Icons in Crisis: Exploring Global Iconoclastic Politics in the 21st Century

This research project addresses iconoclasm (the deliberate destruction of images and visual signs) as a transhistorical and transversal cultural phenomenon, carried out by individuals, grass-root movements, or institutions of power across the globe. Whereas previous research established structural similarities between instances of religious and political iconoclasm of the past, this project intends to provide a socio-anthropological analysis of the contemporaneous dimension of iconoclasm, as a form of political expression in modern liberal democracies. Why do acts of iconoclasm continue to be socially and politically meaningful for many actors in different contexts? Perceiving the spectacular destruction of monuments - from those associated with the end of the Soviet era in Eastern Europe to those representing the racist and colonial power in Western societies - as a visual and behavioural manifestation of radical social transformations, the project explores three hypotheses, elucidating the persistence of iconoclasm as a recurrent feature in the modern, globalised world. They are related to three facets of iconoclasm, perceived as a form of immediate group-building (1), as a form of historical truth-seeking (2), and as a form of performative justice-making for underrepresented communities and causes (3), processes that are respectively oriented towards the present (1), the past (2), and the future (3). This project sets out to break new ground in anthropological research by envisioning and crafting a cross-contextual analytical framework that transcends state-of-theart regional and politico-historical divisions. By employing a comparative ethnographic methodology, based on three extended casestudies, interpreting acts of iconoclasm in post-colonial, post-socialist and liberal contexts, this project significantly enhances anthropological interpretations of conflict in contemporary societies.