In today’s all-pervasive communications society, with its arsenal of technological tools, fame is a conspicuous object of desire, an aspiration that requires no exceptional acts or achievements because universal recognition has become an end in itself. Famous people, celebrities and stars form a vast constellation of people who achieve fame – real social actors who sweep into our world before vanishing as quickly as they appeared. The rules and factors governing fame and celebrity throughout history have been determined by the structure of the public space and by the codes and techniques of socialisation. Thus TV, with all its power to create and disseminate images, initiated a new era in the history of fame that is still ongoing, despite strong competition from the Internet and social media that have introduced new rules into the way the frequency of dissemination constructs fame. Prestige, recognition and authority – factors that once shared a common space with fame – are no longer so relevant, being subject to forms of legitimation that have lost much of their importance.

‘Fame’ – is the central theme of this 11th issue of Electra. We begin with a very brief metalinguistic presentation: the word has recently become slightly anachronistic, referring it seems to something which radiates from the public sphere with characteristics that are no longer those which dominate under the all-encompassing influence of the media. Hence, today we call ‘famous’ people ‘media personalities’, and at the margins of the latest mechanisms of visibility there is really nothing that could be described as ‘fame’. If anything, there are those who benefit from the short-term prestige granted and recognised by a small section of the public and their peers. ‘Media personality’ is the term used to describe someone who frequently appears in the media. Not occasionally but constantly, on media where every appearance is profane – this is the form that fame now almost exclusively takes.

Formulating the law that determines the fame of ‘stars’ in the society of the spectacle, the Italian philosopher Mario Pezzella discusses the seductive staging and affirmative form of appearance that is distinctive to them and which produces a system of desire and a compelling form of voluntary bondage, while at the same time reactivating mythical archetypes.

Robert van Krieken, professor at the University of Sydney and author of Celebrity Society (2012), analyses and charts the genealogy of celebrity, identifying the historically changing social conditions and realities that make celebrity possible, while at the same showing that its history is interwoven with the history of the public realm.

In an essay about infamy – the opposite of fame – entitled ‘The Life of Infamous Men’, Michel Foucault wrote that the infamous are anonymous, they are consigned to oblivion, but notwithstanding, their obscure and unhappy existences provide interesting narrative material. Included among infamous men are writers with no oeuvre or literature to their name. Éric Marty, an essayist and professor of literature, explores the mysterious relationship between literature and infamy based on this work by Foucault.

Based on an essentially anecdotal episode that occurred in the world of pop music and reality show celebrities, the philosopher Laurent de Sutter defines the key attributes of fame, looking back to the Roman world, the idea of ‘reputation’, and to the Middle Ages to establish the roots of the contemporary sense of the word ‘famous’.

This journalistic article by the reporter João Pacheco takes us into the laboratory where the celebrities of mass culture are created, and it shows the mechanisms and technologies – particularly TV – that engender them. Three Portuguese examples are looked at: the football player Cristiano Ronaldo, the Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and the television host Cristina Ferreira.

Political communication, the field of research of Rita Figueiras – a professor at the Universidade Católica, has a wide range of sophisticated tools at its disposal in the current era of new digital technologies, the Internet and social media, which can build a completely mediatised public space subject to manipulation on every level. Success on the political stage has thus become dependent on communication techniques developed within the digital ecosystem.

Barry King is a researcher at the Auckland University of Technology whose most recent work has focused on the mechanisms by which someone gains the status of ‘icon’. He starts this essay by looking at the concept of fame and the conditions which produce it, and then moves on to trace the historic trajectory of the three factors of celebrity, fame and prestige, while also taking a moment to examine the concepts of renown, reputation and charisma. He thus creates a constellation of concepts that have acquired huge importance in the society of mass communication.

This diary travels between Lebanon and Argentina, between father and mother, love and sex, freedom and danger, and life and death. The author is a filmmaker called Anthony El Chidiac who was born in Beirut 32 years ago and whose documentary Room for a Man, sombrely beautiful and with a powerful innocence, examines the subject of fear and the desire to be oneself in a private and public world where homosexuality is condemned. In this ‘Book of Hours’ written for Electra, Chidiac states: ‘I grew up in a shattered family, in a divided society, and a non-conforming body & mind.’ There are echoes in this diary of a world in crisis. There is a confession that becomes accusatory in tone, a dry precision that seeks an escape. The name for it is poetry.