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Deleuze’s Politics of Faciality: Trump and American Exclusion

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Abstract

Donald Trump’s presidency tries to establish a social discourse in which individuals correspond to the stereotype of white, middle class men, and in which the normative order exists solely for those who belong to the status quo. In Trump’s America, minorities are threats to the social order. Thus, the proposed new order requires the production of residual lives and bodies divested of legal rights and political representation. This paper tries to explain Trump’s political movement through a concept developed by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, namely: “faciality”. This device is produced by the interaction of an axis of signification and an axis of subjectification. Power can utilize the “face” to normalize who does and does not belong to Trump’s America. This abstract machine of faciality is his administration’s most dangerous technology of power, because it seeks to strengthen processes of subjugation, desubjectification, and individualization that are bound to produce more groups excluded from contemporary, capitalistic American society.

This essay was translated from Spanish by the editors. In some cases, citations are to Spanish language editions; these have been translated from Spanish, rather than from the original English or French. The reader will find English translations of texts by Deleuze, Guattari, Butler and Levinas in the references.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Claudia Tornini Kruse, “Etica, estética y cosmética del cuerpo: la escritura de Diamela Eltit” (master’s thesis, Universidad de Chile, Facultad de Filosofía y Humanidades, Departamento de Literatura, 2012), 2.

  2. 2.

    Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, El Anti-Edipo: Capitalismo y esquizofrenia. (Barcelona: Paidós, 2015), 158.

  3. 3.

    Gilles Deleuze , Spinoza: Practical Philosophy (San Francisco: City Light Books, 1988), 124.

  4. 4.

    Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari , Mil mesetas (Valencia, Spain: Pre-textos, 2015), 176.

  5. 5.

    Deleuze and Guattari , Mil Mesetas, 174.

  6. 6.

    Deleuze and Guattari , Mil Mesetas, 176.

  7. 7.

    Deleuze and Guattari , Mil Mesetas, 174.

  8. 8.

    Deleuze and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), 178.

  9. 9.

    Deleuze . Negotiations 1972–1990 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 26.

  10. 10.

    Deleuze . Desert Island and other texts 1953–1974 (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 1995), 263.

  11. 11.

    Deleuze and Guattari . A Thousand Plateaus, 181.

  12. 12.

    Butler. Vida precaria: el poder de la violencia y el duelo (Buenos Aires, Paidós, 2006), 58.

  13. 13.

    Butler, Vida precaria, 35.

  14. 14.

    Butler, Dar cuenta de sí mismo: violencia ética y responsabilidad, (Buenos Aires: Amorrortu, 2009), 45.

  15. 15.

    Judith Butler, Senses of the Subject (New York: Fordham University Press, 2015), 6.

  16. 16.

    Butler, Senses of the Subject, 2.

  17. 17.

    Marina Garcés, Un mundo común (España: Bellaterra, 2013), 40.

  18. 18.

    Emmanuel Levinas, Totalidad e infinito (Argentina, Amorrortu, 2009), 207.

  19. 19.

    Deleuze and Guattari , Mil Mesetas, 176.

  20. 20.

    Deleuze and Guattari , Mil Mesetas, 192.

  21. 21.

    Deleuze and Guattari , Mil Mesetas, 37.

  22. 22.

    Deleuze and Guattari , Mil Mesetas, 683.

  23. 23.

    Felix Guattari, ​Caosmosis (Buenos Aires, Manantial, 2002), 13.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City, Mexico

    Maira Colín García

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  1. Maira Colín García
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City, Mexico

    Marc Benjamin Sable

  2. National Autonomous University of Mexico, Ciudad de México, Distrito Federal, Mexico

    Angel Jaramillo Torres

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García, M.C. (2018). Deleuze’s Politics of Faciality: Trump and American Exclusion. In: Sable, M., Torres, A. (eds) Trump and Political Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74427-8_18

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