Extreme Speech| A Presidential Archive of Lies: Racism, Twitter, and a History of the Present

Abstract

What histories can be written from an archive of lies? Specifically, what histories of the present can be written from Donald Trump’s Twitter feed? As default press conference and presidential archive, Trump’s tweets break with the past in terms of presidential communication with the public. However, Trump’s political oeuvre is distinguished for additional reasons, including the scale and extent of his public lies and his extreme and derogatory comments about a range of individuals and groups. Both of these include speech that is interpreted as not only (White) nationalist but also racist and misogynist. In this current political moment, scholarly responsibilities include witnessing and analyzing this archive in formation, its contents, the communities it creates, and the sometimes violent work it does in the contemporary United States.