Fearing the Masses: Gustave Le Bon and Some Undemocratic Roots of Modern Rhetorical Studies

Advances in the History of Rhetoric Jan 2014

Fearing the Masses: Gustave Le Bon and Some Undemocratic Roots of Modern Rhetorical Studies

Jay P. Childers

Abstract

ABSTRACT As the popular narrative has it, the modern speech discipline in the United States was born out of a concern for democracy and reason. However, this story occludes other, decidedly undemocratic, foundational ideas that were at the heart of rhetoric and oratory during the first half of the twentieth century. Given contemporary concerns with both deliberative democracy and affect theory, rhetoricians and speech teachers would benefit today from a fuller understanding of some of the undemocratic ideas that influenced the modern rhetorical renaissance. This article helps accomplish this by focusing on the work of Gustave Le Bon, whose concern with persuasion and the masses was influential on early scholars of rhetorical oratory, including James Winans, William Brigance, and James O’Neill. Indeed, it was Gustave Le Bon who popularized the notion that the masses were like a psychological crowd devoid of reason and the ability to deliberate.

Journal: Advances in the History of Rhetoric
Published: 2014-01-02
DOI: 10.1080/15362426.2014.886932
CompPile: Search in CompPile ↗
Topics: multimodality affect and writing

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (1)

Allen (2015)

Troubled Freedom, Rhetorical Personhood, and Democracy’s Ongoing Constitution

Advances in the History of Rhetoric

Cites in this index (3)

Sproule (2012)

Inventing Public Speaking: Rhetoric and the Speech Book, 1730-1930

Rhetoric & Public Affairs
Keith (2008)

On the Origins of Speech as a Discipline: James A. Winans and Public Speaking a…

Rhetoric Society Quarterly
Crowley (2004)

Communications skills and a brief rapprochement of rhetoricians

Rhetoric Society Quarterly

Also cites 5 works outside this index ↓

Butsch (2008)

The Citizen Audience: Crowds, Publics, and Individuals

↗
Falasca-Zamponi (1997)

Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini’s Italy

↗
Freud (1922)

Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego

↗
Le Bon (1898)

The Psychology of Peoples

↗
Mailloux (2006)

Places in Time: The Inns and Outhouses of Rhetoric

Quarterly Journal of Speech ↗

CrossRef global citation count: 3 View in citation network →