Violating the Sacred: Theft and 'Iconoclasm' in Late Eighteenth-Century Paris

Clay, Richard

doi:10.1093/oxartj/26.2.1

Cited by 3 publications

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“…The art historian Richard Clay favours the term 'sign transformation' over iconoclasm, as this definition recognizes that when images are broken, new signs and meanings are generated. 80 It is indisputable that the physical alteration of religious statues and objects created new spaces and images -gutted churches, headless statues or the carbonised remnants of religious ornaments -which boldly declared the end of Catholic hegemony and the new proletarian and revolutionary power of the moment. 81 However, iconoclasts were also participating in sign transformation in even more explicit, conscious ways, turning religious objects into secular, political figureheads of their heterogeneous, spontaneous revolution.…”

Section: 'You Who Were So Good': Ethical Discourse and Betrayalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sacred Destruction? Anticlericalism, Iconoclasm and the Sacralization of Politics in Twentieth-Century Spain

Thomas

2017

European History Quarterly

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This article examines the ways in which anticlerical discourses and actions in Spain from the early twentieth century onwards became infused with religious language, sentiments and even belief. Specifically, it focuses on the anticlerical violence and iconoclasm which occurred on Republican territory at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. The protagonists of these acts used a wide repertoire of religiously inspired collective action in their attacks on Catholic property and personnel. This article seeks to explain why this was. It argues that, in a time of momentous change and accelerating modernization, ‘secular’ and ‘traditional’ modes of thought mingled and fused together in the mental landscapes of anticlerical actors who had been strongly influenced by religious principles and practices. It suggests that the concept of the ‘sacralization of politics’ is wholly applicable to the Spanish case.

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Section: 'You Who Were So Good': Ethical Discourse and Betrayalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sacred Destruction? Anticlericalism, Iconoclasm and the Sacralization of Politics in Twentieth-Century Spain

Thomas

2017

European History Quarterly

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“…They were not literally the kind of profanations that involved transgressive touching of the sacred, which, until the Revolution, remained punishable by chopping off an offender's hands. 13 However, the posters and graffiti were open to interpretation as symbolic profanations-throughtouch of an image of sacred kingship. While such material transformations of the monument used touch as well as vision to signify unofficial meanings for the sculpture, other symbolic interventions also used olfactory signifiers to connote profanation even more clearly.…”

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confidence: 99%

Smells, Bells and Touch: Iconoclasm in Paris during the French Revolution

Clay¹

2012

J Eighteenth Century Stud

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This article examines the ways in which Parisians mobilised sight, smell, touch and sound to alter their city's 'signscape' and mediate power relations during the ancien régime and French Revolution. It uses contemporary sources to explore disputes about the treatment of statues of kings, busts of Jean-Paul Marat, and church bells. Given that impingements on visual signifiers' physical integrity often generated multi-sensory connotations that were readily understood by contemporaries, it is argued that the historiography of revolutionary iconoclasm has been too oculcentric. The paper ends by concluding that iconoclasm might be productively re-conceived as a form of sign transformation.

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The Typological Framework of Myths as a Tool for Studying Political Thought

Rak

2018

World Political Science

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The article proposes a typological framework of myths which applies to empirical research on political thought. The framework introduces three typologies of myths distinguished by a subject criterion. Their subjects are things, people, and animals. Each typology consists of the dyads of antinomic ideal types located on continua by the extent of the valuation of the myth’s subject. The tool will help researchers identify the processes for understanding the revaluation and devaluation of the myth’s subject over time. Furthermore, it enables researchers to determine the extents of the diversification of mythical political thought as well as to distinguish between myths in their morphology. This research tool applies to empirical research because it encompasses the objectively identifiable and verifiable theoretical models consisting of the essential features of myths.

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Violating the Sacred: Theft and 'Iconoclasm' in Late Eighteenth-Century Paris

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

Sacred Destruction? Anticlericalism, Iconoclasm and the Sacralization of Politics in Twentieth-Century Spain

Sacred Destruction? Anticlericalism, Iconoclasm and the Sacralization of Politics in Twentieth-Century Spain

Smells, Bells and Touch: Iconoclasm in Paris during the French Revolution

The Typological Framework of Myths as a Tool for Studying Political Thought

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