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Emily McCartan:

I'm interested in building on Latour's typology of iconoclasts (the people destroying images) and using it to think about various ways that iconoclasm has worked in and through whole societies in various historical examples.  The common idea is the self-evident one that images and symbols are important to people as individuals and communities and that attacking them is a response to that power and an attempt to demonstrate dominance over it.  But I think there are interesting contrasts to be drawn between iconoclastic movements justified by theological purity (early Protestant destruction of Catholic images, for example, or the Taliban and the Bamiyan Buddhas); iconoclasm as a dynastic statement (Naram-Sin and Roman damnatio); and contemporary political iconoclasm like flag burning or tearing down statues of deposed dictators.  I think there are good insights to be had in looking at how a given society interacts normally with its monuments icons, and how elements within or outside of that society can access ritualized power through violence against icons (and the various forms that violence can take - wholesale razing, disfiguring, building over, etc.) that would be interesting to discuss.

Posted at Oct 26/2011 08:40PM:
cally:"some international commentators saw these statues as part of living Bhuddist tradition, while many saw them simply as static markers of the past that had passed into the realm of artefactual history" (562) What constitutes the "realm of artefactual history" referred to here? If we consider the possibility of images having some autonomy of their own (which certainly seems to be how they are treated in reference to acts of iconoclasm) at what point does their potential to stir the passions of living peoples end? Surely, given their destruction, the Bamiyan Bhuddas must have symbolised a living threat in some way to the ideologies of the Taliban, so must we not then conclude that they were still images with power of their own?Furthermore, at what point can it be acceptably stated that an image has indeed entered "artefactual history", what sets apart the placement of a once sacred object in a museum from iconoclasm, what differentiates the museum plaque from a secondary inscription reappropriating the booty of war?

Posted at Oct 26/2011 08:54PM:
Sade: Flood’s article points out that “the timing of the edict, and the fact that it reverses an earlier undertaking to protect the Buddhist antiquities of Afghanistan, suggest these events had less to do with an eternal theology of images than with the Taliban’s immediate relation to the international community, which had recently imposed sanctions in response to the regime’s failure to expel Osama bin Laden”. What are the implications of this argument on our understanding of other modern examples of artistic and monumental destruction? How does this change our understanding of the term “iconoclasm” on a broader scale?

How does Flood’s discussion of iconoclasm as a form of global communication and performance (especially in regards to the Taliban destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas) affect or change our understanding of Elsner’s discussion of “objects themselves, as material forms”?

Almost every author of this weeks reading sees iconoclasm and the ritual destruction of images as a kind of appropriation of meaning- whether by Roman emperors, the Taliban, Ancient Near Easter kings, or suffragettes. In essentially all of the examples provided, the destruction of images acts as a profound reorientation of previous power relations. Is the act of iconoclasm necessarily more powerful than that of creation?

As Elsner points out, defacement and destruction are in fact public acts of commemoration. Is iconoclasm ever really about forgetting? Is it ever possible to truly erase monuments, persons or ideologies from public and individual memory? If rituals of forgetting, as Elsner argues, are merely complex ways of remembering, can forgetting ever be effectively manufactured?

Posted at Oct 26/2011 09:43PM:
katerina dalavurak: Elsner posits that the effect of official, visible erasure or condemnation of an individual or institution has the effect of making that entity more present in the public conscience. Do you agree? Is there a statute of limitations on how long this holds true? Is modern technology changing this duration? What role do material vestiges (especially architecture) of “disgraced” regimes serve once they are modified to signal official disapproval? It might be good to approach this question considering how history would differ in the absence of material evidence, with only text and official edicts shaping our opinions. What different meanings are possible for different groups within a society when interacting with monuments that bear marks of disapproval? Flood distinguishes between the “negation” and “neutralization” of an image. Can we trouble this distinction? Does an image have to be obliterated to be “destroyed”? In the spectrum of interpretation possible for an object, which stretches from seeing it as something formed and used (by us) to something potently formative (on us), do iconoclasts ascribe a value that tips the balance to the latter? Do they consciously or inadvertently cause others to attribute more agency to the object with efforts to disempower it, than if they had just left it alone?

Posted at Oct 27/2011 12:53AM:
Mariagrazia: I'm interested in Latour's D "type" of iconoclast: the "innocent vandals" who, though well-intentioned and image-loving, wind up profaning and descrating sacred objects through their admiration. This strikes me in light of the conversations we've had revolving around the fetishization of material objects in the archive. Latour refers to this as "factishes." As archaeologists interested in these images (such as the Bamiyan Buddhas) as artifacts of cultural heritage, perhaps even more so than the spiritual life of the objects, does an alternative to iconoclasm exist? In preserving images like the Bamiyan Buddhas, do we engage in idolatry ourselves? Or do we become Latour's D type iconoclasts and alter the nature of the very thing we aim to preserve?