Between imagination and representation. About the aesthetics of the spectacle and the imaginary potency of existence

Abstract

Based on the philosophical reflections of Guy Debord, we attempt to rethink the intersection between spectacle and metaphysics of the image in a context of secular anarchic capitalism. For this, we take as a guide of analysis the genesis and constitution of an aesthetics of the spectacle that deploys and signifies the world as a simple representation of the real. In a second moment, and with the presence of Benjamin, Agamben and Heidegger, the latency of capitalism as a religion will become clear, within the constellation of an all-encompassing and technified capitalism. Finally, we will show the modality in which the metaphysics of the image, administered by a given technique of operativity, becomes a fundamental, representative and static order of meaning. From this context, we propose a theoretical and practical possibility to disarticulate the representational (and representative) spectacle from what we call the imaginative power of existence.