‘What can a crowd do?’: revisiting Tarde after the demise of the public

Abstract

Until now, Gabriel Tarde's essay ‘The Public and the Crowd’ was partially inaccessible to Anglophone scholars, as Terry Clark's 1969 translation – the only version in English – omitted nearly half the essay. As a result, the essay is typically understood as a diatribe against the primitive, uncivilized crowd, cast as the diametrical opponent of an eminently reasonable and thoroughly modern public. The pages that follow correct this lapse by providing the remaining portions of Tarde's essay in English. As will become clear, this translation reveals that Tarde was no champion of modernity, nor did he consistently celebrate the ascendant public's conquest of the savage crowd. In the process, the translation casts doubt upon rigidly ideological readings of Tarde, while lending support to a more politically ambivalent interpretation of his ideas. In its most open-ended moments, the newly translated segments recall Tarde's early affirmative statements about crowds and are suggestive of clear continuities throughout his work.

Keywords:

• communication
• crowds
• imitation
• mob mentality
• publics
• suggestion
• Tarde

Notes

Tarde's essay was originally published in 1898 as ‘Le Public et la Foule’ in La Revue de Paris, and later republished in Gabriel Tarde's L'opinion et la foule (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1901). The essay was partially translated into English by Terry Clark in 1969 as ‘The Public and the Crowd’ in Gabriel Tarde on communication and social influence. Selected Papers, ed. by Terry N. Clark (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1969).