How A Revolutionary Counter-Mood Is Made

Abstract

This essay proposes that affect theory, and in particular the concept of mood in the sense of Martin Heidegger’s Stimmung , is essential for understanding the formation of politically active collectives. Its topic is the emergence of revolutionary counter-moods, those world-altering moments where new alliances, new enemies, and new fields of action become visible and urgently compelling. I argue that one way to bring such counter-moods into being is by way of what Daniel Stern calls an affective attunement, his term for the way that people share affective states with others. In order to ground these ideas in specific events, I consider the formation of the explicitly Marxist-Leninist Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (or DRUM), in Detroit in 1968. I examine a central and highly effective aspect of their organizational approach, one inspired by a reading of Lenin by the group’s organizers: the production of a modest, weekly factory newspaper or newsletter, also called DRUM , distributed by hand, that mainly reported on the poor conditions at the plant and the often racist mistreatment of workers. In order to understand how the newspaper invoked a revolutionary counter-mood by way of an affective attunement, I also draw on Vladimir Lenin’s discussion, in What is to be Done? , of the transformative effects of the party newspaper, and his suggestion that the most powerful agitational effects are achieved by straightforward reporting on the mistreatment of other persons.