Détrompe l’oeil: come disfare cose con le immagini

The article first interrogates the verbal ability of undoing things, taking as examples the Islamic verbal formula for divorcing a wife and atheist rituals for religious disaffiliation. Having pointed out differences and similarities between words that do things and words that undo them, the article then tackles the question whether images can do things in the same way as words do them in the frame of speech acts theory. Finally, it deals with the issue of whether images too, like words, can be used not only to do things, but also to undo them. The case study of images used to ritually undo imagination, like yantras or hesychastic icons, is analyzed.