Impersonal image and post-human nymph. Warburg’s “Nietzschean” readings

Abstract

This paper analyzes three interpretations of Warburghian thought that seek to re-think the elements that the immediate disciples of Warburg put aside in order to build an Iconology as a “ Humanistic S cience”: “Life” in the concept of “Nachleben”, “Pathos” i n the concept of “Pathosformel” and an interpretation of the nymph as an inhuman becoming of the female body. Firstly, it studies the Agambenian suggestions around the no n-dichotomous but polar character of pathos formula and its relationship with the images survival. This allows to think A rt as a “ way of making ” that preserves and transforms the non-subjective space of emotions into an impersonal experience. Secondly , the article examines Didi-Huberman’s considerations on the modes of existence (Lebensformen) involved in the survival of images, which is understood as an impure game of latencies and violence , far away from the Modern Aesthetics of taste. And, finally, through the reading of Paskaleva, we think the figure of the nymph not as an object of male desire but rather as an expression of a no-longer- human affectivity.