Preface and third chapter translated from the Italian by Anne C. Tedeschi and John Tedeschi
Originally published in slightly different form in French (Paris : Les presses du réel, 2013), Spanish (México : Editorial Contrahistorias, 2014), and Italian (Milan : Adelphi, 2015) editions
Includes bibliographical references (pages 223-242)
Memory and distance on a gilded silver vase (Antwerp, c.1530) -- Reading Hobbes today -- David, Marat : art politics religion -- 'Your country needs you' -- The sword and the lightbulb : a reading of Guernica
We are surrounded by images, fairly drowning in them. From our cell phones to our computers, from our televisions at home to the screens that light up while we wait in the grocery store checkout line, images of all kinds are seducing us, commanding us to buy!, scaring us, dazzling us. Ginzburg invites us to look at images slowly, with the help of a few examples: Picasso's Guernica, the "Lord Kitchener Wants You" World War I recruitment poster, Jacques-Louis David's Marat, the frontispiece of Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan, a cup of gilded silver with scenes from the conquest of the New World. Are these political images, Carlo Ginzburg asks? Yes, because every image is, in a sense, political--an instrument of power. Tacitus once wrote, unforgettably, that we are enslaved by lies of which we ourselves are the authors. Is it possible to break this bond?
