Incredulous Onlookers and Social Levitation: Theorizing The Charismatic Performance of Donald Trump.

This paper returns to the central feature of charismatic legitimacy--miraculous proof--and offers a social-interactional account of its etiology. Drawing on elements from the performative turn in social theory, and on previous work that has described "charismatic counter-roles," the paper develops the concept of incredulous onlookers: those prominent disbelievers who, through expressions of shock, exasperation, and moral outrage, help to define societal expectations about the (seeming) impossibility of the leader's success. Equipped with an imposibilist characterization, even minor victories by the aspiring charismatic leader come to be regarded as miraculous. By performing incredulousness along both sceptical and moralistic modalities, these actors thereby create what is in essence the social-interactional negative-image of the charismatic miracle. I find that incredulous onlookers played a critical role in buoying and propelling the "Trump phenomenon.". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]