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Sociologists have productively theorized power and politics via typologies and genealogies. This article combines these theorizing modalities to analyze the election of Joseph Biden in the 2020 US presidential election. Thinking about presidential genealogy, the semiotics of sequence and succession favored humility over hubris in the victory of Biden after Donald Trump. As well, drawing on Weber's three types of authority (traditional, charismatic, and legal-rational) and Fred Block's elaboration of a flexible but constrained and accountable missing fourth type, this article terms that fourth type anticharisma and reads Joe Biden as an anticharismatic aspirant. Whereas charisma draws its strength from the monopolization of attention by the leader, rupture, and crisis, anticharisma aspires to domestic tranquility, competence, familiarity, and empathy. The elaborated typology of authority presented here provides important angles into both the election of Joe Biden as the anticharismatic candidate and the constraints on democratic leadership in the United States.

This article describes the temporal and spatial configurations and limitations of the rupture phase of historical events. It does so through a consideration of the intertwined forms and flows of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic and the social uprising against police violence targeting African-Americans in the United States. The article argues that these ruptures open up a "double exposure", one that makes problematic conventional categories associated with events, like those of past and future and inside and outside, thus challenging our ability to situate ourselves in relation to such events.

There used to be accepted rituals for surrendering, understood by everyone. Today, it is not always clear how and when a conflict ends.