ABSTRACT

This article aims at a threefold historicization of riots, drawing on sources depicting communal riots in North India in the twentieth century. (1) The concept of ‘crowd’ covers a large variety of phenomena. Rioting crowds could range from several tens of thousands, gathered at one place, to just a handful of men performing the actual arson and murder in the back-lanes. (2) Not all rioting crowds give rise to the same emotions. Research on riots often focus on anger and fear, but the sources frequently speak more about josh, about excitement, enthusiasm and fervour – emotions which participants in a riot felt they needed not only to experience, but to show, and proudly show. (3) Finally, the violence itself underwent decisive changes between the 1900s and the 1940s, not only it whom it addressed, but also in the weapons used and the forms of pain it aimed at inflicting. Taken together, the historicization of the crowd, emotions, and violence allows us to overcome a number of dichotomies: Between the riot that essentially always remains the same, and the riot that can only be viewed as a fragment; between the learned and the spontaneous; between emotions and interests, not only by showing that interests generate emotions, but also by showing that the actors had a vital desire to experience certain emotions, which would transform them and thus change the fate of their community. This does not depoliticize the research on riots, but it brings in politics in a more complex way than reducing deadly emotions to the manipulation of the elites.

摘要

本文以描述二十世纪印度北部社区暴动的资料为依据，对暴动进行三重历史化。（1）“人群”的概念涉及多种现象。骚乱的人群可能从聚集在一处的数万起，到只有少数几个人在后巷进行实际纵火和谋杀。（2）并非所有骚动的人群都会产生相同的情绪。关于骚乱的研究通常集中在愤怒和恐惧上，但是消息来源经常谈论关于乔什的事情。关于兴奋，热情和热情–骚乱的参与者感到，不仅要体验，而且要展示和自豪地展示自己的情感。（3）最后，暴力本身在1900年代和1940年代之间发生了决定性的变化，不仅是针对暴力的对象，而且还包括使用的武器和旨在施加的痛苦形式。总而言之，人群，情感和暴力的历史化使我们能够克服许多二分法：在本质上始终保持不变的骚乱与只能被看作是碎片的骚乱之间；在博学的和自发的之间；在情感和兴趣之间，不仅表现出兴趣产生情感，而且还表现出演员对体验某些情感有着强烈的渴望，这将改变他们，从而改变他们社区的命运。这并未使对暴动的研究非政治化，但它以比减少对精英操纵的致命情绪更复杂的方式引入了政治。