Icon and Aura

The icon is not just a certain kind of religious image developed during the early Byzantine empire and still used today in Orthodox Christianity. The chapter defines a broader category of the cultural icon as a key feature of modern visual culture and a powerful instance of enchantment in a secular context. With examples from popular culture and history, the text shows the enduring quality of an icon. Indeed, icons are powerful devices that operate in terms of an extended apparatus of iterations that shuttle aura across space and time in traffic with what matters. The icon enchants by pledging action at a distance, mediated by unseen chains of images reiterated in it.