The aim of this paper is to redefine the notion of "heroism" through an investigation in the sociopolitics of popular Medias and especially the characters of Superheroes as they appear in comics of the late thirties and in the cinematographic industry since the nineties. This paper will pay a large tribute to the works of Gabriel Tarde (1890), Henri Bergson (1932) and Gilles Deleuze (1969) whose concepts will be an imderlying constant reference. My purpose is to redefine the (Bergsonian) notion of heroism through the notions of imitation and innovation, defined by Tarde as the fundamental principles of social life, and redefined by Deleuze as the collective expression of the primitive ontological forces of Repetition and Difference. Actually, the notion of imitation and innovation seem more appropriate to the study of popular culture phenomena than the statistic sociology of Durkheim. Based on that philosophical background, I will give an analysis of the political changes occurring in westem contemporary societies through an analysis of the representation of Superheroes.

In this paper we shall consider how the globalization of media has destroyed the metaphysical link between the nation as political entity the nation cultural unit, a link which was postulated by the Romantic philosophical tradition and that at the same time has been deeply engrained in the common sense idea of national identity. The paper has three sections. In the first one we consider the two meanings of the concept "nation" and show that their possible aiffinity is only understandable taking into account the relevance of the spatial and temporal determinations of existence. We deal with such kinds of determination in the second section; finally, m the third one we suggest that the political and cultural dynamics of the current intemational order have subverted those determinations and have fostered a new vision of existence in convergence with the so-called American way of life and, by the same token, weakened the traditional idea of nation.

This paper will unfold the theoretical object mentioned in the title thereof without solution of continuity, but it will be convenient to take into account some points before beginning: firstly, we shall throughout uphold the difference existing between visual and narrative cinema, that is to say, on the one hand, a cinema whose utmost aim is to dazzle the spectator and fill his sight with images of the most variegated kind no matter how much the anecdotic content of the picture is feeble or plainly absurd and that can at least in principle dispense utterly with whatever narrative thread and, on the other hand, a cinema that tells a story or shows a situation with a certain dramatic coherence, which can of course be even more absurd than the products of the visual cmema but that at any rate founds its absurdity on a story whether symbolically or not and not on the sole strength of visual images (Isaacs 4). Secondly, we shall not deal with visual cinema since, according to a slant that will be explicit hereinbelow, it has played a secondary part in the amazing cultural transcendence of cinema as a whole, which in our opinion lies in having shaped all the world over a certain framework of existence beyond the weight of the particular traditions and also in havmg provided the average spectator with a sui generis experience of his own subjectivity, which has above all been the work of the narrative cinema, for the visual one has as such just started to develop together with a digital conception of image and with a cybemetic conception of communication (Manovich 20). Thirdly, the difference at issue does not implicate any appraisal of the two species of cinema whereto we have alluded. Fourthly, there is a distmction between "narrative" or "story" (that is to say, the imaginative bond of subjectivity and action or subjectivity and occurrence) and "literature" or "reflective story" (namely, the ideal identity or the symbolical action that are above all set out in a novel or in a short story), whereon we shall briefly dwell at the end of the paper. Finally, what follows is more a personal reflection than the outcome of a comparison with someone's standpoints or theories, for we consider that the best way to show something is to focus it through the own experience, above all when the matter in question is within everyone's reach; in other words, we shall play the part of an average spectator, not of the critic's that focuses the phenomenon theoretically.