8 - The Crowd: Figuring the Democracy to Come

Summary

The crowd, suddenly where there was nothing before, is a mysterious and universal phenomenon. A few people may have been standing together – five, ten or twelve, not more; nothing has been announced, nothing is expected. Suddenly everything is swarming with people [Soudain tout est noir de monde] and more come streaming from all asides as though streets had only one direction. Most of them do not know what has happened and, if questioned, have no answer; but they hurry to be there where most other people are. There is a determination in their movement that is quite different from the expression of ordinary curiosity. It seems as if the movement of some of them transmits itself to the others. But that is not all; they have a goal, which is there before they can find words for it. The goal is the most intense darkness where the most people are gathered. (Canetti 1984: 16)

These sentences, taken from the very first pages of Elias Canetti's Crowds and Power, describe rather well how I hear ‘Democracy to Come’ [La démocratie à venir], the title of our colloquium. I understand this title quite literally as ‘the crowd will come’ [la foule va arriver], the people are going to flood in: in a minute from now, five minutes, an hour, in x amount of time, the greatest number will come, ‘the most intense darkness’, the gathering, the mass. And I foresee this real and fantasised moment when this assertion – both banal and full of meaning – can be made: ‘Suddenly everything is swarming with people.’

I have long dreamed of having Canetti and Derrida walk together, at least for a moment. Their meeting has always seemed, to me, necessary. The time has come, and it is Baudelaire whom I ask to introduce them to each other. I remember Derrida reading Baudelaire's poem ‘Crowds’ in a seminar:

It is not given to every man to take a bath of multitude: enjoying a crowd is an art; and only he can relish a debauch of vitality at the expense of the human species, on whom, in his cradle, a fairy bestowed the love of masks and masquerading [du travestissement et du masque], the hatred of home and the passion for roaming. (Baudelaire 1974: 20)