INTRODUCTION

In a strikingly apposite statement of aspects of what is to follow in this chapter, the American cultural critic Henry Giroux writes that: ‘Audio-visual representations have transformed not only the landscape of cultural production and reception, but the very nature of politics itself, particularly the relationships among nationalism, spectacular violence, and a new global politics’ (2006: 17). And our author adds that: ‘It is impossible to comprehend the political nature of the existing age without recognizing the centrality of the new visual media’ (2006: 17). We are thus drawn to ask how visual media and the image as its key component form the basis of the political in the contemporary society of the twenty-first century. An important aspect of Agamben's thinking on politics is precisely concerned with the image, especially with regard to Guy Debord's notion of the ‘society of the spectacle’. As we shall see, what Agamben eventually considers the primary element of Debord's theory and film practice is its capacity to reveal the medium or ‘mediality’ as such. Whether or not one accepts this view of the image as mediality, if the image is complicit with power in contemporary society, it is important to understand what we are dealing with when we encounter the image.