The sacred and violence in the digital communication ecosystem
Abstract
The categories of the sacred and violence are at the center of René Girard's thought. Both his theory of the “scapegoat” and his vision of the indissoluble relationship between the sacred and violence serve as conceptual keys to study communication on digital platforms, especially from the perspective of an exuberant diffusion of the visually grotesque and the cloyingly sentimental. in the aesthetics of the digital networks. In this paper we propose the development of a theoretical scheme that allows a neo-mythical and neo-religious reading of communication in the digital ecosystem, as well as reflecting on its applicability in different fields of study from grotesque representations of the human body to the analysis of our emotions with respect to nature and non-human animals.
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