Judge William of Kierkegaard’s Either/Or claims that the Jutland Pastor’s sermon expresses exactly what he had tried to say in his letters. This is far from obvious to the reader, and I suggest we bypass the Judge, reading the sermon directly with A’s essays on unhappy love and tragedy. Like the sermon, Part I’s “Shadowgraphs” deals with the psychology of persons who have (apparently) been wronged by someone they love and the defenses they construct on the beloved’s behalf mimic classic theodicies. The Pastor’s “practical theodicy,” which consists in thinking of ourselves as the wrongdoers, can be applied to their predicament as well. Yet imagining what that would mean in an abusive interpersonal relationship shows how perilous the Pastor’s theodicy is, alienating us from our own ideas of good and bad, right and wrong. A’s treatment of tragedy offers an alternative. Recognizing that God (or the beloved) is indifferent or simply evil restores our moral-emotional integrity.

This chapter explores the political themes in Cavell’s philosophy of cinema by reading the film Gaslight in the context of contemporary American politics. This reading will serve two purposes. First, by focusing on a single film, the chapter demonstrates the political dimension of Cavell’s writing on film. Second in the last few years some critics of Trump have argued that he deploys gaslighting (a term developed from this film) to manipulate the American public. Therefore a reading of Gaslight can provide resources This chapter explores the political themes in Cavell’s philosophy of cinema by reading the film Gaslight in the context of contemporary American politics. This reading will serve two purposes. First, by focusing on a single film, the chapter demonstrates the political dimension of Cavell’s writing on film. Second, in the past few years, some critics of Trump have argued that he deploys “gaslighting” (a term developed from this film) to manipulate the American public. Therefore, a reading of Gaslight can provide resources for contemporary political theorists to think through political deception in contemporary American life. Gaslighting is one of the most powerful forms of political manipulation in the post-truth-politics era because it tricks its targets into doubting what they know. This chapter offers an theoretical analysis of gaslighting. It considers how Cavell’s interpretation of gaslighting as a gendered practice relates to Cavell’s understanding of the gendered nature of skepticism. Cavell suggests that to resist gaslighting one must cultivate modes of response to one’s intuition in order to reclaim one’s voice. The chapter concludes by analyzing how this way of responding to gaslighting can help us to make sense of Trump’s gaslighting of America and similar forms of populist propaganda.

This chapter outlines the main theoretical contributions of the book and introduces military exceptionalism and institutional gaslighting as key concepts.

This section introduction furnishes an overview of Trump’s verbal behavior when it verges on or crosses into falsehood, by way of innuendo, gaslighting, and plausible deniability. It compares the Trump administration’s symbolic practices with those of Nazi Germany, including the use of superlatives and hyperbole so extreme it takes on a “fairy tale quality.” The chapter further identifies a favorite Trump discourse sequence here termed “reactive reversal,” related to the concept of “plausible deniability” discussed in a later chapter. First, Trump stakes out a hyperbolic claim, and if a public outcry follows, Trump reacts by reversing his claim and blaming others for their inference. Then he may triumphantly declare victory over whoever “really” claimed/did what he originally claimed. This is one of Trump’s methods of gauging reaction from the public.