ABSTRACT
This short chapter takes up the political uses and meanings of the prefix ‘post’ in relation to the changing political landscape of the Trump presidency and the rise of right-wing populism across the globe. It begins with a short genealogy of its post’s usages, pointing out the instances of useful/insightful meanings arising from its application as well as other instances when ambiguity or negative affect has rendered it more problematic. While valuing the need to mark change through temporal concepts, I do think that the rise of ‘post’ theory has had unfortunate political consequences during the neoliberal phase of late capitalism, often closing down possibilities for further elaboration of the original word/concept, now designated (or at least implied) as ‘over’ when accompanied by the addition of the prefix ‘post’. Looking at how the concept of the post-political has been allied in our scholarship with concepts of post-dramatic and post-identitarian performance, the chapter calls for rethinking the attraction of the concept in a time which may turn out to be neo-political rather than post-political.
