ABSTRACT
This chapter explores, through selective readings of literary chronicles, artistic representations, and media productions, how a particular kind of crowd, the carnival crowd, has been interpreted and represented in key periods of Rio de Janeiro's history. It stresses the relevance of perceiving a link between the revival of street carnival and the desire to be part of the crowd. The chapter suggests that the merging in the carnival crowd as a form of experience offers a contrast to the theories of mass alienation by the culture industry and yet it is also distinct from the notion of the individual singularities of the network multitude as formulated by Hardt and Negri. It also proposes that the peculiarity of the carnival crowd in Rio de Janeiro is not only tied to rituals of inversion and the overturning of social hierarchies as affirmed by Roberto DaMatta's seminal study of the late 1970s.
