Destra e sinistra nello spazio iconico tra iconografia cristiana e antropologia

Proceeding from the statement that «reading» images is not at all analogous to any culturally codified lecture of written texts, Sigrid Weigel develops a crucial critic of the anthropological paradigm linked to the left-right problem in the visual arts. Focusing on various examples of painted and sculpted Annunciations, the author argues how the decline of the traditional orientation, based on the figure of God in central position, leads to a growing importance of the spectator gaze and to a new relation between iconic narration and symbolic meaning

Handling og erindring, håb og skyld: Arv som generationsbånd hos Arendt, Benjamin, Heine og Freud

The article discusses different but related figures of trans-generational heritage in the writings of Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Heinrich Heine, and Sigmund Freud. The common ground of these German-Jewish authors is an interpretative pattern within the theory of history/memory based in the idea of a strong bond of subsequent generations and their interrelation, which refers back to the biblical origins of the idea of ‘heritage’. Both Heine and Benjamin hypothesize a secret agreement between the generations, which might be read as the origin of the idea of solidarity. In Freud’s psychoanalysis we find a complementary concept in the figure of ‘archaic heritage’ elaborated in Monotheism, namely a trans-generational trans- feral of repressed memories of the ancestors to their offspring. While Freud, not coincidentally after the First World War and during the rise of Nazism, discovers the unconscious transfer of guilt, Arendt seeks – after the Second World War – to regain, in the space between human beings, action as the space of the political. By emphasizing ‘natality’ as a basic human condition she invests policy in the acting of men in history with the condition of the possibility of a new beginning. The future, according to the insight of these authors, will not be created in abstract images or produced by means of a program, but will come into being by the treatment of the past and the heritage of those who lived before us and by the way in which we act in the present.SIGRID WEIGEL: ACTING AND MEMORY, HOPE AND GUILT: HERITAGE AS THE BOND OF GENERATIONS IN ARENDT, BENJAMIN, HEINE, AND FREUD The article discusses different but related figures of trans-generational heritage in the writings of Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Heinrich Heine, and Sigmund Freud. The common ground of these German-Jewish authors is an interpretative pattern within the theory of history/memory based in the idea of a strong bond of subsequent generations and their interrelation, which refers back to the biblical origins of the idea of ‘heritage’. Both Heine and Benjamin hypothesize a secret ag- reement between the generations, which might be read as the origin of the idea of solidarity. In Freud’s psychoanalysis we find a complementary concept in the figure of ‘archaic heritage’ elaborated in Monotheism, namely a trans-generational trans- feral of repressed memories of the ancestors to their offspring. While Freud, not coincidentally after the First World War and during the rise of Nazism, discovers the unconscious transfer of guilt, Arendt seeks – after the Second World War – to regain, in the space between human beings, action as the space of the political. By emphasizing ‘natality’ as a basic human condition she invests policy in the acting of men in history with the condition of the possibility of a new beginning. The future, according to the insight of these authors, will not be created in abstract images or produced by means of a program, but will come into being by the treatment of the past and the heritage of those who lived before us and by the way in which we act in the present. &nbsp

The Epistemic Advantage of Self-Analysis for Cultural-Historical Insights: The variants of Warburg’s manuscripts on his Indian Journey

The article is devoted to analyze different versions and drafts of the 1923 Warburg’s Lecture, held in Kreuzlingen in 1923, on his travel to the United States in 1895/96, at the end of his long convalescence in the sanatorium of Ludwig Binswanger, as well as the respective lectures of 1897. This essay focuses on how the dispersion of these texts, their different dates and interferences in publications over decades had epistemological implications in the interpretation of his famous Conference. Thus, the contrast between fundamental points of these texts, both in their forms and contents – including deliberate terminological fluctuations –, raises theoretical questions that interfere with the understanding of Warburg’s work in its methodological specificity. It stands out his insertion in the style of characteristic thought identified as a movement of Kulturwissenschaft, the specificity of the relations of his work with Anthropology and Philology, but also with Psychoanalysis, especially in the process of certain Freudian formulations elaborated from a process of self-analysis

Transnational foreign cultural policy - Beyond national culture: prerequisites and perspectives for the intersection of domestic and foreign policy

An overview of the development of the German foreign cultural and educational policy (FCEP), the analysis of rhetoric, terminology and different cultural concepts are the starting point for the discussion of a contemporary FCEP, which is committed to global regulatory objectives, acts in dialogue with partner countries and relies on cooperation with civil society actors, at home as well as internationally. Intercultural politics at home and foreign cultural policy go hand in hand. The biggest problem of a globally effective FCEP is the loss of credibility of German development policy as well as a lack of reflection concerning EU development policy with regard to the legacy of colonial history. Contrary to the postcolonial rejection of the nation state, the study argues for a strengthening of democratic, constitutional structures

Les images, acteurs majeurs de la connaissance

Un déluge d’images De toute part, des plaintes sur l’avalanche d’images qui nous assaille sont audibles. De sombres pronostics annoncent même la fin proche de la littérature, si ce n’est de l’ensemble de la culture de l’écrit. Par ailleurs, il est question partout à la ronde  et particulièrement dans les sciences , d’un iconic ou pictorial turn qui a nourri des aspirations à une nouvelle science interdisciplinaire de l’image. Mais simultanément est aussi conjurée une fin de l’image, parce q..

Le Rituel du Serpent d’Aby Warburg. Correspondances entre la lecture de textes culturels et de textes écrits

La lecture du Rituel du Serpent d’Aby Warburg soulève des questions d’ordre philologique portant sur la lisibilité de ce texte. Elles ouvrent des perspectives ethnologiques qui abordent la question de la lisibilité des signes propres à une culture étrangère. Cette tentative d’Aby Warburg, qui consistait à comprendre le système symbolique des Indiens Pueblos ou encore à lire une culture qui lui était étrangère à la manière d’un texte culturel, s’apparente très nettement au phénomène des images..

Epistemology of Wandering, Tree and Taxonomy

Aby Warburg’s Bilderatlas Mnemosyne makes use of a very specific form of the genre and medium of atlas. Instead of projecting geographical knowledge onto a two-dimensional plane as the conventional cartographic map does, his atlas consists of a number of plates each of which is a configuration of reproduced images, which are collected under a common heading or leitmotif. Gertrude Bing later supplemented these headings with a short explanation, - for example: “Pathos of Suffering in energetic ..