essay
by EMANUELE COCCIA
Rarely has there been a more abused category. Rarely has a word expanded its meaning to such an extent that it has lost it altogether. Today, “glamour” is an empty signifier, the zero degree of meaning. It was associated with bodies, objects, phenomena, and events that have nothing in common except the fact that they are claimed by the subject who designates them in this way as the terrain of their existence. Its use today is merely a symptom of the inability of the current fashion system to hatch radically new ideas (as the historical and cultural task assigned to it for more than a century would require): for this reason, everything it produces becomes glamour.
Yet originally, the term had a very specific meaning. The current term is a variation of one used before the 18th century in the sense of occult and magical knowledge:…