Seduction and Desire: The Power of Spectacle

In this article, I explore the implications of the current political situation for qualitative inquiry. I look at some of the historical roots of neoliberalism, and of qualitative inquiry, and at the clash between them that is evidenced in the Trilateral Commission’s governability report. That report found, in the mid-1970s, that the citizens had become too radical, thus making democracy unaffordable. Their protests, the report claimed, were interfering with the flow of global capital. Within that broader historical and political framework I look at the advent of the Trump Presidency and analyze it as spectacle and as seduction, and I look at the implications of his presidency for our work as qualitative researchers