Distruggere le immagini per costruire un immaginario: Daesh e la manipolazione della storia

Since the foundation of the self-proclaimed Islamic State the affiliates of Daesh have carried out a deliberate strategy of erasing memory and manipulating history through the destruction of the past and, at the same time, the production of a series of videos aimed at “documenting” the events, thus allowing their global diffusion. This article aims to question this strategy based on the paradox of an iconoclasm that works on the destruction of material images to build up digital images in order to mark the beginning of a new historical course thanks to the peculiar clash of temporality that is performed. The claimed foundation of a new time is based on an aestheticized political theology that presents the image of image destruction as an unusual form of memorialization.