Beastly Boasts and Apocalyptic Affects: Reading Revelation in a Time of Trump and a Time of Plague

Beastly Boasts and Apocalyptic Affects: Reading Revelation in a Time of Trump and a Time of Plague

Waxing “biblical,” Donald Trump has described the COVID-19 pandemic as a “plague.” In a different but related register, millions of Christians worldwide have interpreted the pandemic as one of the eschatological plagues prophesied in the Book of Revelation. This article appropriates the reading tact...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Religions (Basel, Switzerland ) Vol. 11; no. 7; p. 346
Main Author: Moore, Stephen D.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Basel MDPI AG 01-07-2020
Subjects:
apocalyptic
Book of Revelation
Christianity
Coronaviruses
COVID-19
Deleuze, Gilles
Donald J. Trump
eschatology
Exegesis & hermeneutics
Gilles Deleuze
Ideology
Pandemics
Phenomenology
Plague
Presidents
Reading
Trump, Donald J
United States > US
Patmos
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Summary:Waxing “biblical,” Donald Trump has described the COVID-19 pandemic as a “plague.” In a different but related register, millions of Christians worldwide have interpreted the pandemic as one of the eschatological plagues prophesied in the Book of Revelation. This article appropriates the reading tactics of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, together with the resources of affect theory, to connect the Book of Revelation with both the Trump phenomenon and the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, the article attempts to relate Revelation’s Beast to Trump (to unleash the Beast against Trump) non-eschatologically, in a non-representationalist reading strategy, and to analyze how Trump has manipulated the pandemic for his post-ideological ends.
ISSN:2077-1444
2077-1444
DOI:10.3390/rel11070346