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Skulls, Tree Bark, FossilsMemory and Materiality in Georges Didi-Huberman’s Transvaluation of Surface

Skulls, Tree Bark, FossilsMemory and Materiality in Georges Didi-Huberman’s Transvaluation of... Studies of material objects in the field of memory studies have followed diverse epistemological and disciplinary trajectories, but their shared characteristic has been the questioning of philosophical assumptions concerning human relations with inanimate things and lower-level organic objects, such as plants, within the Aristotelian hierarchy of beings. Rather than accept at face value their categorizations as passive or deficient in comparison to the human subject, critical scholarship has reformulated the place and role of nonhuman entities in culture. This essay examines the nexus of materiality and memory in the work of the French philosopher and art historian Georges Didi-Huberman, with the focus on the questions of mnemonic affordance of things and plants. The essay proposes that Didi-Huberman’s project can be approached from the perspective of “undoing” the key binaries of Western historiography of art and material culture: surface/depth, exteriority/interiority, visibility/invisibility, and malleability/rigidity. Focusing on imaginal representations of memory objects in Didi-Huberman’s two essays Bark and Being a Skull, the essay situates these texts within the context of his philosophical reading of Aby Warburg’s iconology, and argues that Didi-Huberman’s undoing of the binaries that have traditionally structured thinking about materiality and memory could be productively approached as a philosophical project of transvaluating surface. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Qui Parle Duke University Press

Skulls, Tree Bark, FossilsMemory and Materiality in Georges Didi-Huberman’s Transvaluation of Surface

Zolkos, Magdalena
Qui Parle , Volume 30 (2) – Dec 1, 2021
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43 pages

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Copyright
Copyright © 2021 Editorial Board, Qui Parle
ISSN
1041-8385
eISSN
1938-8020
DOI
10.1215/10418385-9395279
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Studies of material objects in the field of memory studies have followed diverse epistemological and disciplinary trajectories, but their shared characteristic has been the questioning of philosophical assumptions concerning human relations with inanimate things and lower-level organic objects, such as plants, within the Aristotelian hierarchy of beings. Rather than accept at face value their categorizations as passive or deficient in comparison to the human subject, critical scholarship has reformulated the place and role of nonhuman entities in culture. This essay examines the nexus of materiality and memory in the work of the French philosopher and art historian Georges Didi-Huberman, with the focus on the questions of mnemonic affordance of things and plants. The essay proposes that Didi-Huberman’s project can be approached from the perspective of “undoing” the key binaries of Western historiography of art and material culture: surface/depth, exteriority/interiority, visibility/invisibility, and malleability/rigidity. Focusing on imaginal representations of memory objects in Didi-Huberman’s two essays Bark and Being a Skull, the essay situates these texts within the context of his philosophical reading of Aby Warburg’s iconology, and argues that Didi-Huberman’s undoing of the binaries that have traditionally structured thinking about materiality and memory could be productively approached as a philosophical project of transvaluating surface.

Journal

Qui Parle – Duke University Press

Published: Dec 1, 2021

References

  • Phasmid Thinking: On Georges Didi-Huberman’s Method
    Alloa, Emmanuel
  • Communicative and Cultural Memory
    Assmann, Jan Erll, Astrid Nünning, Ansgar
  • Object Matters: Considering Materiality, Meaning, and Memory
    Bruchac, Margaret
  • Affect and Embodiment
    Callard, Felicity Papoulias, Constantina Radstone, Susannah Schwarz, Bill
  • Anatomical Atlases as Cultural Pedagogy of Bodies and the Afterlife of Images
    Cazetta, Valéria Oliveira, Régia Cristina Tavares, Jonathan Mendes
  • In the Image of Auschwitz
    Chaouat, Bruno
  • Teleological Causation
    Charles, David Shields, Christopher
  • The Afterlives of Monuments
    Cherry, Deborah Cherry, Deborah
  • Surface
    Chester, Alicia Elkins, James McGuire, Kristi Burns, Maureen Chester, Alicia Kuennen, Joel
  • Artistic Survival: Panofsky vs. Warburg and the Exorcism of Impure
    Didi-Huberman, Georges. Rehberg, Vivian Belay, Boris
  • Before the Image, before Time: The Sovereignty of Anachronism
    Didi-Huberman, Georges. Mason, Peter Farago, Zwijnenberg,
  • Dialektik des Monstrums: Aby Warburg and the Symptom Paradigm
    Didi-Huberman, Georges
  • Image, Language: The Other Dialectic
    Didi-Huberman, Georges Woodard, Elise Rodriguez Solorzano, Jorge Cauwer, Stijn De Smith, Laura Katherine
  • Knowing When to Cut
    Didi-Huberman, Georges. Caillat, François
  • Out of the Plan, out of the Plane 2: Stripping, Fourth Letter to Gerhard Richter
    Didi-Huberman, Georges Chare, Nicholas Williams, Dominic
  • Memory and Consciousness
    Droege, Paula Bernecker, Sven Michaelian, Kourken
  • Reading Georges Didi-Huberman’s Devant le Temps: History, Memory and Montage
    Duarte, Miguel Nuno Mesquita
  • Polish Landscapes of Memory at the Sites of Extermination: The Politics of Framing
    Dziuban, Zuzanna Schindel, Estela Colombo, Pamela
  • Inhibitions, Symptoms, Anxiety
    Freud, Sigmund Clark, L. Pierce Strachey, James
  • Repression
    Freud, Sigmund Strachey, James Strachey, James
  • A Special Type of Choice of Object Made by Men (Contributions to the Psychology of Love I)
    Freud, Sigmund Strachey, James Strachey, James
  • Georges Didi-Huberman: Vers une intentionnalité inverse?
    Hagelstein, Maud
  • Images and Symptoms: Georges Didi-Huberman’s Studies on Art
    Hanza, Kathia
  • Testimonial Objects: Memory, Gender, and Transmission
    Hirsch, Marianne Spitzer, Leo
  • On Moths and Butterflies, or How to Orient Oneself through Images: Georges Didi-Huberman’s Art Criticism in Context
    Ionescu, Vlad
  • The Rise of Hermeneutics and the Crisis of Ocularcentrism
    Jay, Martin
  • Multidirectional Eco-memory in an Era of Extinction: Colonial Whaling and Indigenous Dispossession in Kim Scott’s That Deadman Dance
    Kennedy, Rosanne K. Heise, Ursula Christensen, Jon Niemann, Michelle
  • Objects of Memory: Material Culture as Life Review
    Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara Oring, Elliott
  • The Convergence of Phenomenology and Semiotics in Georges Didi-Huberman’s Aesthetics of the Symptom
    Krasińska, Magdalena
  • Notes on Afterwardsness
    Laplanche, Jean Stanton, Martin Fletcher, John
  • Time and the Other
    Laplanche, Jean Thurston, Luke Fletcher, John
  • Boundaries—Ontology, Methods, Analysis
    Larsen, Svend Erik Schimanski, Johan Wolfe, Stephen
  • And the Word Becomes Flesh: Georges Didi-Huberman’s Symptom in the Image
    Larsson, Chari
  • Suspicious Images: Iconophobia and the Ethical Gaze
    Larsson, Chari
  • The Hidden Memories of Plants
    Laskow, Sarah
  • From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik or How to Make Things Public
    Latour, Bruno Latour, Bruno Weibel, Peter
  • Images Thinking the Political: On the Recent Works of Georges Didi-Huberman
    Leśniak, Andrzej
  • Mapping Memory: Theories in Ancient, Medieval, and Early Modern Philosophy and Medicine
    Lilião, Ricardo Presti, Roberto Lo Perler, Dominik van der Eijk, Philip
  • Memory Studies Goes Planetary: An Interview with Stef Craps
    Lizarazu, Maria Roca Vince, Rebekah
  • Jak drzewa świadczą? W stronę nie-ludzkich figuracji świadka
    Małczyński, Jacek
  • Polityka natury w Auschwitz-Birkenau
    Małczyński, Jacek
  • The Environmental History of the Holocaust
    Małczyński, Jacek Domańska, Ewa Smykowski, Mikołaj Kłos, Agnieszka
  • Plant-Soul: The Elusive Meanings of Vegetative Life
    Marder, Michael
  • Vegetal Memories
    Marder, Michael
  • Aristotle and Animal Mind
    Mesaroș, Claudiu
  • Narrative Forms in the Age of Anthropocene: Negotiating Human-Nonhuman Relations in Global South Novels
    Neumann, Birgit Erll, Astrid Sommer, Roy
  • The Shimmering Phenomenon of Clandestinity: Political Phenomenology beside Appearing and Vanishing
    Oberprantacher, Andreas Bedorf, Thomas Herrmann, Steffen
  • The Intelligent Plant
    Pollan, Michael
  • Auschwitz as Hermeneutic Rupture, Differend, and Image malgré Tout: Jameson, Lyotard, Didi-Huberman
    Rose, Sven-Erik Bathrick, David Prager, Brad Richardson, Michael
  • Bark
    Rys, Michel Zolkos, Magdalena
  • Didi-Huberman, Georges
    Saint, Nigel Murray, John
  • Pathosformel (Pathos Formula)
    Schankweiler, Kerstin Wüschner, Philipp Slaby, Jan Scheve, Christian von
  • The Difficult Heritage of Non-sites of Memory: Contested Places, Contaminated Landscapes
    Sendyka, Roma
  • The First Transvaluation of All Values: Nietzsche’s Agon with Socrates in the Birth of Tragedy
    Siemens, Herman Tevenar, Gudrun von
  • Son[i]a #201. Georges Didi-Huberman
  • The Objects That Lived: The 9/11 Museum and Material Transformation
    Sturken, Marita
  • Krajobraz po Zagładzie: Pastoralne dystopie I wizje ‘terracydu.’
    Ubertowska, Aleksandra
  • Pagan-Antique Prophecy in Words and Images in the Age of Luther
    Warburg, Aby Britt, David
  • The Readability of Images (and) of History
    Weigel, Sigrid Rys, Michiel Vanvelk, Jan
  • Shelf Lives: Nonhuman Agency and Seamus Heaney’s Vibrant Memory Objects
    Zirra, Maria
  • The Inorganic
    Zolkos, Magdalena Vint, Sherryl
  • Justice, the Confessional, and the Violin: Objects and Object-Mediated Relations of Loss in Jaume Cabré’s Confessions
    Zolkos, Magdalena Andrews, Chris McGuire, Matt
  • Phasmid Thinking: On Georges Didi-Huberman’s Method
    Alloa, Emmanuel
  • Communicative and Cultural Memory
    Assmann, Jan Erll, Astrid Nünning, Ansgar
  • Object Matters: Considering Materiality, Meaning, and Memory
    Bruchac, Margaret
  • Affect and Embodiment
    Callard, Felicity Papoulias, Constantina Radstone, Susannah Schwarz, Bill
  • Anatomical Atlases as Cultural Pedagogy of Bodies and the Afterlife of Images
    Cazetta, Valéria Oliveira, Régia Cristina Tavares, Jonathan Mendes
  • In the Image of Auschwitz
    Chaouat, Bruno
  • Teleological Causation
    Charles, David Shields, Christopher
  • The Afterlives of Monuments
    Cherry, Deborah Cherry, Deborah
  • Surface
    Chester, Alicia Elkins, James McGuire, Kristi Burns, Maureen Chester, Alicia Kuennen, Joel
  • Artistic Survival: Panofsky vs. Warburg and the Exorcism of Impure
    Didi-Huberman, Georges. Rehberg, Vivian Belay, Boris
  • Before the Image, before Time: The Sovereignty of Anachronism
    Didi-Huberman, Georges. Mason, Peter Farago, Zwijnenberg,
  • Dialektik des Monstrums: Aby Warburg and the Symptom Paradigm
    Didi-Huberman, Georges
  • Image, Language: The Other Dialectic
    Didi-Huberman, Georges Woodard, Elise Rodriguez Solorzano, Jorge Cauwer, Stijn De Smith, Laura Katherine
  • Knowing When to Cut
    Didi-Huberman, Georges. Caillat, François
  • Out of the Plan, out of the Plane 2: Stripping, Fourth Letter to Gerhard Richter
    Didi-Huberman, Georges Chare, Nicholas Williams, Dominic
  • Memory and Consciousness
    Droege, Paula Bernecker, Sven Michaelian, Kourken
  • Reading Georges Didi-Huberman’s Devant le Temps: History, Memory and Montage
    Duarte, Miguel Nuno Mesquita
  • Polish Landscapes of Memory at the Sites of Extermination: The Politics of Framing
    Dziuban, Zuzanna Schindel, Estela Colombo, Pamela
  • Inhibitions, Symptoms, Anxiety
    Freud, Sigmund Clark, L. Pierce Strachey, James
  • Repression
    Freud, Sigmund Strachey, James Strachey, James
  • A Special Type of Choice of Object Made by Men (Contributions to the Psychology of Love I)
    Freud, Sigmund Strachey, James Strachey, James
  • Georges Didi-Huberman: Vers une intentionnalité inverse?
    Hagelstein, Maud
  • Images and Symptoms: Georges Didi-Huberman’s Studies on Art
    Hanza, Kathia
  • Testimonial Objects: Memory, Gender, and Transmission
    Hirsch, Marianne Spitzer, Leo
  • On Moths and Butterflies, or How to Orient Oneself through Images: Georges Didi-Huberman’s Art Criticism in Context
    Ionescu, Vlad
  • The Rise of Hermeneutics and the Crisis of Ocularcentrism
    Jay, Martin
  • Multidirectional Eco-memory in an Era of Extinction: Colonial Whaling and Indigenous Dispossession in Kim Scott’s That Deadman Dance
    Kennedy, Rosanne K. Heise, Ursula Christensen, Jon Niemann, Michelle
  • Objects of Memory: Material Culture as Life Review
    Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara Oring, Elliott
  • The Convergence of Phenomenology and Semiotics in Georges Didi-Huberman’s Aesthetics of the Symptom
    Krasińska, Magdalena
  • Notes on Afterwardsness
    Laplanche, Jean Stanton, Martin Fletcher, John
  • Time and the Other
    Laplanche, Jean Thurston, Luke Fletcher, John
  • Boundaries—Ontology, Methods, Analysis
    Larsen, Svend Erik Schimanski, Johan Wolfe, Stephen
  • And the Word Becomes Flesh: Georges Didi-Huberman’s Symptom in the Image
    Larsson, Chari
  • Suspicious Images: Iconophobia and the Ethical Gaze
    Larsson, Chari
  • The Hidden Memories of Plants
    Laskow, Sarah
  • From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik or How to Make Things Public
    Latour, Bruno Latour, Bruno Weibel, Peter
  • Images Thinking the Political: On the Recent Works of Georges Didi-Huberman
    Leśniak, Andrzej
  • Mapping Memory: Theories in Ancient, Medieval, and Early Modern Philosophy and Medicine
    Lilião, Ricardo Presti, Roberto Lo Perler, Dominik van der Eijk, Philip
  • Memory Studies Goes Planetary: An Interview with Stef Craps
    Lizarazu, Maria Roca Vince, Rebekah
  • Jak drzewa świadczą? W stronę nie-ludzkich figuracji świadka
    Małczyński, Jacek
  • Polityka natury w Auschwitz-Birkenau
    Małczyński, Jacek
  • The Environmental History of the Holocaust
    Małczyński, Jacek Domańska, Ewa Smykowski, Mikołaj Kłos, Agnieszka
  • Plant-Soul: The Elusive Meanings of Vegetative Life
    Marder, Michael
  • Vegetal Memories
    Marder, Michael
  • Aristotle and Animal Mind
    Mesaroș, Claudiu
  • Narrative Forms in the Age of Anthropocene: Negotiating Human-Nonhuman Relations in Global South Novels
    Neumann, Birgit Erll, Astrid Sommer, Roy
  • The Shimmering Phenomenon of Clandestinity: Political Phenomenology beside Appearing and Vanishing
    Oberprantacher, Andreas Bedorf, Thomas Herrmann, Steffen
  • The Intelligent Plant
    Pollan, Michael
  • Auschwitz as Hermeneutic Rupture, Differend, and Image malgré Tout: Jameson, Lyotard, Didi-Huberman
    Rose, Sven-Erik Bathrick, David Prager, Brad Richardson, Michael
  • Bark
    Rys, Michel Zolkos, Magdalena
  • Didi-Huberman, Georges
    Saint, Nigel Murray, John
  • Pathosformel (Pathos Formula)
    Schankweiler, Kerstin Wüschner, Philipp Slaby, Jan Scheve, Christian von
  • The Difficult Heritage of Non-sites of Memory: Contested Places, Contaminated Landscapes
    Sendyka, Roma
  • The First Transvaluation of All Values: Nietzsche’s Agon with Socrates in the Birth of Tragedy
    Siemens, Herman Tevenar, Gudrun von
  • Son[i]a #201. Georges Didi-Huberman
  • The Objects That Lived: The 9/11 Museum and Material Transformation
    Sturken, Marita
  • Krajobraz po Zagładzie: Pastoralne dystopie I wizje ‘terracydu.’
    Ubertowska, Aleksandra
  • Pagan-Antique Prophecy in Words and Images in the Age of Luther
    Warburg, Aby Britt, David
  • The Readability of Images (and) of History
    Weigel, Sigrid Rys, Michiel Vanvelk, Jan
  • Shelf Lives: Nonhuman Agency and Seamus Heaney’s Vibrant Memory Objects
    Zirra, Maria
  • The Inorganic
    Zolkos, Magdalena Vint, Sherryl
  • Justice, the Confessional, and the Violin: Objects and Object-Mediated Relations of Loss in Jaume Cabré’s Confessions
    Zolkos, Magdalena Andrews, Chris McGuire, Matt