Abstract

The lecture deals with the destruction of cultural property by Daesh in Iraq and Syria. It is argued that many of these acts of violence can only insufficiently be described using the term iconoclasm, as they were not aimed at destroying effigies, but rather eliminated places and objects that were of outstanding importance for the social fabric of the affected communities. The mediatisation of such socioclasm through images and sound thus becomes conceivable not as simple documentation, but rather as a reminder of the destruction of socially significant artefacts.

Christoph Günther
Christoph Günther leads the junior research group Jihadism on the Internet: Images and Videos, their Dissemination and Appropriation at the Department of Anthropology and African Studies at Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz. Having a background in Islamic Studies, his research interests include religio-political movements in the modern Middle East, visual cultures and iconography, and the sociology of religion. His book Entrepreneurs of Identity: The Islamic State’s Symbolic Repertoire has been published in spring 2022 with Berghahn Books.

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