The legality of the image

Intimate links exist between political power, law and images. Theology, philosophy and law have always developed elaborate rules about visuality. The iconophilic and iconoclastic traditions complemented one another and combined to construct subjectivity and to reconcile humanity with finitude. In modernity, law replaced religion and philosophy conceptualised legality through the aesthetic category of the sublime. The law understands the importance of the governance of images for the maintenance of the social bond and helps organise a regime of permitted images and forbidden idols which amounts to a complex legal administration of aesthetics and a related aesthetic organisation of law