The Crowd (Extract)

The Crowd

There is something to be gained in creating boundaries and marking ones territory. If we are looking at the revolution in terms of what Arendt defines as a gathering of those with the same, shared goal, then we find ourselves looking out onto a crowd of revolutionaries. Elias Canetti (1962) writes extensively on 'The Crowd', how it forms and functions, its structure and goals. The goal exists before the words to define it, in a sense it exists before the formulation of its concept. The formation of the crowd is sudden, it appears spontaneously where before there was nothing. It can spawn from a few people standing together, but nothing is expected, nothing has been announced.

As soon as the crowd exists, its yearning is to grow and seize every other body that lies within its reach. This crowd is defined as the open crowd, what Canetti calls the ‘natural’ crowd and it is open in the fullest sense of the word. It knows and respects no boundaries, it seeks to grow in every direction that it can. The open crowd can only claim existence in so long as it is growing, if it stops growing it will disappear. The openness and desire to expand is its greatest strength while at the same time constituting its greatest weakness. It survives through rapid increase, but there is always a lingering sense of the threat of disintegration. There is something inevitable about its demise, its aim is to absorb everyone but once this has been achieved it will fall to pieces. Without the prospect of growth it cannot continue to exist.

Canetti contrasts this with what he describes as the closed crowd. The closed crowd rejects the instability that inevitably comes with the insatiable desire for growth, in favour of achieving permanence. It sets its own boundary, a space for it to fill and rather than a yearning to extend beyond these parameters, its motivation is to defend and maintain these boundaries. There is a limit to its size and once this has been reached anyone on the outside of the boundary can never be more than a spectator, regardless of their proximity.

The self-imposed boundary of the closed crowd prevents disorderly increase, but in so doing the rate of any dispersal is stilted. Growth is in effect sacrificed for potential longevity. The goal of the closed crowd has shifted to repetition rather than to absorb greater numbers. It hopes that it might be able to meet again, to refill the same boundaries that it has set for itself. Closed crowds of the past have been able to become institutions in their own right, but this also marks an absorption into the situation.

Mapping a revolutionary moment appears to be instrumental in, or at least indicative of, this transformation from an open to a closed crowd. This awareness that growth must be sacrificed, at least for the immediate future, in order for the potential for repetition to exist. It is an example of disappearance in order to avoid death. In order for the potential to hang in the air clandestine until it can re-emerge, at a time that may be safer.

The open crowd is the ‘true’ crowd, in a state of abandonment, answering only to its natural desire for growth. It has no set desire in terms of its size or gain, it only knows that it wants to absorb all and everyone that it can. Canetti maintains that in this state the crowd is subject to its looming and inevitable disintegration. He reaches for the word ‘eruption’ as a name for the sudden transition from a stable closed to this transient open crowd. This eruption should not, he claims, be understood as something purely spatial. A crowd often outgrows its boundaries and spills out onto the streets, but more important than this external event is the inner movement ‘the dissatisfaction with the limitation of the number of participants, the sudden will to attract, the passionate determination to reach all men.’¹

‘Each eruption from a closed locality means that the crowd desires to regain its old pleasure in sudden, rapid and unlimited growth’²

Canetti is careful to express the importance of the insatiable nature of the crowd, it remains hungry as long as individuals remain that it has not yet reached. It is this that gives it is desire to grow, it aims to satisfy itself even though doing so will make its end.

This growth cannot be maintained forever. The crowd carries the sense of its impending demise, it knows that once it stops growing it is doomed. ‘The final disintegration and scattering of this crowd is made somewhat less painful by being determined in advance. It is known, too, that the beaten side will have an opportunity of taking its revenge; everything is not over for good.’³ There is something to be said for taking to ground. Removing oneself from the sight line of those one is fighting, a chance to regroup and protect oneself from death. Once death has occurred there is no chance for resurrection, in disappearing there is always the potential to re-emerge. The open crowd grows but is running full pelt towards its own doom, the closed crowd does not grow and may disintegrate, but there is always the chance for repetition, for the forces to re-gather with the same desires and aims. If the crowd or revolutionary facilitates its own demise then there is still the potential for repetition.

The fate of the invisible crowd pg 53 ‘In spite of their former numbers, they are no longer to be found anywhere in their familiar shape. But they have left their traces.’ Here again, emerges the concept of the trace. How is the revolutionary trace maintained?

In times of a double crowd, we find ourselves at war, ‘The closer in power and intensity the rivals are, the longer both of them will stay alive.’⁴ 

In order to compare these mapping practices and their effect on revolutionary activity it is beneficial perhaps for the purpose of this study to focus on one geographical space in particular. French history is scattered with ‘revolutions’ and as its capital city, Paris is no stranger to uprisings and moments of revolutionary political action. Examples of moments of rupture and conflict played out in the streets are easy to find, as are the attempts to map and analyse these moments. These examples will be looked at, with attention paid to how the mapping might constitute the transition from a open crowd to closed, a disappearance or a death.

1 Canetti, E. (1960) Crowds and Power (trans Carol Stewart) New York: Viking, p. 23

2 p. 23

3 p. 40

4 p. 24