Neither madness nor stupidity: some clues about the grotesque device in far-right politics

Abstract

This article investigates some clues about the grotesque device, a strategy that has become common in current far-right politics. In Foucault's conception, the device refers to the complex and heterogeneous mechanisms articulated to certain games of power and knowledge. The notion of grotesque is also derived from the studies of this author and would have three characteristics: speeches that make people laugh, the will to truth and the politics of death. The object of the investigation is some news stories about the political figures of Jair Bolsonaro, Javier Milei and Donald Trump. The study is in the field of political psychology and uses the so-called digital ethnography. The grotesque is taken as a powerful device that has modulated the relations of power and the regimes of knowledge in the current political scenario. The analyses indicate that the grotesque device acts as a recurring necropolitical strategy and that it is directly linked to neoliberal rationality.

Key words: political psychology; grotesque; digital ethnography; device.