ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to link two apparently unconnected phenomena: (1) celebrity culture with its reliance on charisma, and (2) post-truth, with references drawn primarily from Bollywood. It argues that (1) in a social media-driven era, the Bollywood star’s charisma is made possible through the mimetic capital of representations that possess and generate a sensuous fidelity in the audience, (2) such a charisma effect marks the rise of a culturally induced ignorance, or agnogenesis, in the face of any reliable information, (3) this agnogenesis is directly linked to affective investments in certain images of the star, and (4) such a charisma effect building on affect and agnogenesis may be seen as a response to the anxieties around “algorithmic governance” of our technologically defined lives in the 21st century
