The Contemporary Idolatry and the Iconization of the World
The Contemporary Idolatry and the Iconization of the World

Summary/Abstract: This article examines the persistence of idolatry in contemporary societies by showing that stereotypes function as secular idols: saturated, closed images that substitute for reality, structure collective imagination, and fuel cultural wars. The central problem is to understand how the theological mechanisms of the idol—saturation of the gaze, closure of meaning, abolition of critical distance—reappear today in representations of the world through new idolatric modalities, namely stereotypes. The theoretical framework draws on Marion’s phenomenology of the idol (1979, 1990) and Lippmann’s theory of social representations (1922). The analysis unfolds in three stages: first, a phenomenology of the idol as a dispositif of perceptual saturation; second, a hermeneutics of contemporary idolatry, showing its displacement into political, media, sporting, and technological spheres; and finally, a proposal for an “iconization of the world,” understood as an ethics of the gaze that dismantles idolatric fixation, renders stereotypical constructions visible, and reopens the intentional horizon towards the invisible. The article argues that only such critical iconization makes it possible to resist the new forms of idolatry that structure the public sphere and narcissistically stabilize the modern subject.

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