Essay on How Politicians Use Affect to Influence People's Emotions and Ideas

Affect is used in politics to exert intensity on the body, to be perceived or to be felt by the people. It is the manner through, which one can express there ideas and emotions to others through facial expressions, laughter and hand gestures (Bangstad, Enge Bertelsen, and Henkel 99). Affect is as a result of multiple forms that are intentional in the way they operate. These forms are diverse and they include; advertisements about campaigns, rapid marketing, and politics that entails propaganda. Affect plays a role in Trump's speeches and it is portrayed in different sources.

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Research indicates that Trump finds great esssense to use affect theory in most of his political speeches, for instance, on the source Massumi B. "The Politics of Affect" the author highlights the use of media such as Television, and film, , which speaks a lot than mere words. (Massumi 269). In many of the photos that Trump is caught in, the fingers of both hands are always in a posture that is triangular, this is an indication of confidence. On the other hand, based on Sarah Ahmed "Politics of Fear" Trump postulates that "emotionality is clearly dependent on relations of power, which endows others with meaning and value" (Ahmed 2). Most of his speeches arouse fear and anxiety. For example, On the nuclear issue, Trump first order was "to renovate and modernize our nuclear weapons so that it was stronger and powerful than ever before." He was describing nuclear weapons with gendered technostrategic language. That speech elicited fear and anxiety to other nations or terrorists with the thought of attacking U.S. Fears also works to create a boundary between the subjects and others. Another source is the

Sarah Ahmed "Cultural Politics of Emotion" (Ahmed 377). It helps determine the rhetoric of the nation by producing social relationships between communities (Ahmed 382). Most of Trump's emotional speech also focused on rally audiences, and such talk perhaps resonated with working class whites due to their propensity towards identifying with the nation, and their suffering under bipartisan neoliberalism (Schrock 8) Another example, is that most of his speeches instilled national shame in people through use of slogans that painted the U.S. as being in "trouble." For instance in Clear Lake, Lowa, Trump informed the audience that had gathered before him that "our nation is in trouble ..serious trouble" (Schrock 8-9). In another gathering, he informed his supporters "When I avowed my candidacy I knew what bad shape our nation is in. all you have to observe is world event (Schrock 8-9)." Finally, in Geneva he said "we're losing everything, a lot of citizens do not know but our nation is in trouble of crumbling infrastructure, high national debt, and poverty."

Conclusion

In conclusion, Ahmed asserts that emotions are cultural practices and thus through bodies, individuals get to align a popular ideiology of their community, for instance, when shaking hands trumph does it vigorously as an illustration of power. Trump uses Affect in his speeches to pull different ideas about the country to the people.

Works Cited

Ahmed, Sara. "The politics of fear in the making of worlds." International journal of qualitative studies in education 16.3 (2003): 377-398.

Ahmed, Sara. The cultural politics of emotion. Routledge, 2013.

Bangstad, Sindre, Bjorn Enge Bertelsen, and Heiko Henkel. "The politics of affect: Perspectives on the rise of the far-right and right-wing populism in the West." Focaal 2019.83 (2019): 98-113.

Massumi, Brian. Parables for the virtual: Movement, affect, sensation. Duke University Press, 2002.

Schrock, Douglas, et al. "The emotional politics of making America great again: Trump's working class appeals." Journal of Working-Class Studies 2.1 (2017): 5-22.