of the postmodernist assault on truth; and to Matt Taibbi, Trump’s unfathomable success can be attributed to his ability to manipulate the news media. The list goes on. What has surfaced in all of this is a sense of the need to make sense of the rise and election of Trump.

Tapping into this sense of need, this panel seeks to bring together and critically examine a selection of the narratives circulating around the rise of Trump; to assess their explanatory potential; to reflect on the historical, cultural, and political insights which they have to offer; and to begin to think this complex phenomenon in an appropriately complex way.

It is in the nature of the panel that it also poses questions of broader interest to the literary community—questions concerning ethics (what is the usefulness and value of assigning responsibility?), form (what is the usefulness and value of the polemic as a genre?), and narrative (what are the explanatory structures implicit in any act of narrative reasoning?), to name just a few.

The sheer volume of narratives that have emerged in response to the rise of Trump, many of them authored by academics, and the sheer volume of academics engaging with this body of work, indicates the existence of an audience for this panel. I believe it will solicit many high-quality papers and, ultimately, provoke an engaging discussion.

Topics of interest might include but are certainly not limited to:

· Whiteness and Trump

· Racism and Trump

· Misogyny and Trump

· Neo-Nazism and Trump

· Neoliberalism and Trump

· Populism and Trump

· Bipartisanism and Trump

· Xenophobia and Trump

· Social media and Trump

· Mass media and Trump

· Identity politics and Trump

· Postmodernism and Trump

· Trump’s historical and literary precedents

· The question of moral responsibility

· The value (explanatory or otherwise) of the polemic as a genre

· Revisionist histories

· Original accounts