Iconomy: Towards a Political Economy of Images by Terry Smith

Iconomy: Towards a Political Economy of Images by Terry Smith

Iconomy: Towards a Political Economy of Images argues that imagery of all kinds has become a definitive force in the shaping of contemporary life. While immersed in public politics and private imaginaries, such imagery also operates according to its own logic, potentialities, and limitations. This book explores viral imagery—the iconopolitics—of the pandemic, U.S. Presidents Trump and Biden, Black Lives Matter, as well as the rise of a “black aesthetic” in white artworlds. Having arrived at the term “iconomy” in the years just prior to 9/11, and tracking its growing relevance since then, Smith argues that its study does not require a discipline serving nation states and globalizing capitalism but, instead, a deconstructive interdiscipline that contributes to the politics of planetary world-making. 

“A well documented and welcome history of the genesis of a new concept: iconomy” – Peter Szendy, David Herlihy University Professor of Comparative Literature and the Humanities, Brown University, and author of The Supermarket of Images.

“Charting the image economy’s historical and current coordinates with model perspicuity, Smith reveals timely political insights.” – T. J. Demos, Patricia and Rowland Rebele Endowed Chair in Art History, UC Santa Cruz, and author of Beyond the World’s End: Arts of Living at the Crossing. 

“Unparalleled historian and theoretician of the visual articulations of contemporaneity, Terry Smith provides an erudite and highly useful conceptual framework and historical background for understanding and criticizing the economies that images inescapably form part of in today's cultures. Iconomy is a must-read for anyone who wants to engage critically with contemporary regimes of imagery.” – Jacob Lund, Associate Professor, Aesthetics and Culture, Aarhus University, author of The Changing Constitution of the Present.

“Iconomy gathers forceful evidence that images are indeed capital today. In Post-Fordist societies, as Terry Smith makes clear in this important book, the exposure value of images inaugurates a new political economy we are still struggling to understand : an eye-conomy” – Professor Emmanuel Alloa, University of Freiburg, Faculty of Philosophy, Fribourg.

Smith's Iconomy is unabashedly about the present: it tracks the author's shifting perception about the political role of circulating images in contemporary society over the course of the coronavirus pandemic, the Donald Trump presidency, and the Black Lives Matter movement. Part 1, comprising six brief, roughly chronological chapters, delves into the history, theory, and politics of the image as a form of social currency, surveying ideas proffered by thinkers such as Plato; the iconodules and iconoclasts of Byzantium; and Marx, Benjamin, and Debord. Weighing the value of an amorphous definition of iconomy—a coinage created by theoreticians and marketers alike in recent decades—Smith (Univ. of Pittsburgh) acknowledges that the term is indicative of the essential unknowability and immeasurability of the digital world. The eight chapters in part 2 depart from a genealogy of the image to address the power of digital and video images in the contemporary world. In grappling with the role of image regimes in the wake of the pandemic, the murder of George Floyd, the January 6th Capitol riots, and "Trumpmania," Smith shifts toward an activist methodology. Though new media concepts such as AI, memes, and NFTs are not discussed in depth, the book's juxtaposition of aesthetic theory with critical perspectives on contemporaneity is refreshing —A. Susik, Willamette University.

Terry Smith is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh, Professor in the Division of Philosophy, Art, and Critical Thought at the European Graduate School, and Lecturer at Large in the Curatorial Program of the School of Visual Arts, New York.