Aby Warburg and the Ritual of Images

Abstract

In this paper we intend to associate the works of Aby Warburg and the concept of ritual according to the perspective opened by Van Gennep and Turner. This approach will allow us to think the images (Pathosformel) as experiences of "passage". In this sense, we want to show that an image stages a "drama" as part of a "ritual process" (Turner). If, as Warburg says, images serve to deal with the anguishes and conflicts through which humanity has become possible, we believe that we can rethink our relationships with them as indexes of such "rites of passage". In this way, images can be thought of as marks of the opening to the "communitas" (Turner) and, at the same time, as "restoration" of the order that guarantees an indispensable "space of thought" (Denkraum) for the configuration of culture.