El nacimiento de la imagen contemporánea. Un análisis biopolítico de la ópera verista

Abstract

Since the end of the 19th century, the image has been identified as a privileged aspect of our society. However, considered as the exclusive result of technological development, its analysis loses sight of the real processes that underlie it, which involve transformations both in the exercise of power and in the field of cultural expression, with which it is closely connected. This text intends to locate the verista opera, based on a detailed analysis of I pagliacci by Ruggero Leoncavallo, as an immediate precursor of new mass cultural forms of the 20th century; mainly, the cinema. To do so, it expands the concept of biopolitics, acknowledging its relation to the forms of cultural expression, putting in evidence that this area is not only a mirror which reflects the political and social transformations, but one of the privileged places in which they happen. Therefore, an approach to germinal forms from which the contemporary images were developed will allow us to observe clearly the struggles and contradictions that founded them and therefore are still stalking them.