Barthes and Debord: The Cultural Work of Images in Late Modernity

For some time now, we have been engaging with the question of the image, observing its transformations, its drifts, and its increasingly central role in the construction of contemporary reality. This time, we aim to develop a reflection on how the visual entity has come to assert itself as a form of social power: today, the image is capable, in various ways, of organizing common sense, guiding behavior, and defining what appears relevant, desirable, and visible.

To do so, we return to two figures who, in different historical moments but with remarkable clarity, anticipated many of the dynamics that now permeate digital space: Roland Barthes and Guy Debord. Their reflections on the image, myth, and spectacle do not belong to the past; rather, they seem to describe with precision the current functioning of media, platforms, and systems of visibility.

In both cases, the image is understood as something that goes beyond representation. It becomes a device that produces reality, establishes social relations, and exercises a diffuse form of control without resorting to coercion. The power of the image lies in its ability to appear natural, neutral, and inevitable, while actively constructing a shared worldview.

To reread Barthes and Debord today means to interrogate the present with tools that remain extraordinarily effective, and thus to recognize that the condition of the image as spectacle is not a superseded phenomenon, but a structural condition that has further intensified, to the point of coinciding with everyday experience. In this context, reflecting on the image is equivalent to reflecting on how power manifests itself, is distributed, and renders itself invisible.