Shell-Shocked
Feminist Criticism after Trump
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A biting, funny, up-to-the-minute collection of essays by a major political thinker that gets to the heart of what feminist criticism can do in the face of everyday politics.
Stormy Daniels offered a #metoo moment, and Anderson Cooper missed it. Conservatives don’t believe that gender is fluid, except when they’re feminizing James Comey. “Gaslighting” is our word for male domination but a gaslight also lights the way for a woman’s survival.
Across two dozen trenchant, witty reflections, Bonnie Honig offers a biting feminist account of politics since Trump. In today’s shock politics, Honig traces the continuing work of patriarchy, as powerful, mediocre men gaslight their way across the landscape of democratic institutions.
But amid the plundering and patriarchy, feminist criticism finds ways to demand justice. Shell-Shocked shows how women have talked back, acted out, and built anew, exposing the practices and policies of feminization that have historically been aimed not just at women but also at racial and ethnic minorities. The task of feminist criticism—and this is what makes it particularly well-suited to this moment—is to respond to shock politics by resensitizing us to its injustices and honing the empathy needed for living with others in the world as equals.
Feminist criticism’s penchant for the particular and the idiosyncratic is part of its power. It is drawn to the loose threads of psychological and collective life, not to the well-worn fabrics with which communities and nations hide their shortcomings and deflect critical scrutiny of their injustices. Taking literary models such as Homer’s Penelope and Toni Morrison’s Cee, Honig draws out the loose threads from the fabric of shock politics’ domination and begins unraveling them.
Honig’s damning, funny, and razor sharp essays take on popular culture, national politics, and political theory alike as texts for resensitizing through a feminist lens. Here are insightful readings of film and television, from Gaslight to Bombshell, Unbelievable to Stranger Things, Rambo to the Kavanaugh hearings. In seeking out the details that might break the spell of shock, this groundbreaking book illustrates alternative ways of living and writing in a time of public violence, plunder, and—hopefully—democratic renewal.
A landmark study, one that helps make sense of the last four years.---The Nation
Bonnie Honig's Shell-Shocked is funny, lacerating, and extremely thoughtful about feminism's power and utility during and emerging from the Donald Trump administration. Deftly weaving together political, literary and pop cultural analysis, Honig's vivid account will prove crucial as we work to resensitize ourselves. It is a reminder that feminism is a critical tool in beginning to unravel, respond to, and ideally build something better out of, the shock politics of the past four years.---Rebecca Traister, author of Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger
Shell-Shocked is a must-read for anyone recovering from the disorientation and desensitization of the Trump years. Honig’s feminist lens permits us to see past an overwhelming barrage of words, images, and video outtakes, to reveal how patriarchy remains the foundation of so much of what ails us. Honig brings keen observation and wry humor to dazzling readings of literature, cinema, and cable news, as well as to the everyday moments that have troubled and confounded us. Her insights not only make us smarter; they promise to equip us for the work toward justice that lies ahead.---Martha S. Jones, author of Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All
A breath of fresh air. Honig’s take on our current political scene is always illuminating but never despairing. Shell-Shocked is precisely what we need now to resensitize ourselves to the modes of antidemocratic and patriarchal power that shape our moment, without losing hope, creativity, or humor in how to fight for democratic action and equality.---Elisabeth Anker, author of Orgies of Feeling: Melodrama and the Politics of Freedom
Honig’s book is precise because precision is what the technique of shock needs to exclude and negate. It is funny and ironic because irony is what white supremacist dogma cannot bear. It is dedicated to collective feminist action because neoliberalism simulates individualism and creates fearful isolation.---Carolin Emcke, author of How We Desire
Bonnie Honig’s Shell-Shocked provides a much-needed space of active refuge for those who have suffered under Donald Trump’s presidency and multiple campaign seasons. Far from a calm read, this book ignites your senses, provokes your passions, and encourages the rapid intellectual unraveling necessary to keep pace with the hourly onslaught of Trump’s abusive shock politics. And yet, bearing witness to Honig’s brilliant unraveling (her skill of connecting the dots within the chaos) is deeply satisfying, nourishing even.---Politics & Gender
Those interested in whether the Trump presidency created the conditions for democratic renewal will find many of the essays useful and thought provoking.---Choice
Threads pulled, unravelled, and woven again is a running metaphor in Bonnie Honig’s new book as she scrutinises an array of political, literary and cultural moments from the Trump presidency. The threads examined and rewoven run the gamut of tears from tears of anger, frustration, rage, shock, exasperation, to ones of joy. The background setting is dark and unyielding so it is all the more remarkable that Honig manages to extract, and start weaving, a pattern that slowly becomes brighter, more colourful, in short, starts showing signs of hope.---Critical Legal Thinking
Bonnie Honig's Shell-Shocked is an act of political protest. From the opening sentences in which she explains the difference between feminist theory and feminist criticism, it is clear that Honig intends this work to be a scathing observations critique of the Trump era. Shell-Shocked achieves this with biting wit and dry humor, guiding the reader through the political landscape of the United States in a series of thought-provoking essays.---Feminist Studies Association
Preface | xiii
1 Trump’s Family Romance and the Magic of Television | 1
2 Gaslight and the Shock Politics Two-Step | 13
3 The President’s House Is Empty: Inauguration Day | 33
4 He Said, He Said: The Feminization of James Comey | 39
5 The Members-Only President Goes to Alabama | 46
6 An Empire unto Himself? Harvey Weinstein’s Downfall | 52
7 Race and the Revolving Door of (Un)Reality TV | 56
8 They Want Civility, Let’s Give It to Them | 62
9 Stormy Daniels’s #MeToo Moment | 70
10 The Trump Doctrine | 76
11 Jon Stewart and the Limits of Mockery | 81
12 Bullying Canada: An American Presidential Tradition | 86
13 House Renovations: For Christine Blasey Ford | 92
14 No Collision: Opting Out of Catastrophe | 98
15 Epstein, Barr, and the Virus of Civic Fatigue (with Sara Rushing) | 107
16 Mueller, They Wrote | 112
17 Unbelievable: Scenes from a Structure | 117
18 Gothic Girls: Bombshell’s Variation on a Theme | 126
19 Boxed In: Debbie Dingell vs. Donald Trump | 130
20 Mediating Masculinity: Rambo Republicanism and the Long Iran Crisis | 138
21 “13 Angry Democrats”? A Noir Reading of 12 Angry Men | 145
22 In the Streets a Serenade: Siena under Lockdown | 153
23 Isn’t It Ironic? Spitballing in a Pandemic | 157
24 Build That Wall: The Politics of Motherhood in Portland | 163
25 Impenetrable: Gaslighting the 14th Amendment | 171
26 “Hallelujah”: The People Want Their House Back | 178
27 Loose Threads | 184
Acknowledgments | 195
Notes | 199
Credits | 241
