Contemporary uprisings and revolts deserve to be understood differently from how they are often portrayed in contemporary social theory and political discourse — especially as filtered through the media — whether as doomed revolutionary attempts, criminal or terrorist acts, or peaceful popular protests hijacked by agitators. A reading of various thinkers from the 19th century to the present — many recently rediscovered in the Anglophone world — alongside literary, visual, and cinematic depictions of violent crowds, suggests that the link between anger and violence is not always instrumental rationality. Crowd violence arises from collective emotional experiences; it is eruptive and circumstantial, and its outcomes are as explosive as they are fleeting.

Iván Garzón Vallejo is Associate Professor at the Universidad Autónoma de Chile. He holds a PhD in Political Science from the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina and a Law degree from the Pontifical Bolivarian University (Colombia), where he also studied Philosophy. He is Principal Investigator of the Fondecyt Regular Project no. 1240658, funded by Chile’s National Agency for Research and Development (ANID, 2024–2027). He has been a visiting researcher at Georgetown University, Missouri State University, the Complutense University of Madrid (Carolina Foundation Fellow), and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC).

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Organising Committee

Pablo Sánchez León (CHAM)

Organization

Rioting in the Early Modern Iberian worlds

CHAM / NOVA FCSH