Dematerialization of history in the era ofthe (cinematographic) archive. From Aby Warburg to Jean-Luc Godard

Abstract

Aby  Warburg's  Mnemosyne  proposes  a  writing  of  art  history  that  escaped  from chrono-normativities  of  historiography  that  crystallized  before  their  eyes.  In  his  atlas,  he sought  an  anachronistic  point  of view  where  past  and  present  transform  each  other  to configure what Walter Benjamin could call “constellation”. Both Warburgian experience and some cinematographic archives of Jean-Luc Godard pose epistemological problems very contemporary:  how  configure  an archive  about  the  past  and  how  to  restore  to  (visual) documents a place in the historical process? This article explores how the Warburg’s method illuminates contemporary productions on the relationship between film and history and how it continues functioning as a matrix to think the dematerialization of the historical discipline.