Construction of Crises : Climate, Terror and the Eiffel Tower

Abstract: This work investigates visualizations of two crises; terrorism and climate change. Focus lies on mediated images concerning Paris 2015, where terrorist attacks had an impact on the following UN climate change conference (COP21). The symbol of the Eiffel Tower was used to portrait both issues and will be studied through a semiotic analysis. Terrorism and climate change are argued to be interlinked, although the Tower functions as a powerful apparatus that mediates different meanings depending on which crisis it represents. Roland Barthes’ definition of myth is prolonged with a broader sense of ideology as defined by Louis Althusser. The ideology is mediated from the sovereign to the public through the apparatus that is further developed in the writings of Giorgio Agamben. Depictions of crises can accordingly be used by the sovereign in a state of exception with aim to control people’s behavior. When signifying universal values, the Tower includes some while it excludes others that do not belong to the Western core nations. Countries in the periphery who suffer from climate change are historical victims of Western imperialism. The Eiffel Tower hides the colonial history while representing democratic values that simultaneously are being limited by the French government. The study ends with an ecocritical analysis of public artworks made in relation to COP21. Art has the potential to make the invisible climate change tangible, although the previous terror and the multiplied myths of the Eiffel Tower interfere with the reading.