Crowds and Power
{{Short description|1960 book by Elias Canetti}}
{{More footnotes needed|date=July 2020}}
{{Infobox book
| image = CrowdsAndPower.jpg
| author = Elias Canetti
| pub_date = 1960
| title_orig = Masse und Macht
| caption = First Edition
| language = German
| country = Germany
| translator = Carol Stewart
}}
{{italic title}}
Crowds and Power ({{langx|de|Masse und Macht}}) is a 1960 book by Elias Canetti, dealing with the dynamics of crowds and "packs" and the question of how and why crowds obey power of rulers. Canetti draws a parallel between ruling and paranoia. Also, the memoirs of Daniel Paul Schreber are analyzed with an implicit critique of Sigmund Freud{{Citation needed|date=May 2022}} and Gustave Le Bon.{{Citation needed|date=May 2022}}
The book was translated from German into English by Carol Stewart in 1962 and published by Gollancz.
Overview
Although wide-ranging in its erudition, this essay is not scholarly or academic in a conventional way. Rather, it reads a bit like a manual written by someone outside the human race explaining to another outsider in concise and highly metaphoric language how people form mobs and manipulate power. However, Canetti also uses "we" in his text and does not dissociate from humanity.
On asking questions:
"On the questioner the effect is a feeling of enhanced power. He enjoys this and consequentially asks more and more questions; every answer he receives is an act of submission. Personal freedom consists largely in having a defense against questions. The most blatant tyranny is the one which asks the most blatant questions."Crowds and Power, p. 285
This work remains important for the insights it provided into the Eastern European upheaval which can be understood within the framework Canetti puts forth.Kiss (2004), p.730 It shows the growth of crowds and their power against even the power of the state.
Notes
{{reflist}}
Bibliography
- {{cite journal|last1=Brill|first1=Lesley|authorlink1=Lesley Brill|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3318363 |title=Terrorism, Crowds and Power, and the Dogs of War|journal=Anthropological Quarterly|volume=76|issue=1 Winter |year=2003|pages=87–94|doi=10.1353/anq.2003.0004 |jstor=3318363 |s2cid=144861590 |url-access=subscription}}
- {{cite book
| last = Canetti
| first = Elias
| authorlink= Elias Canetti
| title = Crowds and Power
| publisher = Farrar, Straus and Giroux
| date = 1984
| location = New York
| isbn =0-374-51820-3
}}
- {{cite journal|last1=Honneth|first1=Axel|authorlink1=Axel Honneth|title=The Perpetuation of the State of Nature: on the Cognitive Content of Elias Canetti's Crowds and Power|journal=Thesis Eleven|year=1996|volume=45|pages=69–85|doi=10.1177/0725513696001045007 |s2cid=144262268 }}
- {{cite journal|last1=Kiss|first1=Endre|authorlink1=Endre Kiss|title=Does mass psychology renaturalize political theory? On the methodological originality of 'Crowds and Power'|journal=The European Legacy: Toward New Paradigms|volume=9|issue=6|year=2004|pages=725–738|doi=10.1080/1084877042000311581 |s2cid=144059558 }}
- McClelland, John: "The Place of Elias Canetti's Crowds and Power in the History of Western Social and Political Thought." Thesis Eleven 1996 45: 16–27.
- {{cite journal|last1=Phillips|first1=William|authorlink1=William Phillips (editor)|url=http://www.nybooks.com/articles/13778|title=History on the Couch.|journal=The New York Review of Books|volume=1|issue=1|date= February 1, 1963}}
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Category:1960 non-fiction books
Category:Books about crowd psychology
Category:Books by Elias Canetti
Category:German non-fiction books