THIERRY DE DUVEfunction of religion—being the bond that binds—the society of the spectacle is what most
effectively shrouds the fact that we made good our exit from the religious two thousand
years ago.
The society of the spectacle is the form taken by religion when society has exited
from the religious. It starts with Golgotha, and with what luster! It gains new strength in
ninth-century Byzantium, passing closer than ever to the mystery of incarnation, but
straightaway mapping it onto economy, that is, onto mediation, a mediation that women
and the feminine will pay for. It becomes the official politics of the Catholic Church with
the Council of Trent and the energetic iconographic program of the Baroque period. And
it lands in today’s media industry, handed over to the semi-gods of entertainment and
information alike. The society of the spectacle is in fine fettle. By saying that it is what
most effectively shrouds the fact that we exited from the religious two thousand years
ago, I do not mean to say that it is no more than a smokescreen that can be dispersed. I
mean that religiosity is fighting back and standing up for itself, that it does not intend to
die, that even at the end of the very long tale told by Gauchet, during which humans have
very slowly learned to do without mediation with the invisible, the desire for such media-
tion is being fiercely defended—and all the more fiercely, it must be said, because the exit
from the religious has by and large been accomplished. The blinding, dazzling excess of
visibility of the spectacle is there to conceal that there are things that remain invisible and
that between the visible and the invisible there is no mediation. There were no more
witnesses at Christ’s resurrection than Baroque painters at Isaac’s sacrifice—something
that remains to be pondered.
—Translated by Simon Pleasance and Fronza WoodsPAGE 670670.................16224$ CH33 10-13-06 12:37:38 PS