Smaller than a cult, bigger than a mass: the multitude (In the first anniversary of the “15-M”)

Abstract

This article tries to do three things. First, it insists on rethinking the concept of "Multitude" as it has been developped in recent years, mainly by Hardt & Negri in their trilogy of the Empire, and to emphasize the particular importance of the concept to understand and explain the popular revolts from the "Arab Spring" in 2011, answering also to some frequent objections against its use. Second, at a more superficial level, it suggests variations on the theme that human groups flow, and their ways to flow; on a deeper level, it wants to exercise a blur gender and to raise a rhizome. Finally, it sees and analyzes the deepening of democracy as a predictable trend of the Multitude against dictatorships and formal democracies