Abstract
This chapter analyzes the electoral campaign and election of Donald Trump as an ongoing event—a rupture of known trajectories and narratives. The “eventness” of the election was both orchestrated by the Trump campaign and desired by parts of the electorate precisely as a rupture in the predictable trajectories of political life. We locate this form of rupture in the tension Weber described between charisma and rational-legal authority, as a tear in the mutual implication of these forms of authority in the ordinary business of politics. We then show how such an analysis of rupture problematizes the usual ways sociologists attempt to understand actors, using Weber’s notion of “verstehen” that focuses on understanding individuals’ alternative motivations, meanings, and alternative trajectories of means and ends. We argue that we must position rupture—the suspension and even rejection of such narratives—as an important aspect of our understanding of action in this case.
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Notes
- 1.
As Sewell (2005, p. 228) put it “Ruptures spiral into transformative historical events when a sequence of interrelated rupturesdisarticulates the previous structural network, makes repair difficult, and makes a novel rearticulation possible.”
- 2.
Eisenstadt (1968, p. 19) describes Weber’s contradictory compound concept of the “charisma of office” in which a charismatic figure has the, “ability to (…) transform any given institutional setting by infusing into it some of his charismatic vision, by investing the regular, orderly offices, or aspects of social organization with some of his charismatic qualities and aura.” Nevertheless, even here, the contradictions reappear as “charismatic activities and orientations…contain strong tendencies toward the destruction and decomposition of institutions” (ibid, p. 21).
- 3.
It is important to note that the emotional valences and political attitudes attached to such heightened moments that break away from narratives of cause and effect may be quite varied. Abbott (2007) writes about what he terms specifically localized lyrical moments of social and cultural apperception that share some structural similarities with the ruptures we are analyzing here but that are radically different in mood and tone. Describing the kind of sociology he associates with the lyrical, Abbott (ibid, p. 73) notes that “its ultimate framing structure should not be the telling of a story…but rather the use of a single image to communicate a mood, an emotional sense of social reality.”
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Wagner-Pacifici, R., Tavory, I. (2019). Politics as a Vacation. In: Mast, J.L., Alexander, J.C. (eds) Politics of Meaning/Meaning of Politics. Cultural Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95945-0_2
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