Introduction

The introduction lays the philosophical foundations for the study by discussing Guy Debord’s “The Society of the Spectacle” and relevant critiques. To reconstruct this theoretical approach, the Introduction also incorporates one of the first theorists of the spectacle – Walter Benjamin – and other more contemporary theorists that are essential for understanding the spectacle of consumption today, namely Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Justification for “an embodied assemblage” approach is provided, as a way to transcend previous shortcomings of theories of the spectacle. This overview is critical for understanding Trump and Trumpism today.

The Affects of Celebrity Brand

This chapter explores how Trump’s political identity builds on his status as a celebrity and as a brand. Trump has long utilized media technologies of spectacle in order to enhance his brand identity. As a commercial assemblage, Trump’s business model has been to combine the affective dimensions of celebrity and brand in a way that guarantees the flows of capital and finance that his business enterprise requires. The first chapter provides this context for how we have been socialized by these technologies of post-truth reality during these years and how they came to infect political culture. Trump was gaining celebrity status in the 1980s when President Ronald Reagan was putting similar techniques to work in the White House, providing an early model for Trump to later reinvent.