multiplication of collectives, and forming ‘landing strips’ (Latour 2005) for new
ones.^16 Most particularly, Tarde’s work suggests the possibility of resurrecting an
epidemiological model which is based on processes of imitative contagion, not
least because the spread of feelings (through gesticulation, bodily movements,
motor co-ordinations and repetitions, as well as all the technologies of the body
that now exist) is such fertile ground for thinking about mental contagion. Such
epidemiological models of mimetic ‘vibrations’ held sway in good parts of the
social sciences at the turn of the nineteenth century as means of explaining
phenomena as different as crowd behaviour (as in the work of Le Bon, Trotter or
McDougall, and subsequently luminaries like Freud and Bion) and the diffusion
of different kinds of cultural object (as in the work of anthropologists like Tylor)
but they went in to steep decline as means of explanation for a variety of reasons,
not least their association with right-wing diagnoses of disorder as pathological
and irrational based on ideas such as that crowds were likely to regress to lower
levels of mental functioning, and/or were highly suggestible, in both cases leading
to loss of personality. However, they have periodically continued to grip the
imagination. One thinks, for example, of work in history on affect which has
resorted to these models, as in the case of the history of fear (Lefebvre 19 7 3) or
various kinds of sentimentality (Vincent-Buffault 1991) or even crowd behaviour
like riots (Hobsbawm and Rudé 1985). And, as Leys (2000) argues, they were
implicit in many later theories, for example many current theories concerning
the power of trauma often deploy an implicit mimetic mechanism. Of late,
epidemiological models have begun to make something of a comeback. That
comeback is based on the ability of these models to express expression and to frame
sympathetic induction. Such models provide a much better sense of how particular
kinds of affective phenomena do their work. A good example is provided by the
seminal work of Brennan (200 4 ) who tracks affect as so many ‘atmospheres’.
It is probably against this background that the recently rehabilitated work of
Tarde makes the most sense. Indeed it might be more accurate to say that Tarde
has become more relevant, has even found his time (Thrift 2006b). In particular,
Tarde provides access to a time when unconscious influence was thought to be of
the greatest importance, the key to understanding motivation and disposition:
Men are ever touching unconsciously the springs of motion in each other;
one man, without thought or intention or even consciousness of the fact,
is ever leading some others after him.... There are two sorts of influence
belonging to Man: that which is active and voluntary, and that which is
unconscious; that which we exert purposely, or in the endeavour to sway
another, as by teaching, argument, by persuasion, by threats, by offers and
promises, and that which flows out from us, unawares to ourselves.
(Bushnell, cited in Wegner 2002: 315)In turn, Tarde provided a series of psychosocial models of that which flows out
from (or perhaps more accurately, through) us unawares, namely models of
imitationand invention. These models serve the present moment well, emphasizing
Turbulent passions 231