Conclusion

Abstract

This book challenges the assumption - just as alive today as it was in the nineteenth century - that the political sphere was an arena of reason in which feelings had no part to play. Focusing on the popular radical movement for democratic rights, Democratic Passions has explored the affective politics of key radical leaders in the first half of the nineteenth century, when the movement for democracy took off. It has shown how radical leaders were accused of inflaming the passions; how the state and its propertied supporters were charged with callousness; and how radicals grounded their claims to citizenship in the universalist assumption that workers had the same capacity for feeling as their social betters (denied at this time). This book has changed the way in which we look not only at the radical leaders in question and the movements that grew up around them, but much more significantly at the affective qualities of politics itself. This is important for understanding the evolution of democratic politics. This is because one of the keyways in which politicians have sought to legitimate their own politics is by claiming to speak in the name of reason, while denigrating their opponents as creatures of base passion. As historians and citizens, we need to be on our guard when historical actors and contemporary politicians juxtapose their self-proclaimed rationality against emotion as this has often served to delegitimate the politics of dissent. Recognising this, and laying bare the affective basis of politics, is vital to the health of democratic politics. To understand the evolving relationship between politics and feeling, we need to return to the period when democratic politics was born. Doing so casts new light on the relationship between politicians and the people, the state and its domestic enemies, exposing in the process the affective basis of citizenship.