Donald Trump and the dangerous rhetoric of portraying people as objects
Iâve previously noted how Trump, on the campaign trail, will often use the rhetorical strategy of reification (which comes from the Latin word for thing, res, and in this context means âto thingifyâ) as a way to trivialize the humanity, dignity, needs or opinions of those with whom he disagrees.
As the tape shows, he clearly talks this way in private, too. In a campaign that has epitomized the danger of this rhetoric, women are merely the latest to fall victim to this sort of âthingification.â
Silencing opponents
The history of American political discourse is riddled with the âthingificationâ of people. We have traditionally treated women, workers, immigrants and people with disabilities as less than human, as objects rather than as people. Doing so enables those with power and privilege to retain their status, since thereâs the general understanding that people should be privileged over objects.
In other words, who counts as people has always been political, so this sort of rhetoric is nothing new. Consider how Americans treated slaves as objects â as property to be bought and sold â rather than as human beings. Slaveholders wouldnât have been able to own people if we had recognized that slaves were, in fact, people, rather than things.
We even see the âthingificationâ of enemies in Thomas Jeffersonâs First Inaugural Address. Much like our current election, the election of 1800 was nasty. In the speech, Jefferson attempted to unify the nation, but he also sought to render his critics as objects, as âmonuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated, where reason is left free to combat it.â
In other words, he hoped to cast his Federalist enemies as silent monuments, relegated to history.
Jeffersonâs belief in Enlightenment rationality meant that he thought even those who held differing opinions from him ought to be tolerated.
Nonetheless, a silent monument can neither criticize nor consent.
Defending the indefensible
Fast forward 200 years, and we donât have a founding father attempting to unite a bitterly divided nation but Donald Trump being recorded bragging about his power over women.
âI just start kissing them. Itâs like a magnet. Just kiss. I donât even wait,â Trump sneered on the tape. âAnd when youâre a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab âem by the pussy. You can do anything.â Trump then looked out of the bus window at actress Arianne Zucker and said, âOh, it looks good.â
âIt,â of course, is a thing, not a person. A thing that he might kiss or grab, even without its consent. A thing canât give its consent, after all. The comments on the tape suggest that he might, at times, not wait for any at all.
When Anderson Cooper asked Trump about the comments about women at the second presidential debate, Trumpâs ensuing apologia â a speech of self-defense â was riddled with rhetorical devices meant to minimize the seriousness of his âthingifyingâ women.
He responded that he had âgreat respect for women. Nobody has more respect for women than I do⌠But I have tremendous respect for women⌠And women have respect for me.â
If you look at Trumpâs words, itâs clear he hoped he could persuade the audience merely by repeating positive terms about women. Meanwhile, the core argument of his defense was simple: Present his remarks as innocuous. To do so he used a combination of denial (âI didnât say that [I sexually assaulted women] at allâ); bolstering, a strategy speakers use to associate themselves with something or someone that the audience views positively (âI respect women and women respect meâ); differentiation, which speakers use to reframe what the audience already understands (It was just âlocker room talkâ); and transcendence, or arguing that the issue isnât really that big of a deal (We need to âget on to much more important things and much bigger thingsâ).
When everyoneâs a âthing,â whoâs left?
From a rhetorical standpoint, Trumpâs self-defense was a textbook example of apologia, but it wasnât convincing.
His denial that he had admitted to sexually assaulting women would ring false to people who had heard him on the tape, the repetition of his respect for women is disproved by his own words on the tape, while the attempt to reframe his reification as âlocker room talkâ has been rejected by folks who actually talk in locker rooms. Meanwhile, his attempt to minimize what he said about women and refocus the nationâs attention on his campaign seems only to reaffirm that he views women as trivial.
He could have perhaps been more convincing if he hadnât resorted to reification in so many other contexts. As Hillary Clinton pointed out in the second presidential debate, ââŚitâs not only women, and itâs not only this video ⌠he has also targeted immigrants, African-Americans, Latinos, people with disabilities, POWs, Muslims and so many others.â
The lens of reification can help us to understand what happened between the Gold Star Khan family and Trump at the Democratic National Convention in July. Khizr and Ghazala Khan appeared at the DNC and declared that âDonald Trump consistently smears the character of Muslims.â They asked Trump to stop treating them as objects and to recognize them as people â specifically as Muslims and as American patriots. He refused, instead characterizing them as irrational aggressors.
âI was viciously attacked by Mr. Khan at the Democratic Convention,â he tweeted. âAm I not allowed to respond? Hillary voted for the Iraq war, not me!â To Trump, Khanâs speech at the DNC was a vicious attack. Khan, therefore, could not be a loyal and patriotic American Muslim, as he claimed, but rather â as Trump has argued â all Muslims are aggressors.
The problem for Trumpâs targets and opponents, of course, is that the rhetoric of reification allows Trump to deny legitimate criticism. Because objects can neither consent nor criticize, the use of reification can be seen as an expression of power.
âI am running against the Washington insiders, just like I did in the Republican Primaries,â he tweeted during the summer. âThese are the people that have made U.S. a mess!â
Washington insiders are people âthatâ have made the nation a mess, not âwho.â
Even as Trump acknowledges his enemiesâ personhood, he also negates it. Trump is a person and his enemies are objects. Just as the âthingificationâ of women denies them the power to consent to what happens to their bodies, when Trump âthingifiesâ his critics he denies them the ability to speak and rebut his accusations.
By Jennifer Mercieca, Associate Professor of Communication and Director of the Aggie Agora, Texas A&M University
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
