{"id":1828,"date":"2021-03-30T14:37:08","date_gmt":"2021-03-30T14:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/?p=1828"},"modified":"2021-03-30T14:46:24","modified_gmt":"2021-03-30T14:46:24","slug":"dr-deborah-gould-university-of-california-passions-danger-in-trumps-time-and-after","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/events\/dr-deborah-gould-university-of-california-passions-danger-in-trumps-time-and-after\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr Deborah Gould (University of California) Passions &amp; Danger in Trump\u2019s Time and After"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>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\u00a0so-called masses\u2019 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\u00a0and 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\u00a0sequestered from public, political life. What, then, should we conclude in this moment where it has become obvious, if it wasn\u2019t before, that the political is awash in passions, and some very frightening\u00a0passions 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\u00a0unruly passions in check, that democracy thus cannot work, that, in short, people\u2019s passions make them, us, unfit for democracy. But is it not possible to acknowledge that the political is saturated with\u00a0emotion without going down the crowd theorists\u2019 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\u00a0emotion 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\u00a0moment.<br class=\"\" \/>\u00a0<br class=\"\" \/>Deborah Gould, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is the author of\u00a0<i class=\"\">Moving Politics: Emotion and Act Up\u2019s Fight Against Aids<\/i>\u00a0(University of Chicago Press,\u00a02009). She is currently writing a book titled\u00a0<em>Composing Collectivities: Appetite, Encounters, and the Not-Yet of Politics<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Please contact Regan Koch (<a class=\"\" title=\"mailto:r.koch@qmul.ac.uk\" href=\"mailto:r.koch@qmul.ac.uk\">r.koch@qmul.ac.uk<\/a>), Pen Woods (<a class=\"\" href=\"mailto:p.woods@qmul.ac.uk\">p.woods@qmul.ac.uk<\/a>) or Tiffany Watt Smith (<a class=\"\" href=\"mailto:t.k.watt-smith@qmul.ac.uk\">t.k.watt-smith@qmul.ac.uk<\/a>) for the Zoom details<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Through an exploration of crowds, affect, and the political, Deborah Gould&#8217;s talk considers left activist compositional tasks amid the felt contingency of the current moment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":160,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/160"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1828"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1836,"href":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1828\/revisions\/1836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects.history.qmul.ac.uk\/emotions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}