This paper theorizes contemporary far-right fantasies and practices of heterosexuality in terms of their grotesque dimensions. Inspired by literary theorists who locate the grotesque in the “moment of hesitation” between farce and terror, I explore how heterosexual fantasies in far-right politics call to mind the spectacular violences of eugenics and genocide, even as they are articulated in perversely comedic memes and trolling culture. In characterizing heterosexual fantasy in these terms, I argue that emergent forms of “traditional” heterosexuality in the American context – forms marked by nakedly misogynist (and especially trans-misogynist) violence, necro-political aesthetics of reproduction, and nihilistic politics of incel accelerationism – are more than just violent spectacles. Instead, they represent a quotidian grammar of violence that generates a “corruption of consciousness” in subjects burdened with parsing the over-saturation of surreal and immobilizing affects. In turn, these immobilizations become moments of real vulnerability through which the body is materially harmed. This paradoxical situation, in which the most grotesque dimensions of American fantasy are also the most stultifying, requires a renewed vocabulary at the level of political and cultural criticism. In particular, I argue that we must cultivate our capacity for horror – a capacity that I argue must be central to political criticism, insofar as it trains our senses on the perverse dimensions of political life in ways that move beyond the impasse of the grotesque.
