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Iconoclash: Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion, and Art
Edited by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel
Designed by [thinc]2 communications, Cologne
The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London
700 pages; 835 illustrations; $45
Reviewed by Michael Golec
Confronting the daunting size of Iconoclash: Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion, and Art, a book co-edited by the philosopher/anthropologist Bruno Latour and arts curator/theorist Peter Weibel, I was reminded of a series of interviews conducted by Latour with the philosopher Michel Serres. During the course of one of the conversations, Latour makes a rather benign statement, to which Serres responds, "I beseech you-don't say 'eliminates'! I consider exclusion as history and mankind's worst action. No, let us not eliminate; on the contrary, let us include."
Having worked my way through this densely packed brick of a book, I cannot help but see it as a response to Serres 's admonition. All the better, I believe, for anyone who follows the debates that shape visual culture. This richly illustrated and intelligently argued book explores, through a collection of essays, the ongoing history of collisions between iconoclasm (the action or spirit of those who break or destroy images, especially those set up for religious veneration) and iconophilia (the worship of icons or images) in science, religion, and art-hence the neologism, "iconoclash." "What we propose here," writes Latour in the book's introduction, "is an archaeology of ha-tred and fanaticism." To achieve this, he and Weibel have compiled a vast array of disparate images and dissenting views. Iconoclash's ambitious criticism spans the imaginable and historical range of visual culture: The book's essayists ruminate on topics...