{"id":13841,"date":"2019-11-10T11:52:16","date_gmt":"2019-11-10T16:52:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=13841"},"modified":"2019-11-10T12:04:16","modified_gmt":"2019-11-10T17:04:16","slug":"judith-butler-on-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2019\/11\/10\/judith-butler-on-trump\/","title":{"rendered":"Judith Butler on Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Judith Butler on Donald Trump’s Death Drive and lack of shame<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When commentators speak of Trump\u2019s \u2018death wish\u2019, they are on to something, though maybe not quite what they imagine. The death drive, in Freud, is manifested in actions characterised by compulsive repetition and destructiveness, and though it may be attached to pleasure and excitement, it is not governed by the logic of wish fulfilment. Repetitive action unguided by a wish for pleasure takes distinctive forms: the deterioration of the human organism in its effort to return to a time before individuated life; the nightmarish repetition of traumatic material without resolution; the externalisation of destructiveness through potentially murderous behaviour. Both suicide and murder are extreme consequences of a death drive left unchecked. The death drive works in fugitive ways, and is fundamentally opportunistic: it can be identified only through the phenomena on which it seizes and surfs. It may operate in the midst of moments of radical desire, pleasure, an intense sense of life. But it also operates in moments of triumphalism, the bold demonstration of power or strength, or in states of extreme conviction. Only later, if ever, comes the jolt of realisation that what was supposed to be empowering and exciting was in fact serving a more destructive purpose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[…] Shamelessness is the vector through which the death drive works. If he is not shamed by the accusations against him, they do not \u2018work\u2019 and the accusations become fainter and weaker, less and less audible in the public sphere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[…] I have offered no more than a dream sequence of my own. It may be that shame and guilt has suffused all he has ever felt. The jury is out. My wager\/dream is that he would rather die than pause to feel the shame that passes through him and is externalised as destruction and rage. If he ever registers shame, it may be only in that briefest moment just as it turns outwards, to be expelled into the world around him. It can never properly be lived as his own, because his psychic structure is built to block it \u2013 a gigantic task. If in the end shame ever turns back on him, it would \u2013 according to the rules of his psychic playbook \u2013 be a suicidal submission. Expect then a very long and loud howl, as he launches a climactic accusation against the whole world. Let us hope that by then he has been deprived of his access to military power.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Judith Butler on Donald Trump’s Death Drive and lack of shame When commentators speak of Trump\u2019s \u2018death wish\u2019, they are on to something, though maybe not quite what they imagine. The death drive, in Freud, is manifested in actions characterised by compulsive repetition and destructiveness, and though it may be attached to pleasure and excitement, … Continue reading “Judith Butler on Trump”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-zizek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13841"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13841\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13848,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13841\/revisions\/13848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}