Conclusion
In this chapter, we have extended our previous conceptualization of the racial politics of circulation by disclosing how resistance efforts and practices co-constitute the ongoing cultural-rhetorical politics of white supremacy in our contemporary context. We demonstrated how new media genres such as Trumpicons are not simply social actions, aneutral, or apolitical (as politics proper). New media genres are caught up in affective economies and conflicting tensions about Trump’s white nationalist postracial logics, rhetorics, and policies. Trumpicons are both the effects and affects of racio-political tension. They are both seeds for the propagation of white national postracial logics and rhetorics and the accumulation and force of (some kind of) resistance. Perhaps this should not be so surprising. Politics are systems of power, and in power systems, there is always friction, resistance in which artifacts and bodies rub up against each other. Participatory culture—and the new media genres that emerge within yet circulate beyond it into broader cultural contexts—are not divorced from this process. New media genres are especially important players in the friction that is palpable both in the U.S. and across the world in this crucial racio-political moment.
We have also shown how critical genre studies can be a productive methodology for doing digital visual studies. Vernacular genres such as Trumpicons are ephemeral, emerging and evolving to generate a shared practice of political commentary that, as we saw in our case study, contributes to various acts of resistance—from individual acts of satirical parody to commodity activism to embodied protests. As scholars continue to take a critical genre approach to study how new media genres contribute to public matters, future research might address two important inquiries. First, how effective is satire in era of Trumpism? As Charles Blow wrote, “The white male racist patriarchy will not be denied. It is having a moment. It has its own president.” Confronted with such a powerful force, does satirical parody have any real power, especially when listening to and considering opposite points of view seems so rare these days in the U.S. and divisions between Trump and anti-Trump supporters are so tense? Let’s face it—most of the satirical parodies we identified in this chapter were obviously designed and distributed by anti-Trump citizens. And clearly, as evident in the artist’s Flickr comment above, many believe in the power of ridicule to resist Trump. But what measurable consequence are these new media genres actually having against a white nationalist postracial force that is able to amplify racism and xenophobia and patriarchal white supremacist capitalism under the guise of non-white nationalist aims? It’s an important question we need to keep pressing on.
Second, how might we better understand the participation of new media genres in the commodification of activism, and are such acts of resistance actually consequential in our current neoliberal context? Our research here has been limited in that we shortchanged attention to efficacy and consequentiality by mainly focusing on how Trumpicons have become embroiled in the racial politics of circulation and various efforts of resistance. As Stephen Duncombe pushes us to interrogate, “if resistance doesn’t lead to change, then what is its function, and how do we need to (re)understand it?” While we have made great strides here to show how Trumpicons do in fact become embroiled in activist efforts to resist, we second Duncombe’s question. While new media genres such as Trumpicons are clearly good at enacting satirical parody and selling mass commodities, we still need to be open to the fact that even when coupled with on-the-ground protests, such enactment of resistance might not be (and probably is not) enough to counter the white nationalist postracial logics, rhetorics, and policies that seem to be proliferating not just here in the U.S. but across the world. As we move forward with digital visual studies from a critical genre perspective, then, we might deepen our interrogations of satire and commodity activism, especially so that we can help expose and confront oppressive and dominant justices that have real consequences upon real bodies in the world.
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