The Personality of Power: A Theory of Fascism for Anti-fascist Life

by Brian Massumi

"I am the Chosen One!" With this exclamation, Donald Trump crowns the national exceptionalism his base upholds with a claim of personal exceptionalism. He leaves no doubt as to the emotional "I am your vengeance!" He personifies reaction for the masses. Except, in today's microsegmented social media environment the "masses" no longer exist. Fascism's cultural conditions have shifted.

In The Personality of Power, Brian Massumi retheorizes the conditions of contemporary fascism through the prism of Trump's persona. Older theories based on identification of the masses with a charismatic leader no longer hold. Rather, an affective regime of reaction agitates bodies and orients lives at the molecular level. Massumi examines this agitation in relation to race, gender, personhood, and conspiracy thinking.

The Personality of Power is a political treatise on fascism and its precursor movements, coupled with a philosophical inquiry into becoming reactionary as a collective process. Massumi calls the very concept of the person into question, asking what collective personhood means concretely. Nothing less than an alternative political logic is needed, turned to the task of thinking collective individuation.

Genres: Theory

352 pages, Paperback

Published April 1, 2025

About the author

Brian Massumi is Professor of Communication at the University of Montreal. He is the author of several books, including What Animals Teach Us about Politics and Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation.

Reviews

[endrju]

While the book is about Trump and the groups around his image, I took a look at it not only because I appreciate Massumi, but also, and most importantly, because I wanted to find a better angle to understand what's been going on in Serbia for the past decade. While the differences between Trump and Serbian president are huge, there are some similarities in the way they use their media presence. Most analyses of the Serbian president argue that his staying in power depends on the charisma he has built up through his media presence, and this is where Massumi intervenes. While I can see how his argument can broaden the understanding of authoritarian, totalitarian, and fascist social formations, including the Serbian president, I just wish he would try to make it a little more accessible. People familiar with Massumi will know what to expect - I was even surprised at how accessible the argument actually was - but this theory needs a wider audience, and all these conceptual and syntactical twists and turns are tiring, even though I find Massumi's work fascinating.

[Matei Borangic · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book of creation of concepts in the service of thinking an anti-fascist life.
while some may feel overwhelmed by the ammount of concepts from process philosophy and pragmatism, they are very useful in going beyond the logics whose conclusion is inevitably reaction.
The biggest takeaway from this book is that logic is political, reaction is ontological. By creating new logics of affirmation we can bypass the negativity of non-fascism and turn it into a positive creative task.