Warburg's Haunted House

Bibliographic Data

ID3153449
AuthorsGeorges Didi-Huberman, Georges Didi‐huberman (corresponding author)
Year2012
Volume18
Issue1
Pages50-78
Publication date2012-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueCommon Knowledge (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0961-754X • E-ISSN: 1538-4578
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/0961754x-1456881
OpenAlexW2069898933
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited9

This article deals with the genesis of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne, composed by Aby Warburg between 1927 and 1929 as a response to the Great War. His reaction to the war was both pathetic (even pathological) and epistemic (which is to say, methodological). If the history of culture amounted to a great psychomachia of the astra (concepts) and the monstra (chaos), as Warburg said, the war was for him a direct test of his theory (or Kulturwissenschaft). It should be no surprise, then, that between 1914 and 1918 he should assemble a large iconographic collection of materials from and about the war. This essay compares that collection and its theoretical foundations with similar projects of Warburg's contemporaries in France and Germany (notably those of the historians Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch

Art · Art history · Epistemology · Literature · Physics · Political science · Sociology · Surprise · Warburg Effect · History · Kierkegaardian Philosophy and Influence · Law · Multidisciplinary Warburg-centric Studies · Philosophy · Visual Culture and Art Theory

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