Donald Trump, the TV Show: Michael Rogin Redux

While conventional tools of political science failed to capture the dynamics fueling Trump's improbable ascent, the scholarship of the late political theorist, Michael Rogin, brings together the multifaceted analysis needed to understand the United States under Trump. Whereas prevailing idioms of critique separate the material and symbolic, and institutional and cultural dimensions of politics, Rogin's creative approach theorizes their complex intersections. Whereas prevailing discourse about Trump splits "class" from the "identity politics" of race and gender—either exceptionalizing or normalizing Trump—Rogin's work foregrounds the patterns of racialized nationalism and spectacle that Trump inherits and revises in resonant and dangerous ways.