“Trump Derangement Syndrome” persists today if a newer strain dominates. This new form is something of a close reading of President Donald Trump and his allies, which, despite its literary merit, fails to capture honest analysis.
The occasion usually follows the same sequence of events: Trump says or does something offhand, intricate accusations follow from bald appearances, and the public — the Left-public, most often — gleans from the news the latest awful, definitive quality of the president. It goes beyond the common discourtesy of refusing one’s political opponents the benefit of the doubt in that it is obsessed with details and is intent on pushing context out of the picture. Actions and bare phrases, along with their surroundings, speak not only for themselves but for the actor — in this case, anyone Trump or Trump-adjacent.
It does not work, at least not in the way it is supposed to, because Trump is not a poem. Nor is he a novel, an essay, or any piece of writing on which this critical method actually works. It should have sounded familiar up until now: New Criticism is a real and well-formulated literary theory. It is attractive for its textual focus and literary reverence and, naturally, is associated with the poet T.S. Eliot.
However, the growing connection between New Criticism and political engagement is not foreign ground. English professor Scott During has quietly but thoughtfully documented a “conservative turn in literary studies.” The idea is that literary scholars are turning back to “disciplinary conservatism” — New Criticism-style textual analysis that sidesteps the fallacies of overly affective or authorial intention-focused readings — and that the turn “belongs to the left.”
The Left’s ownership of the revival is key: During argues that, in addition to being an attempt to save literature, the “conservative turn” is a response to Trump. Far-left cultural matters swayed the dominant persuasion from class politics to identity politics, and the elites took it up and advocated it. Identity politics reached its peak, probably with Trump’s second election, and “helped unleash popular authoritarianisms” through the populist, class-focused Trump crowd.
“Disciplinary conservatism,” then, is one way to avoid the too-far-left identity politics that fuel “Make America Great Again.” The idea makes sense, and maybe it rings true to those within the small world of literary criticism but is restricted to that circle: Things go awry when the theory is projected onto real-world political analysis.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has faced the worst of it this week after allegations caught on that his simple hand gesture at the inauguration was a Nazi salute. Is the context of whom Musk directed it toward (the crowd at large) or that his mannerisms are generally uncoordinated (he has autism) of any import to interpreters? Surely not. What matters is the raw action, the devotion contained within it, and the rhetorical connection to Trump’s cult of personality.
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See the method, too, in the media’s fixation on drawing similarities between Trump and kingship. Writers make use of every possible detail — Trump said he was saved by God; Trump is renaming things; Trump introduced his dynastic family to the crowd; Trumpers lean into the “king” motif — except the ones that help explain that, from Trump’s perspective, his life was spared miraculously, that he has an unusual personality, and that he has beaten truly wild odds against both his initial election and reelection.
And so it does not work — not with any measure of charity or logical consistency. Separating an author from his text is no parallel to viewing a human being in isolation, but it is precisely what the Left has tried to make a convincing argument. Bias lies in waiting for judgment, and this type is particularly reserved for Trump.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
