Images, economies—one so present but elusive at the point of exchange, the other so concrete at that point but so elusive in its circulations. In the first part of this book, I surveyed several ways in which the two terms had been thought together. With Indigenous management of sacred and secular “designs” as a control case, we traced a trajectory within Western thought that took these terms to be linked in fundamental senses when explanations of world being were required. Part II profiled contention within contemporary cultures, the politics of the iconosphere, the clash of images as different world pictures competed to be seen, to become as visible as others, more visible than them, with social being at stake. Our subject has been the current warring between image regimes, where they came from, and what critical theory offers to our efforts to understand them.

Does “iconomy” acutely name the plane upon which these phenomena are operating, and pick out their distinctive features in ways that we need to know now? Or does use of the concept blur distinctions that must be made—not least those between imagery and economies—if our current situation, and the pasts that shaped it, are to be fully and clearly grasped?

As we have seen throughout these chapters, to think in iconomic terms does both things—at times one, at other times the other, often at once, in rarely predictable ways. Given what we know about the nature of images and economies, this should be no surprise. Nevertheless, we have also seen that pairing the concepts “image” and “economy” has brought into view several aspects of both that usually remain invisible or implicit. Viewing them politically focuses on real-world relevance. Iconomics becomes iconopolitics.

Before attempting some provisional conclusions, and proposing some possible principles for iconomic thinking, some basic terms require revisiting.

By “image” I mean material images of all kinds, from single pictures through moving images, virtual imagery, and self-images to public personae, as well as mental images of many kinds, from dream imagery to social imaginaries. In none of these contexts does an image exist by itself. It exists in something which carries it and in the regard of someone or something that sees it.