ABSTRACT
Certainly, crowds are essential in mis-assembling the public sphere so that new atmospheres begin to seep out. When the security apparatus releases its public order exceptionality, the object-target is the disorderly crowd. But the populace is never quite as neutral as ‘the population’ because it always carries that sense of a rabble. The populace is governable, but unlike the population, it is never a perfect subject-object of government. But if crowded protests are successful in generating a state of unrest, the crowds become merely a sign of the perturbation in the affective life of the populace. If the population is all the people in a territory with all their issues aggregated so that they can be analysed and managed and the people is the crowning glory of the crowded revolt, then the populace is the aggregate of affective life. Protest excites the temper of the populace.
