Images surround us, dominate us, haunt us. Some impose themselves by striking our minds, while others, more insidious, creep in and surprise us in our imaginations. Should we now learn to defend ourselves against them, because they are too aggressive or too seductive? 

Patrick Boucheron examines the resurgence of these hauntings, bringing back to us the latent iconoclasm of Western culture, for this topical issue must be studied in the light of a long history of images, imaginaries and works of art. It involves an archaeology of our visual culture, which the historian seeks to illuminate by opening up the invisible museum of our blind spots.

Patrick Boucheron is a historian and professor at the Collège de France, where he holds the chair of “Histoire des pouvoirs en Europe occidentale, XIIIe-XVIe siècle”. A specialist in the political, cultural and monumental history of Italian cities at the end of the Middle Ages, he has devoted numerous works to them, some of which attempt to make, with art, a history that is not exactly a history of art (as in Conjurer la peur. Siena, 1338. Essai sur la force politique des images, Paris, Seuil, 2013). He is the producer of the weekly program “Allons-y voir” on France Culture, and regularly organizes “Ateliers d'autodéfense contre les images” (self-defense workshops against images), notably at the Théâtre de la Concorde.

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