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book: The Personality of Power
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The Personality of Power

A Theory of Fascism for Anti-fascist Life
Language: English
Published/Copyright: 2025

About this book

“I am the Chosen One!” With this exclamation Donald Trump crowns the national exceptionalism his base upholds with a claim of personal exceptionalism. He leaves no doubt as to the emotional note: “I am your vengeance!” He personifies reaction for the masses. Except, in today’s microsegmented social media environment the “masses” no longer exist. Fascism’s cultural conditions have shifted. In The Personality of Power, Brian Massumi retheorizes the conditions of contemporary fascism through the prism of Trump’s persona. Older theories based on identification of the masses with a charismatic leader no longer hold. Rather, an affective regime of reaction agitates bodies and orients lives at the molecular level. Massumi examines this agitation in relation to race, gender, personhood, and conspiracy thinking. The Personality of Power is a political treatise on fascism and its precursor movements, coupled with a philosophical inquiry into becoming reactionary as a collective process. Massumi calls the very concept of the person into question, asking what collective personhood means concretely. Nothing less than an alternative political logic is needed, turned to the task of thinking collective individuation.

Author / Editor information

Brian Massumi is a Canadian philosopher and social theorist, and, until recently, Professor of Communication at the University of Montreal. He is the author of many books, including Couplets, Ontopower, The Power at the End of the Economy, and Parables for the Virtual, all also published by Duke University Press.

Reviews

"Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty."
-- E. R. Gill Choice

Topics

  • Publicly Available

    Frontmatter

    i
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  • Publicly Available

    Contents

    v
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  • Part 1. Trumping the Personality of Power
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    The “F”-Word

    1
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    This Book

    3
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    The Decline and Rise of the Personality of Power

    5
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    Who Decides?

    10
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    Collective Individuation

    12
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    Beyond the Interpersonal

    14
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    Accidents of Persons

    15
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    Media Figure, Distributed Event

    18
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    Along Comes Trump

    19
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    Miraculation

    23
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    Are You an Act?

    27
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    The Reign of the Self-Knockoff

    30
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    Ornamental Masculinity

    32
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    Affective Adjunction

    37
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    License

    38
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    Man-Standard, Standard Man

    41
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    Becoming-Away from Man

    46
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    Freedom

    48
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    Deciding in the Exception

    50
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    Fringe Fluidity

    54
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    Rallying Affect

    57
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    Conditions for War

    60
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    Free Indirect Discourse

    61
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    The Expansive Collapse of the First Person

    63
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    The Storm of Unknowing

    67
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    Trump Machine

    70
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  • Part 2. Multiple Persons in Joint Possession
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    Personhood Revisited

    74
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    The Piety of the Personal

    75
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    An Individual Is a Wave

    78
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    Character

    81
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    Society All the Way Up (and Down)

    84
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    Common Likeness, Reconsidered

    85
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    A Person Is a General Idea

    86
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    Index and Event

    87
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    Word and Event

    88
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    Genetic Element, Abductive Impingement

    88
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    Machinic Synthesis

    90
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    Spanning the General

    90
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    Levels

    92
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    Collective Singular

    93
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    An Idea Is a Little Person

    94
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    Class-Naming the Collective Singular

    94
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    Corporate Persons

    95
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    Multiple Persons in Joint Possession

    97
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    My Non-I

    98
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    Strange Intruders

    101
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    Thought the Thinker

    102
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    Commind

    103
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    Recap

    106
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    Why?

    110
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  • Part 3. The Full Body and I
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    The Full Body Retooled

    111
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    Figuring the Full Body

    113
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    Schizzing the Structure of Society

    114
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    Point-Sign

    117
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    Umbral Union

    119
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    Body Matter

    122
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    Individual and Person

    124
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    Micrologic and Amplification

    126
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    Individualization

    127
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    Scale and Dimension

    130
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    Dividuation

    131
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    Overcoding

    132
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    Figural, Figurative, Figure

    133
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    Affect and Intensities

    134
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    Emotion

    137
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    Signed, Affect

    139
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    Resonating Chamber

    141
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    Adjunction/Induction

    141
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    Differential Attunement

    142
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    Media Figure

    143
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    The Man-Standard Again (and Again)

    143
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    The Personification of Capital

    144
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    Recap

    145
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    Why?

    146
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  • Part 4. Error Incarnate
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    The Personification of Capital, Reflux

    148
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    Error Incarnate

    161
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    The Literal

    165
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    Optive Matter

    168
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    Perspective

    170
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    Recap

    173
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    Why?

    174
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  • Part. 5 The Regime of Reaction
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    Passion and Reaction

    175
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    Adequate Ideas

    178
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    From the Singular to the Singular-Universal

    182
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    Uses and Abuses of the General

    185
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    The Sting of the Normal

    191
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    The Politics of Logic

    192
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    The Logico-Politics of Resemblance

    194
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    Signs Behaving Badly

    197
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    The Understory: The Belief from Below

    199
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    Conspiracy Brewing

    203
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    Desire

    204
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    Generalization upon Generalization, Belief upon Belief

    205
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    Vague Presences

    206
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    Association Unbound

    209
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    Note on the Imagination

    212
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    Belief Trumps Intent

    214
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    Modes of Capture

    216
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    Accidents of Persons Predisposed

    219
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    The Pathic Is the Pivot

    222
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    Faciality

    225
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    Ressentiment

    231
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    Fascisizing Tendencies

    235
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    Micro-fascisms

    239
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    A Turning Point?

    242
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    Fascism Proper

    245
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    Diagnosing

    249
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    Ur-Fascism and the Question of Typology

    252
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    The Economization of Hate

    260
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    Stupidity

    265
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    Flash Agents

    269
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    Relay Agents

    271
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    Belief in the Event

    273
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  • Postscript. Distinctions of Distinction: For a Logic of Mutual Inclusion
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    Identity

    274
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    Distinctions of Distinction

    277
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    Modal Distinction

    278
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    Real Distinction

    282
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    Umbral Union

    286
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    Mutual Inclusion

    291
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    Modal Metaphysics

    292
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    Formal Distinction

    294
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    Duality without Dualism

    296
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    Strategic Abstract Generalism

    297
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    Bibliography

    301
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    Index

    317
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Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
March 7, 2025
eBook ISBN:
9781478060543
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
View content
https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478060543
eBook ISBN: 9781478060543
Keywords for this book
Fascism; reaction; Trump; collective individuation; conspiracy theory; racism; gender politics; postruth politics; collective personhood; Whiteness; ornamental masculinity; Anti-Oedipus; Susanne Langer; Deleuze theory of reaction; Nietzsche theory of ressentiment
Audience(s) for this book
For an expert adult audience, including professional development and academic research
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