Pathos freddo nel mondo mutato. Riflessioni di cultura visuale a partire da Die veränderte Welt. Ein Bilderfibel unserer Zeit (1933) di Ernst Jünger

In 1933, Ernst Jünger published a volume of photographs, which aimed to illustrate the transformations of the contemporary world through a constant reference to the ‘coldness’ of the gaze as necessary means to keep up with the times. This interpretative device – which corresponds to an ideological structure within the movement known as the “Conservative Revolution” – contains a reading of images, and of visuality itself, which is current but dangerous, because it rests on a profound dialectic between the living and the non-living. Benjamin’s gnoseological model is proposed as an interpretative antidote.