Introduction
Social movementsare basedon, and sustained by,emotions–emotionsthat,
simplybybeing evoked in the name of politics, become political emotions.
Sometimes identifiedwith“the soul of the people,”“the spirit of the nation,”
“the collective unconscious,”or“the will of the masses,”these emotions func-
tion as sources of group unity and strength, as expressionsofsharedgoals
and beliefs, and sometimes even as political arguments themselves. Much of
the power of emotions in social movements derivesfrom their formative,ifnot
transformative functions–namely, to provide identities, createcommunities,
and sustain identifications and commitments.For these reasons,calls for revo-
lutions,whether democratic, socialist,ornationalist,tend to be written in the
languageofemotions. Likewise, the appeals to emotionasasite ofauthenticity
and truth are especiallypronouncedduring political crises and social conflicts
when expressions of anger and indignation provide legitimacyto oppressed
and discriminated groups.This is also true for the symbolic politics of the work-
ing classduring its historicalalliance with Marxism, socialism, and communism.
Understandingthese kinds of political emotions, however,means turning atten-
tion to culturalpractices in the widest sense and looking for expression of col-
lective imaginaries in artistic forms and aesthetic styles.
The emotional communities dreamt up in the name of the proletariat,that
elusive classed bodyexamined in this book, depended fundamentallyonimages,
stories,songs, performances, symbols, and rituals and theirchangingforms and
functionsduringthe late nineteenth and earlytwentieth century.Given the
uniquepower of these cultural practices, especiallyaspart ofamovement
with revolutionary aims, the politics of emotion that givessymbolic expression
to needs, fears, and desires not always in line with Marxist theory cannot be ex-
plainedaway withreferenceto the primacy of economic conditionsordismissed
as amanifestation of false consciousness.Atthe sametime, there is no reason to
assume that the aestheticexpressions of community and collectivity provided by
what this study calls the proletarian dream translateddirectlyinto new mental-
ities and attitudes, whether through the cultivation and denunciation of specific
emotions, their equationwith specific social forms and public behaviors, or their
enlistmentinalargerclass-based cultureand politics of struggle. Forthatrea-
son, the elusive connections between emotional and culturalpracticesmust
be reconstructed both through their class-specific articulations in late nineteenth
and earlytwentieth centurysociety,capitalism, and democracy and through
their performative, anticipatory,and compensatory qualities in the largernarra-
tivesofclass, nation, folk, and community.Concretely, this means treating polit-