Afterword

Abstract

In their introduction to this volume, Dominik Bartmański and Jeffrey C. Alexander announce a new paradigm that not only continues the line of cultural sociology, but also covers the impact that material things, images, and events exert on collective emotions and the emergence of community. The key notion is iconicity. “Iconicity” refers to the mobilizing power of objects, images, and events. Icons convey, for those who look at them as icons, an unequivocality, straightforwardness, and immediacy that run counter to the enigmatic ambivalence that is the hallmark of pictorial art. Icons are immediately understood even if their meaning is diffuse and vague. They stir up and trigger off a strong emotional response—be it attractive or repulsive, traumatic or triumphant. Sometimes icons split their audiences into those who gather around them as the embodiment of their collective identity and those for whom the same icons represent a demonic and dangerous threat to their communities. The face of Osama bin Laden, for example, stands for leadership and savior-dom among Islamist radicals as well as for a devilish assault on Western civilization among the defenders of liberal democracy. To use a Durkheimian phrasing: icons exude the redemptive aura of the sacred and the destructive aura of the demonic. They hint at triumphant events that occurred against all odds as well as at shocking moments when destructive powers were suddenly disclosed.