Gustave Le Bon

In this paper, I explore the concept of multitude according to the writings of Toni Negri, Michael Hardt and Paolo Virno and in opposition to the concept of mass, developed by the French thinker Gustave Le Bon.
Multitude appears as a kind of political subject, which is based on plurality, difference and cooperation. In addition, I claim that, though multitude effectively contributed to modify the current politics in
many countries, it has been more significant in the field of economics. The multitude has become a productive agent in the context of the cognitive capitalism (and what we have called the capitalism of the commons) that is more convenient for the economical goals than the mass. In this space we can see the emergence of a depoliticised face of the multitude.

Un mayor desarrollo de esta cuestión puede ser leído aquí:

https://www.academia.edu/22660452/Senderos_nuevos_del_capital_trabajo_consumo_y_producci%C3%B3n_de_subjetividad_2016_

Dieser Aufsatz liest das während des Ersten Weltkriegs begonnene Lustspiel-Fragment Timon der Redner als einen Versuch HofmannsthaIs, ausgehend von der Geld-thematik und Figurentypik bei Shakespeare zu einer kritischen Inszenierung des mo-dernen Massenstaates und dessen Sozialdynamiken zu gelangen. Hierbei stützte er sich auf sozialpsychologische Studien Sigmund Freuds und Gustave Le Bons sowie auf Max Webers Herrschaftssoziologie. Als Wirkungsabsicht hinter dieser Ironisie-rung des allegorisierten Masse-Führermodells zeichnet sich die Re-Etablierung von legitimen Autoritätsstrukturen im Faszinosum der Dichtung ab, welche das Politi-sche authentisch gestaltet. This survey interprets Hofmannsthal's fragmented adaptation of Shakespeare's Timon of Athens as a comedy on the masses of modernity. Combining contemporary theories of the crowd (Freud, Le Bon, Weber) with the staging of the political and economic sphere in Shakespeare's works, HofmannsthaI tried to elaborate critical poetics of the modern state and its most urgent dangers. His ironical dramatization of brute anarchy versus corrupted aristocracy tended to re-establish a consciousness of true authority-which should be found in literature. »Hofmannsthai sehnt sich nach dem extensiven, vielseitigen und polyphonen Leben Shakespeares, des alten englischen Dramas.« (Georg Lukacs, 1911). »Nie in meinem ganzen Leben hat das productive Element diesen Raum ein-genommen, von unten her mit solcher Kraft sich nach oben gedrängt, meine bürgerliche Lebensführung so erschwert und gewissermaßen ironisiert wie in diesen Jahren seit 1916. Das was nach oben will, sind Massen, die ich natürlich seit weit längerer Zeit in mir trage.« (HofmannsthaI an Hermann Bahr, 15.VI. 1918).1 Timon der Redner gehört zu den vergleichsweise wenig beachteten Arbeiten Hugo von Hofmannsthals. 2 Aus den überlieferten Materialien des schon 1975 1

Cosa significa protestare per le strade, perché occupare uno spazio nella città? Veniamo da un recente risveglio, da anni che hanno riportato la politica nelle piazze e nelle strade. In tutto il mondo uomini e donne sono scesi in piazza manifestando un'urgenza condivisa di resistenza, di riappropriazione degli spazi e della capacità di agire e fare politica a partire dalle vite. Come comprendere la specificità di queste esperienze? Perché chiamarle rivolte urbane e non rivoluzioni? Quali sono gli strumenti per leggere una rivolta senza astrarre, generalizzare, neutralizzare? Stare per le strade è la pratica di 'stasis' che crea lo spazio per la rivolta e contemporaneamente dispone un modo affettivo di vivere lo spazio urbano. Durante una protesta, la corporeità è esposta in tutta la sua intensità appassionata e vulnerabile. Il corpo al centro permette di cogliere la relazione che questi eventi intessono con gli spazi urbani, il nuovo senso della politica che propongono e i rapporti tra uomini e donne nel momento della protesta.

It is widely believed that the philosophical concept of ‘tabula rasa’ originates with Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding and refers to a state in which a child is as formless as a blank slate. Given that both these beliefs are entirely false, this article will examine why they have endured from the eighteenth century to the present. Attending to the history of philosophy, psychology, psychiatry and feminist scholarship it will be shown how the image of the tabula rasa has been used to signify an originary state of formlessness, against which discourses on the true nature of the human being can differentiate their position. The tabula rasa has operated less as a substantive position than as a whipping post. However, it will be noted that innovations in psychological theory over the past decade have begun to undermine such narratives by rendering unintelligible the idea of an ‘originary’ state of human nature.

This is an overview of the emergence of psychology in France, beginning with the philosophical origins, and moving into the psychoanalytic, psychiatric, and psychological fields.  It may be useful for some research papers on the topic, especially in summarizing some key ideas and figures in early French psychology.

Gustav Le Bon's key 1895 text on mass psychology has long been cited as an important work in terms of shaping sociology in the early twentieth century.  His thesis has contributed to studies of the effects of media on public opinion, and in helping to shape the attitudes of public relations gurus such as Freud's nephew Edward Bernays.

Whilst the Le Bon's study is mostly disparaging of "psychological crowds", and the ease with which they can be apparently motivated by simplistic images, maxims and concepts, it cannot escape the readers notice that his observations are largely based on generalisations themselves.  The lack of empirical data to back up his assertions, however compelling, leads to the assumption that "The Crowd" is largely a book designed for consumption by the very thing it criticises, the popular masses.

Even with this paradox in mind, the book still provides some cohesive insight into the psychology of populism and mass appeal, arguably a major driver of society that is still so very prevalent today. The difficulty of attaining empirical data on the unconscious workings of large groupings of people is a major factor to bear in mind, and a consideration to concede to when criticising Le Bon's methodology.

"The substitution of the unconscious actions of crowds for the conscious activity of individuals is one of the principal characteristics of the present age."

The author's intention could be theorised as one of populist appeal, hence the generalised aspects of his observation, or an attempt at a form of autonomous warning, attesting to the dangers of allowing oneself and one's rationality to be drawn into the numbing effects of the horde. To either of these considerations I cannot give a definitive answer beyond the realm of speculation.  On the note of speculation, upon reading of this book, one can certainly reach a tentative conclusion that is through the mass permeation of the speculative, that pack mentality within a crowd rapidly spreads.

http://www.whenthenewsstops.org/2017/01/the-crowd-study-of-popular-mind-by.html

The main thesis of this study stems from the work of Romanian philosopher and historian of religion Ioan Petru Culianu (1950-1991), who suggested that modern disciplines such as psychology, public relations, and modern media emerge from the magic arts of the Renaissance, and in particular from a brief work by Giordano Bruno titled De Vinculis in Genere (A General Account of Bonding). Taking Dr. Culianu’s thesis as a starting point, I elaborate in Part I and Part II a historical journey that links the basic principles of Western erotic magic with 18th century medicine (animal magnetism), 19th century medicine and psychology (hypnosis and psychoanalysis), and 20th century public relations, advertising, propaganda, modern media, and media warfare. In Part III, I investigate the influence of these magical practices on counterculture and the digital world. The last chapter deals with the repercussions of this “magic system” in the media and disinformation establishment of contemporary Russia, where the techniques derived from Renaissance magic have run a particularly troubling course.

Nancy, éditions Arbre Bleu, 2022  ------- Célèbre pour avoir écrit les Réflexions sur la violence qui furent diversement interprétées, Georges Sorel (1847-1922) a pourtant produit une œuvre qui ne prête pas à ambiguïté sur le fond. Se voulant « serviteur désintéressé du prolétariat », il n’a cessé de questionner ce qui pourrait amener les groupes ouvriers organisés à préparer le chemin vers une société libérée des entraves asservissantes du capitalisme.
Se plaçant dans les pas de Karl Marx qu’il a contribué à acclimater en France, Georges Sorel s’est employé à ruiner le prestige de la culture bourgeoise et les stratégies politiques de séduction mises en œuvre par l’État républicain. La résistance qu’il concevait était à la mesure de l’enjeu : elle commandait d’opérer la « scission » par l’action directe et la construction de l’autonomie prolétarienne selon des principes qu’il partageait avec les syndicalistes révolutionnaires.
Ce livre apporte un regard neuf sur l’imaginaire politique de Sorel. Aux études que Willy Gianinazzi consacre à des facettes insoupçonnées de sa pensée s’ajoutent des écrits engagés du philosophe dont la plupart, publiés en Italie, l’autre « patrie » de Sorel, sont restés inconnus en France.
Plus que jamais, Sorel vaut d’être redécouvert et lu : son enthousiasme à repérer et élucider les allants populaires qui nous meuvent vers la liberté est communicatif.

In Science in Context, 17 (Winter 2004), 423-66
This is the full introduction for this guest-edited issue on modern art and science.  Part I contains a history of this topic and a discussion of methodology; Part II on Cubism and Futurism appears here as well as in a separate file that follows.

How Propaganda Became Public Relations pulls back the curtain on propaganda: how it was born, how it works, and how it has masked the bulk of its operations by rebranding itself as public relations. Cory Wimberly uses archival materials and wide variety of sources ― Foucault’s work on governmentality, political economy, liberalism, mass psychology, and history ― to mount a genealogical challenge to two commonplaces about propaganda. First, modern propaganda did not originate in the state and was never primarily located in the state; instead, it began and flourished as a for-profit service for businesses. Further, propaganda is not focused on public beliefs and does not operate mainly through lies and deceit; propaganda is an apparatus of government that aims to create the publics that will freely undertake the conduct its clients’ desire.

Businesses have used propaganda since the early twentieth century to construct the laboring, consuming, and voting publics that they needed to secure and grow their operations. Over that time, corporations have become the most numerous and well-funded apparatuses of government in the West, operating privately and without democratic accountability. Wimberly explains why liberal strategies of resistance have failed and a new focus on creating mass subjectivity through democratic means is essential to countering propaganda.

This book offers a sophisticated analysis that will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in social and political philosophy, Continental philosophy, political communication, the history of capitalism, and the history of public relations.

The paper critically reconstructs the crowd psychological heritage in phenomenological and social science emotion research. It shows how the founding figures of phenomenology and sociology uncritically adopted Le Bon's crowd psychological imagery as well as what I suggest calling the disease model of emotion transfer. Against this background, it can be examined how Le Bon's understanding of emotional contagion as an automatic, involuntary, and uncontrollable mechanism has remained a dominant force in emotion research until today. However, a closer look at phenomenological descriptions and empirical investigations of how emotion's spread shows that there is little evidence supporting Le Bon's crowd psychological framework. Thus, I suggest that the disease model should be dismissed in favor of more plausible approaches to interpersonal emotion dynamics.

Ernst Jünger’s detective novel 'Eine gefährliche Begegnung' (1985) dramatizes a clash between the concept of adventure and the principles of order and modern scientific inquiry. Set in Paris, in 1888, the text tells the story of a murder investigation. Two adventurers embody, respectively, adventure’s origins in medieval chivalry and adventure’s eighteenth- and nineteenth-century form of colonial exploration; the detective embodies nineteenth-century advances in applied science as well as modern anthropological and psychological theories. Jünger’s narrative engages with defining nineteenth-century texts, such as Bertillon’s writings on anthropometric identification, Cesare Lombroso’s theories on the nature of the criminal, and Gustave Le Bon’s analysis of mass psychology. These texts articulate a rationalist ethos, advocated in Jünger’s novel by the detective. The opposing principles of unregulated individual freedom and a fanciful code of honor, embodied by the adventurers, are depicted as relics of a bygone age, whose passing can only be lamented, not remedied.

This paper draws from contemporary psychoanalytic theory as well as nineteenth-century crowd theory to critique Louis Althusser’s account of the ideological interpellation of the subject. I argue that rather than ideology interpellating the individual as a subject, bourgeois ideology interpellates the subject as an individual. By “bourgeois ideology” I mean the loose set of ideas and apparatuses associated with European modernity, an instrumental concept of reason, and the emergence of the capitalist mode of production. The advantage of reversing the Althusserian account is that the subject is not pre-constrained to the individual form, a form that is itself always already as failing and impossible as it is assumed and demanded. In Althusser’s version, the individuality that emerges in history is posited as universal, a given. In mine, the individual form is itself the problem; it’s a coercive and unstable product of the enclosure of the common in never-ceasing efforts to repress, deny, and foreclose collective political subjectivity. The individual is thus a form of capture. Rather than natural or given, the individual form encloses into a singular bounded body collective bodies, ideas, affects, desires, and drives. There is nothing necessary about the link between subjectivity and individuality; it is an effect contingent to the array of processes that converge into bourgeois modernity.

The thesis of this paper is that with the advent of experimental psychology, this “social” or
“cultural” dimension, long a central component of psychological research, was transformed into a
declaration and analysis of the scope of the self: this self was plastic, not only comprehensible from
both experimental and social viewpoints but also the intended target of sociocultural and even
psychological reform. Because psychology spanned that far, it was the discipline through which
rational and positive comprehension and reform could occur, in ways other sciences could not
match. Such reform was not merely social reform—it promised to affect the “individual” himself.

In support of this argument, the essay considers Wilhelm Wundt's ethnopsychology (Völkerpsychologie), the development of experimental psychology alongside "crowd psychology" in France, and Hugo Münsterberg's psychotechnics.

''La "Psicologia delle folle", edita nel 1895, costituì e costituisce tuttora una vera e propria miniera d'oro per chi vuole comprendere il comportamento della folla. Lenin, Stalin, Hitler lessero meticolosamente l'opera di Le Bon e l'uso di determinate tecniche di persuasione nella loro dittatura sembra trarre ispirazione dai suoi consigli. "Qualsiasi bugia, se ripetuta frequentemente, si trasformerà gradualmente in verità". (Hitler). Perfino Mussolini fu un fervido ammiratore dell'opera dello psicologo francese. "Ho letto tutte le opere di Le Bon - diceva - e non so quante volte abbia riletto la sua 'Psicologia delle folle'. È un'opera capitale alla quale ancora oggi spesso ritorno". Il moderno dittatore, secondo Le Bon, deve saper cogliere i desideri e le aspirazioni segrete della folla e proporsi come l'incarnazione di tali desideri e come colui che è capace di realizzare tali aspirazioni. Ciò che conta non è portare a compimento tali improbabili sogni quanto far credere alla folla di esserne capace: "Nella storia - aggiunge Le Bon - l'apparenza ha sempre avuto un ruolo più importante della realtà". Un testo incredibilmente attuale che ogni cittadino, per non divenire 'mera parte di una massa facilmente manovrabile' dovrebbe conoscere.''

The bellybutton as both a reminder of the womb and our 'diploma of independence' from it,  the author suggests we take the bellybutton as a new metaphor of the self.

Reminding us that the "omphalus stone" at Delphi was the mythic center of the Greek world of its time, the book is about the logic of the self in regards to the concept of civilization. As we move on to the next Axial Age, most of us dread a painful and hazardous process, and from a humanistic standpoint, some fear a still-birth.  But the author suggests that given a little mild self-derision at human ambitions we can grease the passage through the birth canal with hope.  Tansson believes the coming era might  be fashioned as a new womb of Humanism such that future generations of children shall be born free.  We shall all happily accept Gaia's motherly monicker (knowingly tied to the apron strings of matter) “my little bellybutton!”  At the very least we shall take it on the chin when someone assaults us with the 'navel yell': “you bellybutton, you!”  For we, even the greatest of all times, must be put in our place.

""On December 28, 1895, German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen disclosed his discovery of X rays to the public. Just a few months later, Guglielmo Marconi successfully demonstrated his wireless system at Salisbury Plain, England. This article traces the relations between the early histories of wireless and X ray technology. It does so by highlighting the role played by psychic research to open the connections between different technologies and knowledges. The disclosure of occult connections between them contributes to locate the cultural reception of wireless around 1900 in a wider cosmology of rays and invisible forces.

French Version
Le 28 Decembre 1895, le physicien allemand Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen révélait au monde sa découverte des rayons X. Quelques mois plus tard, Guglielmo Marconi faisait une démonstration de son système de télégraphie sans-fil en Angleterre, à Salisbury Plain. En examinant la parapsychologie comme un champ propice à la mise en relation entre les technologies et les connaissances les plus hétéroclites, cet article reconstruit les liens entre la télégraphie sans-fil et les rayons X. L'étude de ces liens occultes permet de situer la reception culturelle de la transmission sans-fils autour de 1900 dans une cosmologie des rayons et forces invisibles.""

This article frames Trump's politics through a genealogy of propaganda, going back to P.T. Barnum in the 19th century and moving through the crowd psychologist Gustave Le Bon and the public relations counsel Edward Bernays in the 20th. This genealogy shows how propaganda was developed as a tool by eager professionals who would hire themselves to the elite to control the masses. Trump’s propaganda presents a break in that he has not only removed professionals from control over his propaganda, he has mobilized it as a force against them. His lower and middle class supporters may not materially gain from Trump’s politics, but they get to vent their ressentiment on the professional class and see them too become the targets of propagandistic control. Ultimately, the conflict between working class whites, those without college degrees, and professionals earns little for its participants and occludes the role that elites play in class dynamics in the United States. This article adds substance and context to the claims that Trump’s appeal is anti-professional while showing that the claims that his supporters are ‘voting against their interests’ does not reflect the real psychological benefits many Trumpists get from supporting him.

RESUMO Este texto tem por meta analisar um conjunto documental pouco explorado referente às pesquisas do médico Raimundo Nina Rodrigues sobre fenômenos coletivos registrados entre o final do século XIX e inicio do XX. Pretendemos dar ênfase a algumas reflexões do referido autor e, especialmente, ao diálogo que ele estabeleceu com profissionais estrangeiros do campo da sociologia, da antropologia e da saúde mental. O esforço intelectual de Nina é como um testemunho do nascimento de um campo de estudos cujas primeiras linhas estavam sendo traçadas no Brasil: a psicologia das massas ou loucura das multidões. Nina resgata uma rica tradição de estudos para abordar, à sua maneira, casos de epidemias coletivas e religiosas no Brasil, vinculadas à população negra e mestiça. Palavras-chave Nina Rodrigues – multidões – loucura – religião – miscigenação. ABSTRACT This text is aimed to analyse an underexplored set of documents related to the research referring to the physician Raimundo Nina Rodrigues on collective phenomena recorded between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We intend to emphasize some reflections of that author and especially the dialogue which he established with foreign professionals in the field of sociology, anthropology and mental health.Ninàs intellectual effort is like a witness of the birth of a field of study whose first lines were being drawn in Brazil: crowd psychology or the madness of crowds. Nina rescues a rich tradition of studies to address, in its way, cases of collective and religious epidemics in Brazil, linked to the black and miscegenated population. Keywords Nina Rodrigues – crowds – madness – religion – miscegenation. Introdução É possível afirmar que Raimundo Nina Rodrigues foi um dos primeiros intelectuais brasileiros a, sistematicamente, teorizar e formular hipóteses sobre o campo da chamada Psicologia das Multidões. Esse aspecto foi apontado, pela primeira vez pelo médico Arthur de Araújo Pereira Ramos (1903-1949) no prefácio do livro As collectividades anormais, coletânea de textos de Nina Rodrigues, reunida pelo primeiro em 1939: Nina Rodrigues, já apontado como o iniciador dos estudos de etnografia e psicologia social do negro, no Brasil, já conhecido como estudioso de nossos problemas de raça e de cultura, aclamado como uma das autoridades em criminologia e ciência penal.... talvez não fosse lembrado, pela nossa pobre ciência nacional, tão esquecida dos precursores, como um dos pioneiros do movimento da psicologia coletiva. No entanto o seu nome fora apontado pelos estudiosos europeus, como um dos fundadores da psicologia das multidões, um dos criadores da psicologia gregária, normal e patológica, ao lado dos Rossi, dos Si

En el presente ensayo estudiaremos algunas percepciones sobre la idea de multitud que aparecen a fines del siglo XIX y principios del XX. Lo haremos a través de la pluma de una selección de intelectuales que se interesaron por el análisis de la política moderna, los partidos, la burocracia, el parlamentarismo y la sociedad en Europa. Asimismo, nos apoyaremos en autores contemporáneos a nosotros, que nos brindarán una perspectiva histórica sobre las ideologías y  los fenómenos evocados en el argumento.
Este trabajo tiene la particularidad de no contener citas, debido a que era un requisito para su evaluación. Es parte de un trabajo para el Master en Historia de la Universidad Torcuato Di Tella

برز نجم لوبون في أواخر القرن التاسع عشر في منعطف تاريخي مهم احتدم فيه الصدام في أوربة بين أطروحتين اجتماعيتين واقتصاديتين في غاية الأهمية، هما أطروحات القائلين بالمساواة الإنسانية، والحقوق العامة للبشر، والتحرر الديني وغيره، وأطروحات الانغلاق على الذات، والعنصرية، والطبقية، والفوارق البشرية، وفي فترة بدت فيها الرأسمالية الفردية الصناعية تتسلم الراية من نظام الاقطاع الأميري السائد.

RESUMO: O artigo tem por objetivo comentar, em linhas gerais, o modo como Gustave Le Bon, em sua Psicologia das multidões, e Sigmund Freud, em sua Psicologia das massas e análise do eu, justificam a aplicação de categorias da psicologia ao âmbito social. Trata-se de uma discussão que tem como plano de fundo a investigação das causas da regressão social. Para ambos os autores, haverá nas multidões ou massas uma dimensão inconsciente, um estado de sugestão. Mas vão se diferenciar, no entanto, no uso de determinadas categorias, como a de "prestígio", em Le Bon, e a de "libido", em Freud, e nos tipos de organizações sociais exemplares para a aplicação de categorias da psicologia. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Le Bon; Freud; Psicologia das multidões; Psicologia das massas; regressão social. ABSTRACT: This paper aims to comment, at large, how Gustave Le Bon, in his Psychologie de foules, and Sigmund Freud, in his Massenpsychologie und Ichanalyse, justify the application of categories of psychology to the social sphere. The background of the discussion is the investigation of the causes of social regression. For both authors there will be in the crowds or masses an unconscious aspect, a state of suggestion. But they will differ, however, in the use of certain categories, such as the one of "prestige", in Le Bon, and the one of "libido", in Freud, and in types of exemplary social organizations for the application of categories of psychology. KEYWORDS: Le Bon; Psychology of crowds; Psychology of the masses; social regression.

Ce nouveau volume de « Suppléments » à la correspondance du «philosophe dansant» lève, avec 140 lettres inédites, une partie du voile sur ses relations avec Alfred Jarry, Octave Uzanne, Rubén Darío ou encore Guillaume Apollinaire. Les deux premiers tomes ont paru en 2010.

"Im Jahre 1936 erschien das Buch Castellio gegen Calvin oder Ein Gewissen gegen die
Gewalt von dem österreichischen Autor Stefan Zweig, der in einer Zeit des Massenwahns
und der Massenmanipulation mit seiner historischen Biografie für den Leser nicht zu
übersehende Gegenwartsbezüge darstellte. Dabei muss festgehalten werden, dass man
das Werk “nur bei sehr weiter Ausdehnung des Begriffs” als Biografie bezeichnen
könnte (Hamacher, 2003: 169; Zimmermann, 2006: 323-330). Der Autor versucht
anhand der Biografie von Castellio, einem mittellosen Humanisten und Idealisten des
16. Jahrhunderts, der der geistigen Tyrannei, dem Fanatismus und damit verbunden der
Diktatur den Kampf ansagt, den Widerstand und die aussichtslose Fehde eines Einzelnen
gegenüber einem gesamten Staatsapparat zu veranschaulichen.
Ziel dieses Beitrags soll es sein, ausgehend von dem unverkennbaren Einfluss Le
Bons und Sigmund Freuds auf das Zweigsche Werk, massenpsychologische Aspekte
darzustellen. Denn die Ereignisse zur Zeit des Faschismus, die Europa in seinen
Grundfesten erschütterte, waren zugleich auch immer Massenereignisse. Ferner sollen
anhand des Werkes einerseits die Bezüge zum Nationalsozialismus und andererseits
der Einfluss einer Diktatur auf Sprache, Gesellschaft und Mentalität veranschaulicht
werden. Letztendlich soll dieses Werk verdeutlichen, dass radikale Veränderungen der
bestehenden politischen und gesellschaftlichen Verhältnisse wie gewaltsame Umstürze,
Systemwechsel und Staatsgewalt in der Literatur divers reflektiert werden. Infolgedessen
soll dargestellt werden, wie diese Umsetzung bei Zweig erfolgt."

In a group of drawings accompanying the first English edition of Oscar Wilde’s one-act play Salome, Aubrey Beardsley invented a grotesque imagery of complex symbolism that interjected the text of the play, exacerbating the latter’s thematic association of female libido with death and destruction. When analyzed against the background of contemporaneous scientific discourses on evolution, sexual differentiation and pathological female atavism, the world as imagined by Beardsley can be shown to have been in alignment with a novel definition of nature that established the disquieting alterity of the female as its foundation. In this essay I demonstrate that depicting the Biblical Judean princess Salomé as harbinger of pathological atavism and degeneration, Beardsley selectively drew his inspiration from nineteenth-century scientific texts and illustrations by naturalists, embryologists, criminal anthropologists and others, a discourse which increasingly defined the woman as an uncanny agent of nature, and a symptom of evolutionary reversion.

"Dès l’abord de son ouvrage synthétique qu’accueillirent de très nombreux lecteurs, Gustave Le Bon annonce que «l’âge où nous entrons sera véritablement l’ÈRE DES FOULES.» Concurremment à ses contemporains du tournant du XXe siècle, Gabriel Tarde, de Scipio Sighele et de Henry Fournial, ce polygraphe détermine alors «les principaux caractères de l’individu en foule» : «[…] évanouissement de la personnalité consciente, prédominance de la personnalité inconsciente, orientation par voie de suggestion et de contagion des sentiments et des idées dans un même sens, tendance à transformer immédiatement en actes les idées suggérées […].» Prolifèrent par la suite des discours scientifiques (ceux des criminologues, des médecins, des sociologues, etc.) et pseudo-scientifiques (ceux des «psychologues des foules» autodéclarés et autres polémistes) examinant le phénomène des mouvements de masse, lesquels se multiplient depuis l’armistice.
La foule joue également un rôle capital dans la production littéraire de l’entre-deux-guerres, en raison de ce foisonnement d’ouvrages parus dans le sillage des thèses soutenues par les spécialistes. D’innombrables romans représentent au moins une scène de rassemblement – que ce soit une démonstration, une émeute ou un meeting – pour la mise en texte de laquelle sont récupérées les qualifications souvent dépréciatives ainsi que les grandes métaphores (animalières, aquatiques, atmosphériques, ignées, etc.) illustratrices de ces traits qu’on découvre dans les publications savantes.
On peut dès lors se demander ce que la littérature apporte de nouveau à la question. Maints romanciers d’orientation idéologique parfois opposée, comme Aragon, Céline, Martin du Gard, Nizan ou Sartre, intègrent des attroupements dans leurs œuvres non pas seulement pour fournir un décor réaliste aux péripéties de leurs héros, mais dans le but de mettre au jour d’autres significations que ces phénomènes sociaux comportent en puissance. La présente communication propose de lire ces extraits selon une perspective sociocritique afin de dégager les moyens sémiotiques, stylistiques et narratologiques déployés par quelques-unes des meilleures plumes de l’entre-deux-guerres pour mettre en œuvre un traitement novateur du motif de la foule tout en proposant une vision de la société valorisant la communauté, le partage, la présence aux autres, etc. En effet, ces écrivains fondent, chacun à leur manière, l’utopie d’un vivre ensemble imaginable, sinon immédiatement réalisable dans la France divisée des années 1930. Il s’agira donc de comprendre comment s’élaborent ces utopies sociales et comment elles s’articulent entre elles."

O presente texto procura promover uma análise do Psicologia de grupo e análise do Eu, de Sigmund Freud (1921), visando explicitar e sublinhar as ideias políticas e antropológicas que estão por trás das escolhas teóricas feitas pelo autor no âmbito da psicologia social, mapeando, posteriormente, o impacto dessas escolhas sobre sua teoria dos instintos. Para tanto, utilizamos principalmente duas balizas. A primeira é uma caracterização histórica e teórica daquilo que chamamos de discurso moderno a respeito das multidões, paradigmaticamente caracterizado em termos políticos e filosóficos, e tendo ramificações importantes para a psicologia social clássica do final do século XIX e início do XX, com a qual Freud dialoga de perto. A segunda é a concepção antropológica que Freud desenvolve no Totem e Tabu (1914), e que depende fundamentalmente de uma certa imagem do ser humano primitivo. Demonstramos como essa imagem desempenha um papel de destaque nas explicações de nosso autor a respeito do desenvolvimento psíquico individual, acompanhando os raciocínios que relacionam mutuamente a suposta “horda primitiva”, o conceito de “ideal do Eu” e as concepções psicanalíticas de moralidade, sexualidade e religião. Finalmente, lançando mão de ilustrações antropológicas e etológicas diferentes daquelas empregadas originalmente por Freud, sugerimos alguns caminhos alternativos para recolocar os problemas relativos ao fenômeno da multidão a partir do sistema teórico freudiano.