ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to propose a novel concept that can supplement existing approaches to the study of crowds: “enduring crowds.” It discusses the question of temporality in classical approaches to crowds, and explains what it means to rethink crowds as “enduring.” The 2011 events in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, and many other places thus evidenced the crucial spatial dimension of mass mobilization, as crowds literally conquered the central squares of the main cities of those countries peacefully. The attraction of the crowd of course always had a “positive” element to it, connected to the concrete experiences undergone by human beings merging into a crowd. In classical scholarship the crowd produces a toxic excitation that carries away the individual without meeting any resistance. In the political crowds that conquered the squares around the globe from 2011, endurance was achieved while holding boundaries open.
