Thirteenth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

This paper initiates an exploration of the utility and effectiveness of messaging that combines ad hominem and hyperbole speech as forms that have particular affinity with populist movements. Such messaging incorporates an assortment of valences consisting of unstable differentiations—ambiguities, contradictions, paradoxes, ironies, and over-and understatements. In political arenas where persuading the populace is fundamental to gaining political office and maintaining it, such messaging helps instantiate a form of personal power to the messenger, one ensconced in a logic of theatre performance. This paper hypothesizes that power is gained in this process, i.e. followers and adherents are inured to ambivalence and anxiety, and reconcile themselves as advocates for the narratives and policies promoted. By accessing some aspects of Jacques Derrida’s notion of différance, the economy of these messages operate as unstable-always already differed and deferred from themselves, allowing then the messenger to exploit values and ethics for their underpinnings to (re)establish sentiments where loyalty versus antagonism is the norm.