The Trump Stories: An Antimimetic, Unnatural, and Postmodern Narratology

The last of the four approaches to narrative discussed in Narrative Theory: Core Concepts and Critical Debates (2012) is the antimimetic approach of Brian Richardson, who focuses on the ways that narratives do or do not conform to the usual expectations of representation. As he says:

… nearly every narrative represents some portion of the world we inhabit in one way or another. … That manner of representation may be conventional or unconventional, stylized or straightforward, unmarked or outrageous, clumsy or artistic; it is always constructed. Mimetic narratives typically try to conceal their constructedness and appear to resemble nonfictional narratives, while antimimetic narratives flaunt their artificiality and break the ontological boundaries that mimetic works so carefully preserve. (p. 20)

In broad strokes, then, narratives, whether fictional or factual, are always constructed (certainly by authors — I'm not sure if Richardson considers co-construction by the audience), and while most narratives try to hide or ignore that construction, some narratives play with the details of construction. This distinction holds even for clearly fanciful narratives: on the mimetic hand, Star Wars tries to hide the scaffolding for its outrageous characters, props, and plot lines, whereas the antimimetic Spaceballs reveals the scaffolding, largely to mock it.

Fictional narratives have more flexibility in this respect as factual narratives are usually held to higher standards. Even when a fictional narrative uses a historical event, readers are usually more tolerant of factual inaccuracies — at worst, considering it sloppy writing; at best, creative license. Not so with Trump's tales of the stolen election. Those of us who do not believe that the story matches the facts probably believe that Trump and his followers are at best delusional and at worst liars and cheats. Richardson says that he is dealing primarily with fictional narratives. Still, I think I can make use of this rather focused approach. Again, it will not by itself provide me the resources to discuss all the issues that I want, but it should give me some tools to explore the Trump stories.