010030 VO Religious Iconoclasm: A History (2017S)

Aim:
An introduction into the idea and practice of religious iconoclasm, this course will seek to deepen our understanding of the ideological and systematic destruction of art under different historical and cultural configurations. By exploring the larger dimension of image practices and prohibition of images it will focus, in particular, on the hostility toward images in the Byzantine world, Islam, China and, presently, in the Middle East, and on iconoclasm in contemporary art.

Description:
The term 'iconoclasm' ('icon'/Bild, '-clasm'/-sturm) as generated by Byzantine controversy means 'breaking of images'. Destruction of images, monuments, graves etc. for religious or political motives has a universal character; it has been propagated by a great variety of religions, beliefs and ideologies. 'Motivated annihilation of any presence or power realized by an icon [symbol, image, word, name, etc.] through the annihilation of this icon' (May 2012) raises contentious questions that transcend cultural and temporal boundaries. Iconoclastic destruction and 'iconoclashes', however, presuppose idolatry (Latour and Weibel 2002; Mitchell 2012). This means that iconoclasts need idolatry to destroy in order to construct a new tradition in which to exist. But this fact is easy to overlook since it has been widely assumed that entire religions such as Judaism and Islam are aniconic, inherently disposed to operate without images, and that their putative prohibition of figuration results in iconoclasm. In The Power of Images (1989), art historian David Freedberg called this assumption the 'myth of aniconism' dismissing it as 'wholly untenable' (Freedberg, p. 54). At the same time the purging of images is always linked to an opposition to certain practices and individuals. In a sense then it is not about the image itself at all. The image is only a means whereby one imposes one's beliefs forcibly on another or attempts to inflict harm to an individual through the mediation of their images (Halbertal and Margalit 1992). Broad transdisciplinary comparison with similar phenomena and periods contribute to better understanding them.

Method:
Lectures with visual and textual material.