Iconomania, iconoclastia e visione poststoriche : il contributo di Günther Anders=Iconomanina, iconoclastia e visoen posteriores : a contribuição de Günther Anders

In the Twentieth Century, new visual technologies have known such a rapid development that the idea of a culture totally dominated by images (and the ocularphobic idee-fixe of being on constant display) has actually become technically realizable. In his critique of, among others, photographic devices, Günther Anders seems to be close to forefeeling this evolution in 1956, well ahead of the official onset of the iconic turn. Anders, however, was not only concerned with the growing deployment of visualization at every level of contemporary culture and society, but also focused on what might be called the ‘rhetoric’ of visual experience and representation throughout the history of Western culture. A discoursive analysis of the ambivalent status of visual practices, and more specifically the tension between (more or less) secularized versions of iconoclastic and idolatric discourses, seems to be highly interesting and deserves further investigation.