CHAPTER 10: The Carnival of Populism: Grotesque Leadership.

This chapter sheds some light on the employment of grotesque humour in the current political scenario. More specifically, I deal with grotesque images exploited and enhanced by populism. In order to unfold my argument, I allude to and apply two often neglected yet fruitful ideas: the idea of carnivalization of politics and the grotesque power of the sovereign. Regarding the first, I appeal to the idea of the grotesque in the Renaissance and more specifically in the French poem Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais, as well as how it is presented by Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin in his seminal work Rabelais and His World. Bakhtin explains how the carnival allows social hierarchy to be not only suppressed but even inverted for a limited window of time. Regarding the second, I refer to the so-called 'ubuesque' power explored by philosopher Michel Foucault in his lectures Les Anormaux, according to which the ubuesque king has the capacity to enhance and strengthen his power over his subjects by exploiting satire and use mocking as a relief valve. The king of the fools, or the Ubu King, is then crowned as the highest authority in this subverted social and ethical order. Grotesque humour has the capacity to put citizens in a state where conflicting and even opposing feelings, such as amusement and repulsion, coexist on the same level. The coexistence of contrasting feelings may provoke a change in perspective that can influence not only our mood but also our moral compass regarding tastes, pattern of behaviours and ethical issues, creating a new model of leadership that can be internalized by citizens through laughter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]