The zaniness of everyday life: Trump, Littler and Ngai

Abstract

This article seeks to build on sociologist Jo Littler’s notion of the normcore plutocrat, that is, a newly emerging political actor who gains power through performances of ordinariness. We do this by expanding Littler’s work through an engagement with Sianne Ngai’s aesthetic theory. Taking up Donald Trump’s performances as a case study, we attempt to think through the relationship between what Ngai refers to as ‘zaniness’ and Littler’s normcore plutocrat. Given Trump’s abnormal and bizarre antics, this article poses the question of what it means to frame his performances as ‘ordinary’. In attempting to answer this question, we relocate Ngai’s work to an explicitly political register in the attempt to show how Trump’s use of language, abysmal business record and faux-masculinity can be understood as revealing something about ordinary neoliberalism.