The spectacle of/as the state: The 2016 coup in Turkey and the performance of sovereignty

The spectacle, state and the politics of violence

Debord’s (2012) Society of the Spectacle has become a seminal theoretical work postulating a specific stage in late capitalist development, in which he ponders the relationship between the proliferation of mass media messages and the commodity relation. Debord (2012) argues that the spectacle signals an unreal reality that is marked by mere representation, an illusion of wholeness or unity that is in fact a separation of all society and social beings from each other, their labour, and the fruits of their labour. For Debord (2012), the spectacle signals a visually circulated language through which relationships to power – that is capital and capitalist production – become conflated and simplified into images. It becomes a (self-)referential visual language that creates its own logic – a true unreality or the means through which power naturalizes and objectifies itself. As Debord (2012) writes, ‘the language of the spectacle consists of signs of the ruling production, which at the same time are the ultimate goal of this production’ (p. 7) and ‘. . .it is the true reflection of the production of things, and the false objectification of the producers’ (p. 16). For Debord (2012), the spectacle underscores a visually abstracted layer of separation of producers and production, in which the unity of society through the commodity is in fact a deceptive unity through separation:

The spectacle is nothing more than the common language of this separation. What binds the spectators together is no more than an irreversible relation at the very centre which maintains their isolation. The spectacle reunites the separate, but reunites it as separate. . .. The externality of the spectacle in relation to the active man appears in the fact that his own gestures are no longer his but those of another who represents them to him. (pp. 29–30)

Debord (2012), and the other Situationists, were essentially interested in the ways in which mass-mediated society highlighted a new means through which commodity production and consumption came to dominate society through the image or ‘imaginary’ (Clarke, 2015), creating an abstracted node of power (image of the commodity) that further alienated concrete relations among social groups. ³ Seeing the emergence of the spectacle as the pacification of the spectator, Debord’s (1998) follow-up essay, Comments on the Society of the Spectacle (1998), moves his analysis of late capital towards the function of spectacle as discursively constituting subjects and reality in addition to mere abstracted representation. Comments, in many ways, offers a ‘manual’ (Bratich, 2007) through which to conceptualize the changing conditions of spectacular society from a fully saturated image of the commodity towards an integrative process. The spectacle is thus a language or at least structure by which one must speak in order to be heard or seen (Debord, 1998), and has become a structuring principle through and of screen culture (Giroux, 2007). ⁴

Contemporary works on the spectacle have pushed Debord’s original conceptualization of a self-realizing force of capital towards a theoretical lens for unpacking the integrative and constitutive means by which politics becomes a highly visualized performance through violence (Celso, 2010; Deluca and Peeples, 2002; Giroux, 2007; Matusitz, 2015; Pătraşcu, 2013; Weber, 2002). These works examine how state sovereignty and power operate through imagery of terror and terrorism to reify and solidify itself as the central nexus of socio-political relations. Indeed, these works highlight how the spectacle has come to mark a fluid and shifting phenomena under contextually-specific circumstances (Kellner, 2005).

Giroux’s (2007) work on terror(ism) as a spectacle, for example, argues how shock and a ‘cinematic politics of the visceral’ (p. 19) demand an always already violent politics – that violent spectacles of terror mark an aestheticization of politics that projects an idealized utopia of the state vis-à-vis the external threat of an (outside) invader or enemy. He argues that it circulates images of a hyper-real violence, cementing a permanent fear thereby ‘. . .legitimating a notion of sovereignty that [dictates] who is safe and who is not, who is worthy of citizenship and who is a threat, who can occupy the space of safety and who cannot. . .’ (p. 22). Indeed, just as Benjamin (1978) argued in Critique of Violence, violence – or in this case, the image of violence – is productive and creates its own existence. What Giroux’s (2007) postulations signal are the ways in which representations and circulations of images of violence are productive discourses that legitimize the operation of state power. The image of the violent event becomes a singular or seemingly static representation for notions of inside and outside (as in ally or enemy) and how such conceptualizations are produced. The image is the hollow shell that encapsulates how the state creates and asserts itself in relationship to terrorism or the enemy – a performatively produced notion that is in fact produced through the script that the state demands (Weber, 2002).

Just as Debord (1998, 2002) argued that the image functions as an alienating representation of the relationship between the social world and forces of capital, so too does the spectacle of violence provide a lens for the relationship between the political realm and social realm from the perspective of the nation-state. In as much as the spectacle hinges upon images that build upon historical narratives, memories and identities (Giroux, 2007; Weber, 2002) to conjure up and mobilize ‘affective investments around images of trauma and suffering’ (Giroux, 2007: 39), it also demands and creates these narratives, thereby rendering and circulating its own instrumentalized affect. The spectator is not wholly alienated into passivity, though, but part of the active creation and recreation of the ‘success’ of the state and its apparatuses (Debord, 1998). The spectacle becomes circular and referential, erasing history as a referent through which to understand it, thereby shrouding its function and exploitation in secrecy. It becomes an eternal present ‘. . .which wants to forget the past and no longer seems to believe in a future, [it] is achieved by the ceaseless circularity of information, always returning to the same shortlist of trivialities, passionately proclaimed as major discoveries’ (Debord, 1998: 5). The spectacle becomes a means by which history is outlawed by images that seem self- evident, familiar, ‘as if it had always been there’ (6).

As Massumi (1998) argues, ‘the mass-media circulation of violence-legitimating affect conditions seriality that makes questions of origin and sequence moot points’ (pp. 45–46). More than rendering violence affectively legitimate, the spectacle mediates the presence of the state through representation. Representation of the unity of the nation through the spectacle, in other words, performs the mere idea of a material nation. It is demonstrative of an adjustment and response to threats to unity, whether internal or external, whereby a subject is rendered an active participant if only as a conduit through which the state operates to construct and reinforce its legitimacy or sovereignty. I argue that the spectacle is a force that operates through the deployment of multiple sites, spaces and identities to foster a performed scene or narrative of ‘national unity’.

Turning towards the Lacanian mirror stage as a metaphor for understanding the spectacle as a mediating force between state and spectator, Weber (2002) writes:

The internal contradiction of such identification is that it institutes an image of unity only by occupying two places at once: the desired place of wholeness and the feared place of disunity. In the images of catastrophe that dominate broadcast media ‘news’, the disunity is projected into the image itself, while the desired unity is reserved for the spectator off-scene. (p. 6)

The spectacle becomes the imaginary realm through which the state is engaged in an ‘ongoing experiment in destruction and creation, de- and re- composition’ (Bratich, 2007: 1).

Contextualizing Turkey’s media environment

The press in Turkey has historically been marked by a high degree of political parallelism and influence (Aksoy and Robins, 1997; Christensen, 2010; Ergec, 2012; Kaya and Çakmur, 2010, Öncü, 2013; Yeşil, 2014, 2016). From the later years of the Ottoman Empire until the present day, the press in Turkey has played a pivotal and contentious role in mediating between political elites, economic interests and the (re)production of the hegemonic ideology of the time. From the foundation of the Republic of Turkey until the present day, various constitutional and criminal regulations have impacted the potential democratic and communicative function of the press in Turkey (Arsan, 2013; Christensen, 2010; Yeşil, 2016). Not only do these regulations safeguard the political and cultural ideologies of the state and ruling party, but they also do so by curbing the sort of information and commentary that can be disseminated and shared by the press. This legal and regulatory environment has created a journalistic field that remains timid and hesitant to critique official state narratives and ideologies (Arsan, 2013; Christensen, 2010; Yeşil, 2014, 2016). For example, writing about the treatment of ethnic minorities (i.e. Armenians, Greeks and Kurds), questioning the centrality and legitimacy of the founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, or even reporting on political crises can become the grounds for censorship, outlet fines and closures, even arrest. Thus, journalists and their respective organizations often engage in mandatory and/or selective self-censorship (Arsan, 2013; Christensen, 2010; Yeşil, 2014, 2016).

The media in Turkey are subject to a highly arbitrary and complicated legal system. For instance, large holding companies whose publications are critical of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) are often prosecuted over tax or broadcasting violations that would have otherwise been ignored by the tax and broadcasting regulatory boards. In one such case, Çiner Holding’s Sabah newspaper was forcibly seized by the AKP government and sold to Çalık Holding (Öncü, 2013). Çalık is owned and operated by President Erdoğan’s son-in-law. While these sorts of practices were common prior to the ascension of the AKP in 2002, the clientelistic nature of the commercial press in Turkey has created the breeding ground for a political environment in which the ruling party can build and control a favourable press in exchange for large government contracts. The commercial and corporate interests of the holding companies that oversee Turkey’s commercial and mainstream publications are mitigated by the power of the state to withhold contracts, sell off parts of the company to more favourable partners, or shut down a publication entirely (Yeşil, 2016).

Watching and reading the 2016 coup attempt

In what follows, I examine the attempted military coup of 2016 and the scenes through which it occurred to demonstrate how the spectacle is a multi-sited and responsive process that recomposes state sovereignty by mediating images of destruction. These destructive images are not wholly played on screen but become a force to unify and render a spectator as an ‘agent’ by exploiting historical anxieties. I approach these different scenes from a critical, discursive perspective. I analysed these scenes and events to understand how state power was mediated through and around the different social and cultural connotations of the bridges, TRT and CNN Türk, and the means by which Erdoğan spoke to the public. These different spaces and outlets have had historical significance in the tension between Erdoğan and Turkey’s Kemalist legacy and secular elite. By critically reading the dynamics of the coup attempt around these spaces and news outlets, we can better understand how Erdoğan sought to reinforce his power and popular support, cementing his mark over any future significance these places might play in the culture and politics of contemporary Turkey.

The bridges were selected as an object of analysis because it was the physical point of confrontation between the oppositional public/Erdoğan’s supporters and the usurping military forces. Additionally, they are significant in that these two bridges are crucial transportation lines within Istanbul and quite literally connect Europe and Asia. TRT was selected because it was the first news outlet to be overtaken and first broadcast the declaration of the coup. It is also significant that it is an official state news outlet, making its takeover by the coup plotters uniquely symbolic in their attempts to render control over the state and its official news channels. I selected CNN Türk as a second news outlet to analyse because it was the first news outlet through which Erdoğan appeared to the public after reports of his assassination. It is also a major commercial news outlet, previously owned by Doğan Holding. CNN Türk was sold to Demirören Holding, a pro-government and pro-Erdoğan conglomerate in 2018 after Doğan Holding was forced to sell after incurring fines for unpaid taxes (Coşkun, 2018). The airport was selected because it was the space where Erdoğan finally appeared physically before the public after a long night of uncertainty and questions about his whereabouts and assassination. In addition to claiming victory over the usurping forces at a site named after the republic’s secular leader, Erdoğan’s speech at the Istanbul Atatürk Airport underscored the resumption of traffic, travel and the movement of people. These spaces and scenes, in other words, worked in tandem to underscore Erdoğan’s full command over the cultural and political significance of who, what, when, where and how people move and get their news and information.

Scene 1: The newsroom

Tijen Karaş, the lead anchor for TRT on the evening of 15 July, looked directly at the camera wide-eyed, stoic, almost robotic. She read the same paragraph over and over again for what seemed like hours (see Appendix A for a full translation of the announcement). This statement was read live on TRT, a state-sponsored television outlet, and it announced the coup d’état by the Turkish Armed Forces. At no point during the broadcast were soldiers seen on screen. The interruption of the normal broadcast followed seamlessly as Karaş read the declaration calmly on a loop. Any disruption to the flow of the newscast was hidden behind the camera. If it were not for the words she read, the news of the emerging coup could have been easily ignored.

Details of the ‘behind the scenes’ panic and commotion did not emerge until the coup was quashed in the early morning of 16 July. Speaking to other local and international news outlets, TRT deputy director-general Ibrahim Eren stated that the coup plotters stormed the building just after midnight local time, holding producers and journalists at gunpoint (Daily Sabah, 2016). Eren said that the soldiers who stormed the building claimed that they were taking over to prevent an eminent attack from Daesh (also known as ISIL or ISIS) and to protect reporters. Eren said that as the soldiers took control of the newsroom and building, they pointed heavy artillery at Karaş, saying: ‘You will read it or we are going to shoot you’ (Daily Sabah, 2016). In reports circulated throughout official and private news outlets across the country, Karaş emphasized her fear emphatically, noting that as her colleagues watched with their hands tied behind their backs, she was forced to read the statement.

Despite what appeared on screen, Eren praised the scene outside the newsroom, where citizens and uncompromised colleagues gathered to resist the presence of the armed soldiers. Even though TRT continued to broadcast, veiling the chaos behind the camera, Eren noted that people confronted the soldiers cautiously to reclaim the building and restore the normal, ordered broadcast. They were inspired and comforted, he said, by the calls of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (Daily Sabah, 2016), who urged people to gather in the streets to confront the military organizers. Erdoğan, who remained mysteriously absent from public squares that evening, had made his message known via FaceTime, as an anchor for CNN Turk held her iPhone up to the camera for viewers to see and hear his message (Figure 1).

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Figure 1.

Erdoğan via FaceTime on CNN Türk.

While the TRT offices were stormed and occupied, confirming the suspicions of a military coup being under way, Erdoğan proclaimed: ‘I invite the people of the nation to the squares’.

Soon after his declaration, however, the CNN Türk offices were emptied by the Turkish military forces. Screams, yells and sounds of pushing and shoving could be heard as the same news anchor who had just moments before held her phone before the camera announced that CNN Türk would be cutting its broadcast. ⁵ The discordant sounds of panicked camera operators and managers were the backdrop to cameras focused on nearby Istanbul Atatürk Airport, as reports began circulating that President Erdoğan would be arriving there to address the nation. As the broadcast was cut, the cameras returned to an empty newsroom. An assertive man, presumably a newsroom manager or editor, directed people to go outside. He remained calm, often glancing in the direction of the camera to address the occupying soldiers. Just as they never appeared before the camera as TRT was occupied, the coup plotters also remained unseen. The only confirmation of their presence came through glances and exchanges from CNN Türk personnel. ‘What you are doing is wrong’, one media personnel declared as he left the newsroom.

Invisible soldiers, visibly panicked yet robotic news anchors and editors, and a presidential address via FaceTime signalled the events’ climax that night. The mainstream media in Turkey have often been the harbingers of emerging political conflict and instability in Turkey (Öncü, 2013). In addition to being the central apparatus by which Turkey’s four previous military coups have been announced, mainstream media outlets and journalists have become the targets of blame (as well as witch hunts) for inciting political instability and fostering disunity. For example, media outlets and institutions are often shut down if their reports are viewed as favourable or sympathetic towards the Kurds or deemed overly critical of the president and ruling party (Yeşil, 2014). ⁶ Thus the events playing out live on the screen, showing scenes of violent takeovers of newsrooms complemented by sounds of commotion off-camera, were clear signals of impending political and social disaster for the public. Whereas the broadcast of the previous four military coups seemingly confirmed the power takeovers as inevitable, yells from behind the camera, the emergent stories of resistance in the plazas surrounding the studios, the invisibility of the coup plotters, and the video-conferenced address of President Erdoğan marked the newsroom as a scene not of transition of power, but of a call to resist. If TRT represented the ‘state in crisis’, the CNN Türk newsroom marked a public in jeopardy that needed to gather in resistance to the impending threat of the military takeover. President Erdoğan’s FaceTime message was the catalyst that shifted the coup plot from a drama played out for the public on the screen to a participatory performance.

The images and videos of the newsroom as the chaotic epicentre of the coup conjured memories of its role in previous coups, highlighting how the spectacle is a contextually specific deployment and assertion of power. It mediates not between reality and fiction or between a priori subjects or institutions, but is a discursive structure (Mattoni and Treré, 2014) that evokes historical anxieties within the present. Although scholars such as Massumi (1998) remain highly critical of the notion of mediation, I argue that the events in Turkey on the night of 15 July mark how the different scenes worked in tandem as a means by which the nation-state worked through various visual and physical infrastructures and spaces to constitute and assert specific interpretations of the present, and therefore future, of Turkey. ⁷ As Couldry (2008) and Silverstone (2002) both argue, mediation is a social process supporting flows of specific discourse, meanings or interpretations of society (as cited in Mattoni and Treré, 2014). Thus, amidst uncertainty, the ‘powers that be’, so to speak, worked through various apparatuses, such as the media newsroom, to re-assert themselves via an active process of participation by the populace against perceived domestic or foreign threats. The state constituted its sovereignty by way of re- and de-establishing new flows of discursive and active, participatory politics, thereby blurring the distinction between mere representation and participation. For example, just days after the coup attempt was foiled, the state-sponsored TRT published an article hailing the ways in which people in Turkey seized different communication technologies and media to coordinate against and challenge the coup. This highlights how the state is working through the actions of the populace to define and redefine its parameters and legitimacy. The media, the various scenes, and the representation of the event itself are merely the conduit through which power is disseminated.

Scene 2: The bridge

While the newsroom and media centres throughout Istanbul were being occupied by the alleged coup-plotting Turkish Armed Forces, the Istanbul Bosphorus Bridge and Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge became spaces of violent occupation and clashes. Before news of the attempted coup was officially announced, Facebook posts, tweets and text messages circulated rumours that military tanks had halted traffic on the two bridges. Connecting the ‘European’ and ‘Asian’ sides of Istanbul, these bridges are essential transportation lifelines for both the city and the country. Not only do they carry people to and from work and school, they are both materially and symbolically the means through which the European (i.e. ‘West’) and Asian (i.e. ‘East’) continents are culturally, politically and economically connected. In fact, the Bosphorus Bridge is often invoked as a metaphor in cultural promotions of Istanbul and Turkey. The halting of the flow of traffic by armed forces, if true, marked a complete cessation of movement throughout the city. Through the occupation of this transitory and connecting apparatus, culture, time and the status of the nation were brought into question.

Images of the empty bridges surfaced through news and social media (Figure 2) – almost a mockery of spaces that are usually painfully congested with traffic. The only visible vehicles or people on the bridges were tanks and uniformed soldiers guarding both entrances to each bridge. Helicopters and fighter jets circled above, flashing spotlights onto the empty roads.

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Figure 2.

Soldiers guard the entrance to the Bosphorus Bridge.

Yet as the night progressed, the empty bridges became the scene of intense clashes with soldiers. Hordes of people, mostly young men, made their way to both bridges to confront the occupying soldiers in direct defiance of the curfew that had been imposed by the coup plotters. Stories were reported of soldiers laying down their machine guns, hands held high in surrender, as apparently thousands of people flooded the bridges to demand the withdrawal of the military troops from the city. Military tanks were overturned, soldiers handcuffed by civilian ‘police’, and flags waved in triumph as the impending threat to civilization in Turkey was brought to an end by the efforts of citizen-activists or citizen-soldiers (Figure 3). The crowds videoed and photographed the scene, which made visible cheers from a seemingly revolutionary moment. In the photo below, for example, a triumphant crowd stands atop an overturned armoured tank. A man on the right holds a photo of President Erdoğan amidst a sea of men and red Turkish flags.

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Figure 3.

Men stand on top of an overturned military tank.

The bridge, mythically encapsulating much of the socio-cultural and historical position of Turkey as a nation-state both regionally and globally, further underscored the idea of not only a nation under threat but the renaissance of state sovereignty. The halting of traffic, as I mentioned previously, signalled how the attempted coup-in-progress rendered the physical and symbolic boundaries of Turkey as a nation-state open and vulnerable. Overturned military tanks and even a rumoured beheading of a coup plotter by civilians became enactments of unity and an assertion of the will of the people (albeit under Erdoğan’s directive). Thus, while newsrooms were scenes of uncertainty and panic, the bridges, though momentarily occupied, were the settings of decisive action. Uncertainty became represented in the newsroom, whereas action played out on the streets. Through the juxtaposed images of the chaotic newsroom and seized bridge ‘triumphantly’ reclaimed by the citizens, the images of chaos and destruction became merely potentialities and imaginary threats that did not erase history – as Debord (2002) argues is the function of the spectacle – but rather deployed and evoked memories of history as a means of (re)asserting state power.

Scene 3: The ‘return’ of Erdoğan

As the crowds reoccupied the bridges and the media outlets were emptied, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan arrived at Turkey’s largest airport to be received by a mass of supporters (Al Jazeera, 2016). The days prior to the coup, Erdoğan had been uncharacteristically absent from the public eye while vacationing in the coastal city of Marmaris (BBC, 2016a,b). Even as the coup plot emerged, he remained out of sight until his now famous appearance on CNN Turk via FaceTime. Erdoğan’s public appearance after hours of uncertainty signalled the faltering of the attempted coup plot and the restoration of order. Cheering crowds waved both ruling party and Turkish flags as Erdoğan addressed the public directly (at least physically) for the first time since the military plotters had announced their intention of removing him from power. This was a treasonous act, he declared (BBC, 2016a,b), assuring the people that the harshest penalties would be imposed on those conspiring to undermine the democratically elected government. He assured the crowd that though the coup plotters were members of the military, they represented a small, deviating faction, while the rest of the military remained wholly against the illegitimate attempt to seize power. He condemned this group of detractors while simultaneously praising those who stood up against the tyranny of the coup:

Turkish Armed Forces was not involved in the coup attempt in its entirety. It was conducted by a clique within the armed forces and received a well-deserved response from our nation. (President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as cited in BBC, 2016a,b)

Coupled with reports that the chief of staff, General Hulusi Akar, had been held hostage by this clique (Al Jazeera, 2016; BBC, 2016a,b), Erdoğan’s words assuaged the historically rooted anxieties of the role the military has played in Turkish politics as the forebearer of Kemalist secularism. ⁸ Standing where just a month before a bomb had ripped through the airport, killing nearly 50 people and injuring hundreds (BBC, 2016a,b), Erdoğan’s presence marked the assertion of stability and the ability of the state and its leader to function through and despite chaos. His theatrical ‘return’ marked a restoration of order, signalling the final act of a political drama that he noted was doomed from the start. Erdoğan was resolute in reassuring the people of Turkey that it was through them that the nation had been restored, revived and resurrected from a near death experience.

Conclusions

The different settings in which the attempted coup unfolded worked in tandem to construct an image of the looming and potential destruction of Turkey. These images played out through the chaotic newsrooms and occupied bridges were evocative of a context and history in Turkey that has been marked by four military coups, genocide, mass detention and arrests of political detractors, and violent ethnic conflict. In recent years particularly, the socio-political climate in Turkey has been marked by massive anti-government protests (such as the 2013 Gezi Park uprisings), regional instability amidst Daesh advances and a deteriorating Syrian civil war, and internal political strife – if not civil – war in the southeast as Turkish military forces imposed martial law in Kurdish-majority cities. These developments have strained the relationship between Turkey’s government and larger international bodies such as the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), calling into question Turkey’s status as an invaluable Western ally. Indeed, the rockiness of the last several years within Turkey has culminated in the collapse of political alliances between the ruling Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, or AKP in Turkish) and the Gülen movement. ⁹ In fact, the AKP and Erdoğan have led charges against Gülen and his followers for orchestrating and carrying out the coup with help from the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) (Arango & Yeginsu, 2016).

These trends, though marked by new and distinct players, are indicative of a historical anxiety that has characterized Turkey’s socio-cultural and political position both domestically and globally since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and foundation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923. Official discourses often evoke memories of the threat of both domestic instability and foreign occupation, encapsulated in the quote from the founder of the republic, Mustafa Kemal: ‘Peace at home, peace in the world’. Thus, the sites where and ways in which the coup unfolded on the night of 15 July drew upon spaces, tropes and common cultural artifacts from socio-political life in Turkey as a way of asserting and embodying a seemingly united society around core values (see Kellner, 2005).

Surrounded by increasing regional, global and domestic threats to the legitimacy and sovereignty of the state, more specifically the state through the rule of President Erdoğan, the newsroom, bridges and return of the president became multi-sited political dramas to reassert Turkey as a nation-state and its people as a united body or entity against the threat of the coup. These scenes indicate a diffuse yet situated spectacle built into familiar cultural discourses and narratives, though deployed under new and altering circumstances, as a means of world projection (McHale, 1996). The images of (potential) catastrophe and destruction of the order that the state provides was rendered eminent through violent images that were referential to specific and contingent history. The spectacle of the night, functioning through projected yet never realized images of potential destruction, became not merely representative forms of the idea of Turkey as sovereign, but an active mediation between the government, the populace (i.e. the subjects) and socio-cultural and political history.

The state is thus a diffuse and dispersed system that circulates itself as sovereign through political performance. It is a spectacle in that it circulates images and representations of disaster and catastrophe as a means by which to evoke anxiety, thereby inciting action. Action is incited through and by the image to ‘assuage and exacerbate anxieties of all sorts by providing images that can be attached, ostensibly comprehended, and above all, removed’ (Weber, 2002: 7). These spectacular images become a place of envisioning a future as eminent in the present that demands action for survival. It creates itself by representing – and thereby rendering – itself as fragile and in need of saving. Indeed, if the spectacle ‘is the existing order’s uninterrupted discourse about itself, its laudatory monologue’ (Debord, 2002: 23), the state shows itself to be a ‘fragile organism’ (Agamben, 2001) in need of constant reassurance and re-institution. ¹⁰ It relies on the external to reify and solidify the internal. The state as spectacle and as spectacular performance represents not society as isolated from itself, but the state as isolated from society. It alienates itself through its own representation, staving off obliteration or its disappearance to the realm of the non-living by mediating the mere image or rumour of its objective existence through the memories and actions of a collective.