Semiocapitalism, Spectacle, Eikonomia, and the Function of Art

Author: Sotirios Bahtsetzis
Year: 2019 (Widok. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture 25)
Source type: article
Raw file: raw/articles/bahtsetzis-2019-semiocapitalism-spectacle-eikonomia.md

Summary

Bahtsetzis proposes a "pre-modern archaeology of the society of spectacle," arguing that the contemporary collectible masterpiece is the visual equivalent of a long-running theological debate over the iconicity of power. Drawing on Giorgio Agamben's The Kingdom and the Glory (the theological-economic paradigm of oeconomy), he reads the iconoclastic stance of the historical avant-garde not as a radical break but as a "supplementary reserve" of the spectacle: it protracts quasi-theological promises of value and generates "dormant" meaning — aesthetic surplus value, or semicapital — saved for future use as an investment asset. The essay traces the Byzantine coinage of eikonomia ("iconomy") and the acheiropoieton ("not-made-by-hand" icon) and their secular afterlife in the priceless masterpiece, the deification of the artist, and the "freeport" economy of semiocapitalism.

Key Claims

• Semiocapitalism: a late stage of capitalism (Baudrillard, Berardi) in which information technologies let the productive use of signs merge with capital valorization; economies capitalized on "attentive time" (TV, social media, online games, advertising) partially replace the production of goods. Producing visual signs and making people pay with their attention is the main growth logic of the "attention economy," producing what Bernard Stiegler calls "hyperattention."
• Debord's spectacle as the assumption: "[T]he spectacle is capital to such a degree of accumulation that it becomes an image." Images are both semiotic operators and means of financial profit — a form of fixed capital, semicapital.
• The avant-garde as spectacle's supplement: the supposedly iconoclastic, anti-institutional avant-garde "is not the locus amoenus of all kinds of radical thinking"; its concealment and "going underground" increase surplus meaning, deliberately saved for future use. The avant-garde's deferred meaning is the eschatological dimension of the "avant-garde project."
• Eikonomia ("iconomy"): coined by Byzantine iconophiles (Patriarch Nikephoros, Theodore of Studion) during the iconoclastic controversy — "[he] who does not recognize the image rejects the entirety of the economy." It installed the icon as the visible sign of God's dispensation, a "semiotic coup d'état" that made the sign either challenge power or be its accomplice, forming modern "semiopower."
• Acheiropoieton secularized: the "not-made-by-hand" miraculous icon — "without-hand-made" — functioned as iconographic prototype/archetype (a Christian ontological equivalent of Platonic truth). Its secular heir is the priceless masterpiece treated as a "secular reliquary"; the Calvinist condemnation of images (but not art) "opened a door toward the deification of the artist" (the representer).
• The contemporary museum/place of art: "The museum nowadays is an investor's deposit, isolated from profane, practical life, remote and hidden from public sight" — epitomized by the Geneva Freeport holding up to a million artworks hidden in storage. The "cult of the contemporary acheiropoieton" in the freeports of neoliberalism epitomizes the eschatological economy of semiocapitalism.
• Futurity as investment: artists "produced to remain hidden ... suspended in a permanent circuit of exchange"; the future investment "becomes an investment in the future." Harvey: it was only in an era of "speculation on the future and fictitious capital formation that the concept of an avant-garde ... could make any sense."
• Critique of critique: with Hal Foster, genealogical critique of the avant-garde "often ends with the affirmation of the existing status quo"; critique (and art) "tends to get stuck in an endless but content-free state of immanence."
• Alternative (exit): the exit from semiocapitalism is, on this account, a semiotic operation — a "linguistic/semiotic coup d'état," an "exit from within." Exemplars: Duchamp's abandonment of the economics of art (giving work away), Adorno's "works that abstain from the auratic," Bataille's economy of expenditure, Derrida's hospitality/gift, Sedláček's gift economy.

Connections

Concepts: Spectacle · Semiocapitalism · Eikonomia · Iconic Architecture · Ideology
Authors: Sotirios Bahtsetzis · Guy Debord
Debates: Spectacle vs. Function
Related source notes: Wallenstein 2016 — Architecture, Critique, Ideology

Direct Quotes

"the spectacle is capital to such a degree of accumulation that it becomes an image" (p. 24, quoting Debord, The Society of the Spectacle)

"[H]e] who does not recognize the image rejects the entirety of the economy" (recurring phrase of Nikephoros and Theodore of Studion, cited by Bahtsetzis)

"The museum nowadays is an investor's deposit, isolated from profane, practical life, remote and hidden from public sight."

"Today the only works that really count are those which are no longer works at all" (Adorno, cited by Bahtsetzis)

"the avant-garde should not be understood as the opposite of the hegemonic society of the spectacle, but rather as its supplementary reserve"

"the exit from capitalism […] can only be envisaged as the exit from nihilism" (Nancy, cited by Bahtsetzis)

Open Questions

• Does the "semiotic shift" Bahtsetzis proposes as an exit from semiocapitalism amount to anything more than an aesthetic gesture, given his own (Foster-derived) admission that critique tends to reaffirm the status quo?
• Is the analogy between the Byzantine icon and the contemporary spectacle a substantive genealogy or an over-extended metaphor, especially when transposed to architectural (not fine-art) imagery?