The will of the people—that voice that hardly ever seems to speak—what a phenomenal dream is that? Unity without tyranny, all seeking the good of all, a binding together that makes all free.[1] The beating heart of the democratic dream of our society. But what is a heart without arms and legs? How does that dream gain a body that moves, acts, and realizes itself? How do so many different people ever come together? In the manner of a shapeless writhing mass of course! A many headed monster of congealed wills that seeks with many eyes and hands the brushing touch of an intangible justice. That transcendent form when at last the public will realizes its power! The public will—your will—that has risen, fallen, and changed from a great force to an uncertain one.
Recall those days so long ago when the people stood in that field of justice before the executioner’s scaffold “as witnesses and almost co-adjutors of [the] law.”[2] Who could, in the case of unbearable injustice, “intervene, physically: enter by force into the punitive mechanism” and in doing so “redistribute its effects”—foist injustice upon its real perpetrators![3] You, the mighty “crowd… a compact mass, a locus of multiple exchanges, individualities merging together [into] a collective effect!”[4] One body, bearing down upon the wrongdoers with a singular determination. Standing tall and demanding justice, when at last enough was felt to be enough.
You who stood not just before the scaffold, but arose first in France in that “French Revolution” and then again and again across the world to create our democratic dream that has ever since become recurring.[5] And at the heart of that dream: the formation of the mass from the crowd, momentarily writhing before becoming determined and charging itself with its divine duty; with the pursuit of plainly obvious justice.
In that crowd, every individual member became invisible—cloaked against retaliation by anonymity. So they were free to express their wills in action and reaction, and from these communications formed an ongoing conversation of deeds amongst the crowd. Supporting or refuting the common scene before them—until at last a chord was struck! And when what was just became so obvious and necessary, the crowd turned to collective action—into a force seeking justice and clashing with those failing to create it. A force that is more than just collective action: the crowd, the movement, the public brought together in sympathy as a one body. For a moment. Unified in feeling, unified in will and so unified in action—when the world was simple enough.
But nay let me show you, let me channel for you a moment, that being, that thing—called the public will. ARISE, ARISE, you many-headed monster of feeling! Who knows, from time to time, just what to do! and at that time, a crashing wave of change you strike! ARISE, one who breathes out, with weighty lungs, the atmosphere of the moment! Who bathes in it, wallows, and breathes it in again—making and mending our life towards the organic construction of justice! The will of all for all!
I AWAKEN! Rising from my swaddling cloth—the crowd—to survey the scene. There I see them, the ones I am here to fight; I feel it in my bones! What has been done, what is being felt—what immense power runs through the threads of feeling that bind tight the crowd to form my body. And in that body, my veins are ripe for fire! For the roaring force that is the absolute demanding of justice! The one that springs up from the single spark of an action when the kindling says IT IS TIME.
As if chasing my own smoke, I rush towards the sky—a comet traveling in reverse. Determined to break through that cloud of injustice that hangs over us all and expose the sky—expose the justice—waiting above. A lance of brutal hope that skewers its way, writhing with indignation, through all obstacles and barriers. All in the perfect pursuit of the justice I first laid eyes on.
And in the shimmer of that lance, the person is seen no more.
At that time when finally it is enough.
I am the seamless shapeless mass that has a congealed will: the crowd, the movement, the historical moment! So often bathed in blood, but mere deaths, they are mere scratches on the flank of my unstoppable force! And my voice rings out, at last against power and oppression: “I AM, I WILL” and I will bring my will to bear and change this cruel world in which we live—and make at least this one thing right! Foucault, several years later you would have the audacity to ponder: why do people revolt?[6] IT IS BECAUSE OF ME! That is why. Because at some point injustice is clearly enough and must be righted; and it is in no other bloodstream than that of the shapeless mass of the popular will that runs the IRON STRENGTH to make that change. To, as we did at the moment when heads flew in France and the world changed forever, overturn the entire order of what would be to come.
And I may sleep only so long as the world is still just for my people…
Ah what a fiery spirit that shapeless mass is. A pity indeed that that is all it seems to be these days. Occasionally, it rises again, yes—such as in the summer of 2020—, but to what effect? Without a clear vista spread before it its power wanes so easily! The perfect demanding of justice, the congealing of the people’s wills, yes—but only when the stage is set; be it by accident or by design. And now so often the stage is set with utter madness, with obfuscated and complex problems about which no one can agree about or feel enough to gather themselves together into that crowd.
When things are clearer, it suffers still. The techniques of power have come a long way, and now often counter or direct that collective action. These days each person can be isolated and convinced, brought to see a different world by a personalized stream of information—meaning that shapeless mass, when it forms, often takes imaginary stands, goes a tad insane, and finally subjugates itself to power. Fizzling out or finding its direction directed. Powerless on your own, oh shapeless one.
AGAIN I RAISE MY HEAD! Proudly! As one body! Break me into my component atoms? HOW DARE YOU! You, with your little legs, your little feet, those spindly arms and torso, who claims to hold POWER? To Attempt to lead me, guide me, trick me? You would not dare you would not dare… I am in the end TOO STRONG, too adaptable, too virulent… you will never hold me down.
Damn you, damn you. You cannot rid yourself of me so easily! I WILL RETURN! Until the last fiber of connection is finally broken, until all but one person on the earth are really dead, consumed, subjugated, mechanized, isolated, I will merely be sleeping until I wake again! And then there will be blood, there will be blood…
THE WORLD WILL BE OVERTURNED BY THE CONGEALED HAND OF THE MASSES that comes for your throat, o powerful ones. That seeks at last what you can never give us! What you can never see! justice!
AND I!, AND I…
Overturned into what, shapeless one? What is a revolution without a new direction? Will things ever be obvious enough for you to find one?
You were once so strong. A force for popular justice in those days when governments were still weak. Now? NOW THEY CONJOUR THEE! Seamless shapeless mass with a congealed will, once made by its members for just purpose. Now it is only justice perceived—conclusions drawn from an elegantly painted reality tailor made for each… You have become creatable, a primordial jelly mass produced! People split apart with controlled means of communication, with controlled streams of information—they will think whatever is made most apparent. Their justice and the subject of their justice will come from that. When reality looms so high, full of problems without solutions—what is then your purpose? An untrue one, an antirevolutionary one, or an incomplete one, that is all…
So at last when the crowd comes together in outrage to demand justice, to push back the borders of power… It will be a manufactured outrage and a manufactured justice. And the shapeless mass will be one more tool of political struggles and the maintenance of the status quo. Oh how far you have fallen, great one. As we have seen on the 6th January, as we have seen in the four years before that, as we have seen in Europe at the breaking of the fictitious continent, as we see more subtly in Asia, Africa and south America—under the name of populism. Justice and the shapeless mass—in our massive world, so beyond the understanding of any person or action—well they hardly come together.
But do not fear there is still hope… reach out your hands, speak, listen, find differences and make them subtle, find strangers and truly make them friends.
And someday, maybe, we will change the world—and it is through these unmediated friendships and connections that change will flow. Perhaps for once as a kind mass, a hearing mass; accumulating everyday changes until at last they amount to a revolution. One that can, in extended dialogue, finally grasp the subtle world that the shapeless mass could not.
[1] Principles from: Rousseau, The Social Contract, book I ch. 6-7. See: https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/rousseau1762.pdf Reasonably considered foundational to what would become our ideas of democracy.
[2] Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish, Vintage, 1975 pg 61
[3] Foucault, pg 61, emphasis added
[4] Foucault, pg 201
[5] Toqueville, Alexis de, The Old Regime and the Revolution, trans John Boner, pg 36-37. To summarize: the French revolution, the first of all the democratic revolutions that were to follow, was based on an essential and increasingly obvious social truth: that the aristocracy were superfluous parasites on a struggling society. They did not run the government, or provide any public service (all this had been moved off into a more traditional modern beurocratic system), they simply taxed and lived off of the tax. And so some very hungry peasants began to wonder their purpose and then took up arms.
[6] Foucalt, Michel, Is it Useless to Revolt, 1979 in Foucault and the Iranian Revolution by Afary and Kevin B. Anderson. Pg 263-267
