Trumpism and Brexit both exemplify postcolonial melancholia rooted in lost omnipotence fantasy
Evidence
The Brexit vote was practically a case study of what Paul Gilroy calls postcolonial melancholia. Trump’s rise — Make America Great Again! — is the American equivalent of the same phenomenon. As Gilroy points out, this melancholia has its manic and jubilatory aspects, but it is rooted in a longing for an idealised past, and a denial of the complexities and perplexities of the present… Since it is organised around desires that are impossible to satisfy, the flight into fantasy will of course be very far from some harmless exercise in escapism; immense damage will inevitably be done in the attempt to preserve these //// of restoration and “purification”. Postcolonial melancholia is caused by “the loss of the fantasy of omnipotence”, at the same time as it is a compensatory strategy which renders the disappearance of a sense of omnipotence as a merely temporary matter, soon to be rectified. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 2027
Categorization
- XREF: Directly flags a concept (‘the loss of the fantasy of omnipotence’) that the reader likely already knows via Gilroy’s Postcolonial Melancholia — the reader’s own taste file cites Gilroy’s other work on the notion of ‘the white man’s burden’. — connects to: Brexit and Trump reflect the right’s retreat from modernity into postcolonial melancholia — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 2046; Post-imperial Britain’s declining status fostered collective melancholia and scapegoating of minorities — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 969; Yearning for a precolonial essence traps politics in the past instead of the present
Broader Connections
- Brexit and Trump reflect the right’s retreat from modernity into postcolonial melancholia
#expands(0.97) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 2046 - Post-imperial Britain’s declining status fostered collective melancholia and scapegoating of minorities
#expands(0.88) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 969 - Yearning for a precolonial essence traps politics in the past instead of the present
#qualifies(0.76)