Collective Atmospheres. Phenomenological explorations of protesting crowds with Canetti, Schmitz, and Tarde

Abstract

The paper provides a conceptual framework for understanding collectively shared political agency in public space. By using a phenomenological approach, it explores the spaces of protest movements by deploying Elias Canetti’s perspective on crowds and links this to an affectively embodied spatiality of protesting crowds, which is conceptually framed as atmosphere. This endeavour is substantiated with the differentiation between atmospheres and situations as in the neo-phenomenology of Hermann Schmitz on the one hand and the social theory of imitation by Gabriel Tarde on the other. The key argument of the paper is that the rhythmic appearance of imitative waves of sentiments and ideas within protest movements spatially manifests itself in an overarching atmosphere of protesting crowds. The paper contributes to a better understanding of the links between social movements, emotional crowd dynamics and the emergence of communal atmospheres of protest. It concludes with the argument that such atmospheres and techniques that facilitate them are of major importance for the understanding of the stability and sustainability of protest movements.