Crowds: The Stadium as a Ritual of Intensity

Author:   Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht
Publisher:   Stanford University Press
ISBN:  

9781503628830


Pages:   138
Publication Date:   11 May 2021
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
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Crowds: The Stadium as a Ritual of Intensity


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Overview

Anyone who has ever experienced a sporting event in a large stadium knows the energy that emanates from stands full of fans cheering on their teams. Although ""the masses"" have long held a thoroughly bad reputation in politics and culture, literary critic and avid sports fan Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht finds powerful, as yet unexplored reasons to sing the praises of crowds. Drawing on his experiences as a spectator in the stadiums of South America, Germany, and the US, Gumbrecht presents the stadium as ""a ritual of intensity,"" thereby offering a different lens through which we might capture and even appreciate the dynamic of the masses. In presenting this alternate view, Gumbrecht enters into conversation with thinkers who were more critical of the potential of the masses, such as Gustave Le Bon, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Jose Ortega y Gasset, Elias Canetti, Siegfried Kracauer, T. W. Adorno, or Max Horkheimer. A preface explores college crowds as a uniquely specific phenomenon of American culture. Pairing philosophical rigor with the enthusiasm of a true fan, Gumbrecht writes from the inside and suggests that being part of a crowd opens us up to an experience beyond ourselves.

Full Product Details

Author:   Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht
Publisher:   Stanford University Press
Imprint:   Stanford Briefs
ISBN:  

9781503628830


ISBN 10:   1503628833
Pages:   138
Publication Date:   11 May 2021
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.

Table of Contents

"About the Present and the Presence of Crowds: Preface to the English Translation of a German Book 1. Empty Stadiums 2. Stadium-Masses 3. The Contempt for the Masses 4. Masses of the Past 5. In the Crowd—Laterally: Swarms, Mirror Neurons, Primates 6. In the Crowd—Vertically: Mystical Bodies, Intensity, Transfiguration 7. The Stadium as Ritual of the Crowd 8. ""You'll Never Walk Alone"": Dortmund, March 13, 2016"

Reviews

A wild, entertaining ride from Maradona to Nietzsche, from the Russian Revolution to the Boston Tea Party, from Jesus to Karl Marx. -Neue Zurcher Zeitung


A wild, entertaining ride from Maradona to Nietzsche, from the Russian Revolution to the Boston Tea Party, from Jesus to Karl Marx. -Neue Zurcher Zeitung [Gumbrecht's] new book takes an empathetic look at the elation of fans like me, on nights like the one I experienced eight years ago [at the Pittsurgh Pirates playoff game against the Cincinnati Reds]. In a synoptic history, Gumbrecht explores both fear of crowds, of their violence and unreason-going back, via Freud and Jose Ortega y Gasset, to Gustave Le Bon's Psychologie des Foules in 1895-and implausible hopes for their political efficacy, from the French Revolution to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Arab Spring. -Keiran Setiya, Times Literary Supplement Seamlessly weav[es] together philosophy, theology, history, politics, and culture with ethnographic participant observation and personal experience... What the book lacks in length, it more than makes up for in its ability to advance readers' theoretical and conceptual understanding of what transpires in so many of the grand settings in which culture is experienced, expressed, consumed, and re-created. As people accept that COVID-19 is here to stay but nevertheless feel the urge to return to normal life and reconvene againen masse, the lessons articulated in this book will be invaluable to sociologists, historians, philosophers, and all scholars who study sport spectatorship and popular-culture fandom. Highly recommended. -J. R. Mitrano, CHOICE


Author Information

Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht is the Albert Guérard Professor in Literature Emeritus at Stanford University. His books written in English include In 1926 (1998), Production of Presence (Stanford, 2004), In Praise of Athletic Beauty (2006), Atmosphere, Mood, Stimmung (Stanford, 2012), After 1945 (Stanford, 2013), and Our Broad Present (2014).

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