Detail Radicals: Gothic Feminism, Macho Populism, and the Spectral Body of the Queen

Abstract

Bonnie Honig ’ s book, Shell-Shocked: Feminist Criticism after Trump , is a sharp, urgent, and sophisticated critique of Trumpism ’ s many facets. But it is not any kind of critique: it is a feminist critique of Trumpism ’ s policies, gestures, a ff ects, and legacies. Suggestive in Honig ’ s book is the proposal of a speci fi c type of intense sensorial disposition that feminist criticism can work with and through; a kind of alternative epistemology of awareness where psychic stability and a sense of reality depend upon a heightened attention to detail. Attention to detail links the stories of public writing reunited and reworked in the book. Following the example of Penelope in Homer ’ s Odyssey , who promises to choose a “ suitor ” after fi nishing a shroud but gains time by weaving during the day and unweaving at night, Honig fi nds a loose thread in the fabric of the political and pulls, until the fabric comes undone. To undo the fabric of Trump ’ s macho populism, Honig returns to the female gothic perspective, a recurring motif in her work. In what follows, I would like to address the female gothic perspective in Shell-Shocked by focusing on three main themes: (1) the female gothic ’ s peculiar attentiveness to detail that sees things others cannot see, including ghosts (2) the link between the gothic genre, as such, political theology, and contemporary theoretical writing on the American presidency; (3) the (gothic) promise of feminist transnationalism in the Americas.