Visual spectacle now overrides factual reality in global politics
Evidence
These developments have coincided with the phenomenon Guy Debord diagnosed in 1967 as The Society of the Spectacle (La Societe du spectacle), in which a widespread commodity fetishism has moved into the age of globalized mass media and endemic alienation has metastasized into the absolute visuality of everyday life. The native informers demonstrate the factual dementia of reality, the overcoming of facts by visual fantasy upon a spectacular stage where the self-loathing Muslim partakes in and mutates into the image of Islam that has taken root in the globally alienated mind. — Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks, 459
Categorization
- XREF: Extends Debord’s spectacle thesis to post-9/11 Islam discourse — parallels arguments in The Soundscape about mediated perception reshaping experience. — connects to: The televised event supersedes and substitutes for the historical event it depicts — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 177; Mass sporting spectacles are engineered to suppress political antagonism
- DEFINE: Applies the concept of ‘factual dementia’ as the subordination of facts to images in public discourse.