tarian originateinpeasant culture that has been the focus of ethnographyoris
he an entirelynew type? Is his life completelychanged on that dayhefirst walks
intoafactory?”¹²
VonStein, Riehl, and several others contributed to the scientific and pseu-
doscientific discourses thatconstituted the proletariat and its discursivedouble,
the masses, as subjects of scholarlyinquiry and objectsofemotionallycharged
projections.This emerging mass discourse typicallyimagines the proletariat as a
negatingforce, the absoluteother of existing cultureand society whose pre-
sumed formlessness at once threatens and confirms society’sneed for structure.
In identifying the proletariat asatransformativeforcethrough which (in the fa-
mous formulation by Marx)“all thatissolid melts into air,”mass discourse
bringsinto relief the destructive forces unleashed bymodern capitalism. These
intendedeffectsandtheunderlyingprocessesofdisplacementaccountforthe
conflation of revolutionary proletariat and socialist movement in the specterof
the modernmasses. The rhetorical figures developed asaresultofmass dis-
course hadaprofound influenceonpolitical thought, academicscholarship,
and cultural criticism; this is most evident in the frequent equation of the
urban masses with criminality and pathology. At the same time, it is entirelypos-
sible that the impact of mass discourse on antisocialist laws and antilabor pol-
icies strengthened the spirit of opposition thatmadethe SPD“the first true mass
political party in modern history.”¹³
The historiographyonmassdiscourse has taken advantage of the theoretical
perspectivesopened up by poststructuralism and drawnclose attention on the
overdetermined function of the modern masses as amarker of difference.
From theirrespective disciplinary backgrounds,Susanne Lüdemann, Michael
Gamper,and StefanJonsson have shown how mass discourse functions above
all asamodeofdistinction andastrategy of exclusion that proceeds from the
juxtaposition of individuals andmasses and that,given its precarious nature,re-
lentlessly worksto fortify its discursive boundaries.¹⁴Defined by the historical
Will-Erich Peuckert,Volkskunde des Proletariats:Aufgang der proletarischen Kultur(Frankfurt
am Main: NeuerFrankfurterVerlag, 1931),4. Forthe continuities in ethnographic approachesto
proletarian culture,see WolfgangJacobeit andUteMohrmann, eds.,Kultur und Lebensweise des
Proletariats:Kulturhist.-volkskundl. Studien u.Materialien(Berlin: Akademie, 1973).
Andrew Bonnell,The People’sStage in Imperial Germany:Social Democracy and Culture
1890 – 1914 (London:TaurisAcademic,2005), 1.
The references areSusanne Lüdemann,Metaphern der Gesellschaft. Studien zum soziologi-
schen und politischen Imaginären(Munich:Wilhelm Fink,2004); Michael Gamper,Masse
lesen,Masse schreiben: Eine Diskurs- und Imaginationsgeschichte derMenschenmenge 1765–
1930 (Munich:Wilhelm Fink,2007); and StefanJonsson,Crowds and Democracy:The Idea
and Image of theMasses from Revolution toFascism(NewYork: Columbia University Press,
40 Chapter 1