GOVERNARE CON LE IMMAGINI: TRUMPISMO, COSPLAY POLITICO, BIOPOLITICA DELLO SPETTACOLO E STORYTELLING

Abstract

The essay analyses Trumpism as an advanced form of spectacular politics, interpreting it considering Guy Debord's theory of the Society of the Spectacle and his Comments on the Society of the Spectacle, as well as Neil Postman's media criticism, developed in Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. Far from being a simple populist anomaly, it proposes to interpret Trumpism as the structural outcome of the transformations of the symbolic, communicative and temporal regimes of advanced modernity. Through the analysis of phenomena such as culture wars, political cosplay, the spectacularisation of the leader's body and the anti-historical management of memory, it aims to show how politics is gradually being replaced by performance, argumentation by emotion and history by storytelling. A comparison with similar cases – from Bolsonarism to Milei, from Berlusconi's precursors to current European leaders – highlights the transnational dimension of this model, in which disinformation and the loss of historical consciousness are not deviations but central devices of government in contemporary spectacle.

Keywords: Society of the spectacle; Trumpism; Mediatisation of politics; Disinformation; Historical memory.

Giulia Crippa è professoressa associata di sociologia dei processi culturali e comunicativi presso l'Università di Bologna. La sua ricerca si concentra sulla memoria culturale, sulla mediazione dell’informazione e sull’immaginario sociale. Tra le sue pubblicazioni più recenti si ricordano: il capitolo di libro «Frontiere: genere, razza e tecnologia nella serie 3%» (2025) e gli articoli «Dissonâncias dos mosaicos da ‘Casa del mutilato’ de Ravenna» (2025) e «Patrimônio gastronômico, mobilidade turística e distinção» (2025).