Course Description
Summary
Marx once quipped that all historical personages happen twice, as it were: "First time as tragedy, second time as farce." Marx clearly got the second coming of Trump wrong: the first time was a farce, this time around its tragedy.
The bewildering saga of the 2024 presidential election and bludgeoning start to the new administration in 2025 has overturned much of the established political wisdom. So what happened? What happens next? And what’s at stake? This course takes a journalistic, comparative, and critical look at the elected direction of American democracy. Tracking back and forth between the unfolding events of the first hundred days of the new presidency and potential points of insight in social theory and research, this class will reflect on the barricaded identities, deferred solidarities, affective surplus, and honest surprise that found cogent expression in the recent election. We will engage the following themes: to what extent do the rising rubrics of political explanation – race, class, gender, and religion – offer a convincing account of the rise of MAGA and to what extent is a new social accounting needed; how do the shifting dimensions of economic precarity find political form (and to what effect); how have social media titans come to identify with Trump and to what effect; how does the rise of Trump compare with recent populist resurgences worldwide; and, with modern rationality itself being called into question in the institutional irreverence and rhetorical excess of the president elect, upon what grounds should understanding, critique, and action now proceed? Exploring historical points of comparison and distinction, we will read classic works in critical theory on the rise of fascism in the 1930s. We will also invite Faculty from across the College to teach us the changes they see in the worlds they know best. We will also familiarize ourselves with Project 2025 and other visions of remaking American Society under a second Trump Presidency while following the news closely during those heralded, hectic first days of Trump 2.0 to better grasp unfolding efforts to dismantle select parts of the federal government and disenfranchise select aspects of American life.
