MakeAmericaGreatAgain: ideological fantasy, American exceptionalism and Donald Trump

Our country is in serious trouble. We don’t have victories anymore. We used to have victories, but we don’t have them. When was the last time anybody saw us beating, let’s say, China in a trade deal? They kill us. I beat China all the time. All the time.

…Sadly, the American dream is dead.

But if I get elected president I will bring it back bigger and better and stronger than ever before, and we will make America great again.

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!