Publication Date

9-2022

Journal

Legalities

Abstract

A striking aspect of the current American cultural divide is divergent attitudes towards expertise, generally, and masking and vaccination to mitigate the Covid-19 pandemic, specifically. Liberal pundits profess shock that Red State America won’t just ‘trust the science’. On the right, politicians and television personalities reject mandates in the name of ‘freedom’.

Lacanian discourse theory gives insight into this. The rejection of expertise is an example of an ‘hysteric discourse’ challenging a ‘university discourse’: the regime of experts. An hysteric discourse is a critique of rules imposed by experts by the subjects-subjected-to them. Hysteria can lead, in turn, to a ‘master discourse’ which rules through authority alone, without justification by external norms. I show how this helps explain the personality cult of love for Donald Trump. In addition, I suggest how these three discourses relate to law and jurisprudence.

Volume

2

Issue

2

First Page

150

Last Page

181

Publisher

Law and Society Association of Australia and New Zealand

DOI

https://doi.org/10.3366/legal.2022.0037

Keywords

expertise, critique, discourse, sexuation, Donald Trump

Disciplines

Jurisprudence | Law | Law and Economics | Property Law and Real Estate

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