Conquering Mount Olympus
By Daniel Dayan
English
In the early sixties, Violette Morin wrote a seminal essay in which she laid the grounds of a sociology of visibility. According to the French sociologist, the “Olympians” were those who occupied a towering position above all stars and celebrities. They embodied the epitome of visibility. Fifty years after Violette Morin’s essay, this paper analyzes an ongoing revolution directed against the “Olympians” and their privileges. Anonymity and invisibility have become a stigma and visibility a right which everybody feels entitled to get, grab, or steal. Anonymity is no longer accepted as a fate. Mount Olympus is under siege.