Fables of obscure life: technical images and anonymity

Abstract

From the late eighteenth century, institutions of social control 
increasingly focused their attention on the ordinary man, that was also the focus of technique, science and art. However, the unveiling effort to neutralize the threatening force of an urban mass always coexisted with strategies of concealing, such as conspiracies and schemes. With the advancement of communication technologies, the opposition between showing and hiding has become more tenuous. This article debates the extent of visibility/invisibility dichotomy when it comes to establishing a correlation between cultural practices and politics.