Suggestion was an unexplained mechanism that supposedly explained everything about crowds
Evidence
Finally, contagion. For Le Bon, contagion can only be a form of pathological transmission. Its explanation is to be found in the general phenomenon of ‘suggestibility’ which was, at the time, the Deus ex machina omnipresent in the discourse on mass psychology. What, however, explains suggestibility is something to which no attention whatsoever was paid. As Freud put it: ‘My resistance took the direction of protesting against the view that suggestion, which explained everything, was itself exempt of explanation.’ Also in this case, a set of questions could be formulated which would undermine the dogmatism of Le Bon’s view. What, for instance, if contagion were not a disease but the expression of a common feature shared by a group of people, one which is difficult to verbalize in a direct way, and can be expressed only by some form of symbolic representation? — Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason, 86
Categorization
- XREF: Freud’s complaint that the deus ex machina itself evades explanation parallels the reader’s Frankfurt material on Horkheimer and Adorno’s critique of ‘explanations’ that reify an unexplained ground. — connects to: Le Bon saw word-image dissociation as a perversion of language, not inherent to it — Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason, 68; Crowd theory’s insights only failed due to rigid dichotomies — Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason, 112; Rationalist social science systematically demotes affect in identity formation. — Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason, 448 (+3 more)
Broader Connections
- Collectivized suggestion grows phonier and self-destructs over time.
#expands(0.80) - Le Bon identified affirmation, repetition, and contagion as crowd persuasion devices
#complicates(0.75) — Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason, 77 - People resist randomness and prefer intentional explanations for important events.
#qualifies(0.70) — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 115