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Dr Deborah Gould (University of California) Passions & Danger in Trump’s Time and After

Wednesday 19th May, 2021

17:00 BST (note change of time), via Zoom

This talk is animated by my own recently roused fear of the crowd. I offer a way to think about politics and emotion in a moment that has witnessed handwringing across the political spectrum about the so-called masses’ unruly passions dangerously seeping into the political realm and bringing with them Brexit, Trump, and the explosion of rightwing authoritarianism across the globe. Classical liberal and democratic theorists have a response to the fear of the crowd: the political realm requires rational deliberation, and thus passions that might interfere must and can be exorcised, or at least sequestered from public, political life. What, then, should we conclude in this moment where it has become obvious, if it wasn’t before, that the political is awash in passions, and some very frightening passions at that? Faced with the madding crowds of the Brexit/Trump/QAnon era, liberal and democratic theory might lead us to the conclusion that liberal institutions have not and cannot keep our unruly passions in check, that democracy thus cannot work, that, in short, people’s passions make them, us, unfit for democracy. But is it not possible to acknowledge that the political is saturated with emotion without going down the crowd theorists’ path that denies the demos our political capacities? My aim with this talk is political as much as conceptual: we need a better rendering of politics and emotion in order to grasp the current moment. Through an exploration of crowds, affect, and the political, the talk considers left activist compositional tasks amid the felt contingency of the current moment.
 
Deborah Gould, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is the author of Moving Politics: Emotion and Act Up’s Fight Against Aids (University of Chicago Press, 2009). She is currently writing a book titled Composing Collectivities: Appetite, Encounters, and the Not-Yet of Politics.

Please contact Regan Koch (r.koch@qmul.ac.uk), Pen Woods (p.woods@qmul.ac.uk) or Tiffany Watt Smith (t.k.watt-smith@qmul.ac.uk) for the Zoom details