The Trump Carnival

Elizaveta Gaufman is an Assistant Professor in the Research Centre for the Study of Democratic Cultures and Politics at the University of Groningen. Her research is situated at the intersection of political theory, international relations, media, and cultural studies.
Bharath Ganesh is an Assistant Professor in the department of Media Studies and the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation at the University of Amsterdam. Bharath's research focuses on racism and social media, platform governance, and transnational far-right digital cultures.

Donald Trump's campaign and presidency represented a radical departure from political norms that are often classified by media and researchers as 'populist'. Instead, this book theorizes Trump's campaign and presidency with reference to Mikhail Bakhtin's "carnival" - a medieval festival of transgression, ridicule, and renewal. In this book, Lisa Gaufman and Bharath Ganesh provide a closer insight into the Trump Carnival, developing interdisciplinary perspectives on populism, misogyny, misinformation, and far-right vernacular culture. Building on the idea of the carnivalesque, this book focuses on the laughing culture of the Trump campaigns and presidency that vilified minorities, disparaged women, and ultimately emboldened the far right. Bringing Bakhtin into dialogue with key developments in contemporary politics, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in the Trump phenomenon, American politics, and populism.