Eikonomia

Definition

Eikonomia — a neologism fusing eikon ("image, icon") and oikonomia ("economy, dispensation") — denotes the claim that the icon is the visible sign of a divine economy, and the semiotic operation by which image-signs came to mediate power. First coined by Byzantine iconophiles (Patriarch Nikephoros, Theodore of Studion) during the 8th–9th century iconoclastic controversy, it secured the icon's exceptional status as the sign of God's ability to dispense grace. Bahtsetzis uses it to argue that icons were granted a "semiotic state of exception" allowing privileged artefacts to detach from mundane economic circulation and so gain the power "to direct the actual value of all other produced objects and meanings" — the model, on his account, of the contemporary masterpiece.

Key Thinkers

• Sotirios Bahtsetzis — reconstructs eikonomia as a "pre-modern archaeology of the society of spectacle."
• (Related, not yet paged: Giorgio Agamben (The Kingdom and the Glory; the "economics of appearance" invoked in the Proto 2023 source note), Jean-Luc Nancy, Marie-José Mondzain, Hans Belting — see log.)

Related Concepts

• Spectacle — eikonomia as the theological genealogy of the spectacular image.
• Semiocapitalism — the contemporary economy that eikonomia is said to underwrite.
• Iconic Architecture — iconicity as image-power in the built environment.
• Ideology — image-signs as a material power-knowledge system.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Semiocapitalism, Spectacle, Eikonomia, and the Function of Art
• Introduction to Spectacle and the Screen (Proto 2023) — invokes Agamben's "economics of appearance" as the theological economy of the image underlying the spectacularized built environment

Open Questions

• Whether the Byzantine "iconomy" really maps onto the modern art market, or whether the analogy elides the crucial difference between religious veneration and financial speculation.