Empathetic pictorial memory: Aby Warburg and the symbolic form

• Grant number: 24/05522-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: December 01, 2024
• End date: July 31, 2028
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - History of Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Márcio Suzuki
• Grantee: Isabela de Vilhena Gaglianone
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This doctoral project aims to investigate the conceptual construction of symbol and symbolism in the work of Aby Warburg (1866-1929), based on his reading of the essay Über das optische Formgefühl [1873], by Robert Vischer (1847-1933). It was in this essay that Vischer developed his theory of Einfühlung (empathy, or the projection of one's own bodily sensation into the perceptual process), within the aesthetic discussion waged in the second half of the 19th century about the symbolism of form.In a second moment, we will try to present a "topos of the hand," in Warburg's thinking, based on the polarity he establishes in the 1923 conference between greifen [to grasp] and Begriff [concept], poles between which the symbol is found. This polarity becomes a heuristic tool from then on and reappears in the introduction to Atlas Mnemosyne, featuring the artistic act produced by the artist's hand as the interval between the poles - in the intermediate place that is that of the symbol - because Warburg goes increasingly deeper into the task of considering the work of art as an instrument of orientation, in the celestial cosmos and in the social universe: in the space of thought [Denkraum].The symbol is closely related, for Warburg, to history and memory. We will seek to show how, throughout his work, Einfühlung merges with mneme to identify the empathetic memory of images.