But it is possible to envision that there could be, as happened in Genoa in July 2001, panic to a degree sufficient to fuck up the cybernetic programming and pass through various social groups/milieus, panic that would go beyond the annihil…Speed upholds institutions. Slowness cuts off flows. The kinetic problem, properly speaking, in politics, thus isn't about choosing between two kinds of revolt but about abandoning oneself to a pulsation, of exploring other intensifications…But it also means that these other rhythms, as manifestations of ontological wobbliness, have always had a creative political function. Canetti himself also discusses how on the one hand "the rapid repetition by which steps are added onto s…
Elias Canetti
writer · 3 mentions across 1 reading
In this course
Canetti's concept of mass behavior and panic appears primarily through his analysis of how crowds move and organize themselves through rhythmic coordination—a framework the readings mobilize to understand both how institutions maintain control through speed and how disruption (panic, slowness, desynchronization) might interrupt cybernetic systems of social management. His work on "mass" provides the theoretical vocabulary for distinguishing between commanded rhythms that sustain power and the creative political potentials of ontological wobbliness or rhythmic rupture. He functions here as a theorist of crowd dynamics whose insights into repetition, motion, and collective behavior ground arguments about resistance to algorithmic and institutional control.
Mentioned in 1 reading
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