Nicholas K. Mohlmann - Trump and Autobiography: Corporate Culture, Political Rhetoric, and Interpretation

The 1970s and 1980s heralded the rise of neoliberalism in United States culture, fundamentally reshaping life and work in the United States. Corporate culture increasingly penetrated other aspects of American life through popular press CEO autobiographies and management books that encouraged individuals to understand their lives in corporate terms. Propelled into the public eye by the publication of 1989s The Art of the Deal, ostensibly a CEO autobiography, Donald Trump has made a career out of reversing the autobiographical impulse, presenting an image of his life that meets his narrative needs. While many scholars have sought a political precedent for Trumps rise to power, this book argues that Trumps aesthetics and life production uniquely primed him for populist political success through their reliance on the tropes of popular corporate culture. Trump and Autobiography contextualizes Trumps autobiographical works as an extension of the popular corporate culture of the 1980s in order to examine how Trump constructs an image of himself that is indebted to the forms, genres, and mechanisms of corporate speech and narrative. Ultimately, this book suggests that Trumps appeal and resilience rest in his ability to signify as though he is a corporation, revealing the degree to which corporate culture has reshaped American societys interpretive processes.

Nicholas K. Mohlmann is assistant professor of English at the University of West Florida. He earned his PhD in literary studies from Purdue University.

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Trump and Autobiography
Corporate Culture, Political Rhetoric, and Interpretation
Nicholas K. Mohlmann

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First published 2021

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2021 Nicholas K. Mohlmann

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Names: Mohlmann, Nicholas K., author.

Title: Trump and autobiography : corporate culture, political rhetoric, and interpretation /

Nicholas K. Mohlmann.

Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021005628 (print) |

LCCN 2021005629 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032025247 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032025278 (paperback) |

ISBN 9781003183754 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Trump, Donald, 1946- |

AutobiographyAuthorship. | PresidentsUnited

StatesBiographyHistory and criticism. |

ExecutivesUnited StatesBiographyHistory and criticism. | CapitalismSocial aspectsUnited States. |

NeoliberalismUnited States.

Classification: LCC E913.3 .M64 2021 (print) | LCC E913.3 (ebook) | DDC 073.933092 [B]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021005628

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021005629

ISBN: 978-1-032-02524-7 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-032-02527-8 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-003-18375-4 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman

by codeMantra

As both a candidate for and a holder of the office of president of the United States, Donald Trump generated controversy with what he said as well as how he said it. Some statements were viewed and condemned as offensive, such as his assertion that when Mexico sends its people, theyre not sending their besttheyre bringing drugs; theyre bringing crime; theyre rapists, and some, I assume are good people or his infamous boast that when youre a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything (Transcript: Donald Trumps Taped Comments About Women). Other statements were objected to based on their truthfulness, such as Trumps repeated, but unproven, claims that there is substantial voter fraud in the United States. Even when the content of Trumps remarks have been less controversial, his habits of speech have led to speculation about his mental acuity and fitness for office, with some statements, like his discussion of his uncles work on nuclear technology, reaching a certain meme status for their supposed incoherency (Mikkelson). We might say that Trumps speech has come under fire both for its consistency and for its inconsistency; the ways it consistently marginalizes, prevaricates, and confounds; and how it inconsistently represents reality and breaks with the norms of American political speech in content and form. While one can certainly make convincing arguments that Trumps actions as the head of the executive branch are authoritarian, even destructive, Trumps speech across a range of modalities demands careful attention for the ways he uses it to subvert and manipulate the political and cultural processes that make his executive actions possible.

Unlike other presidential candidates who ran on the strength of their business acumen, like Ross Perot, Trumps success came in part because he has spent much of his life constructing himself as a public figure with certain significations. Through media appearances, book publications, and television programs, Trump produced an image of himself and a narrative of his life that emphasized his extreme wealth and cutthroat business savvy. This image and narrative served a commercial purpose initially, deepening and cementing the connotations associated with Trumps name, a name that became a commodity, marking buildings and products with the Trump brand. In the twenty-first century, Trump leveraged the symbolic capital he had accumulated in the twentieth century by taking to Twitter to push conspiracy theories about President Barack Obamas place of birth and to opine on a wide range of political issues (Krieg). In doing so, Trump added to his brands signification political and digital dimensions that positioned him to pursue higher office. Thus, when Trump announced his candidacy for president of the United States, he was already familiar and legible to an American audience. A key difference that allowed Trump to disrupt the Republican primary and ultimately assume the office of president is that Trump refused to act presidential, a sort of contortion of ones public production of ones self to meet an assumed set of norms for a president or presidential candidates behavior and speech. A common explanation provided for a sizeable voting population embracing a presidential candidate who rejected presidential norms was that voters who backed Trump wanted a disruptive candidate, someone who went against the status quo. In what follows, I would like to suggest that part of Trumps appeal is not simply a rejection of presidential norms that entails an embrace of anything that signifies as anti-presidential, but rather a recognition and acceptance of another set of norms already deeply familiar to nearly all Americans: the forms and mechanisms of commercial corporate speech and identity.