Politics and Commonality of Sensation from a Reading of Merleau-Ponty

In this paper, we will not discuss revolutionary events in Europe or elsewhere. Rather, we will use the above event as a concrete exemplar—the symptom of a problem that enables and orients the relation between sensation, politics and the body. In addition, the above example will constitute a thought experiment that will allow us to test our hypothesis that links the assemblage of bodies, screams, noises, and their collective formation at the intersection of politics and sensation. For now, suffice to say that from this example, the screams in question have the effect to actually galvanize the mass of protesters and allow for a coagulation of the political discontent that eventually extends to the whole country in the following days. As will become clear in what follows, our line of interpretation is that the act of “screaming” works in this context as the locus of sensation that had a generative function on the mass of people gathered in the square and eventually generated a political event.