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The Surviving Image: Aby Warburg and TylorianAnthropologyGeorges DicH-Huberman

1. Aby Warburg, 'Italian Art and InternationalAstrology In the Palazzo Schifanoia' in Th eRenewa l of Pag an Antiquity- Contributions to theCultural History of the European Renaissance , t r ans .David Bntt (Getty Research Center for theHistory of Art and the Humanities. Los Angeles,1999), p. S85.2. See Georges Didi-Huberman, Derant l'image.Que stion posee auxjlns d'une histolrt d e V an(Minuit: Paris, 1990)3 . See Aby Warburg, Gesammelte Sduiften, edsG. Bing and F. Rougemont (Teubner: Leipzigand Berlin, 1932). Significantly, the longejtentry in the very precise index of this edition(four pages, three columns) is devoted to theexpression Nachleben. See also dirs Hans Meier,Richard Newald, and Edgar Wind,Kulturwissenschaftl iche Bibhoaraphie xum Nachlebenda Antike-A Bibliography on th e Survival of theClassics, (Cassell: London, 1934), p. 5, wherethe near impossibility of translating this terminto English is already noted.4 . S e e A b y W a r b u r g , Schlangenntual . E mReiseberlcht (19 23 ), ed U. Raulff (KlausWagenbach: Berlin, 1988 and 1996); Fritz Saxl,'Warburg 's Vis i t to New Mexico ' ( 1929-1930),Leaura (The Warburg Institute. London, 1957),pp . 32530; A Dal Lago, 'L'arcaico e il suodoppio ' , Au t out , no. 199-200, 1984, pp. 67-91 ; C. Naber, 'Pompeji in Neu-Mexico. AbyWarburgs amerikanische Reiie ', Freibeuter 3 8,1988, pp 88 -97 ; P Burke, 'Aby Warburg asHistorical Anthropologist', Ab y Warburg. Alaender intemat lonalen Symposiums Hamburg 1990,dirs. H. Bredekamp, M. Diers, C. Schoell-Glass(VCH-Acta Humaniora: Weinheim, 1991),pp . 39-44; Kurt W. Forster , 'Die Hamburg-Amerika-Unie, oder . WarburgsKulturwissenschaft zwischen den Konnnenten',Aby Warburg Alaen inurnaUonalen SymposiumsHamburg, pp. 1137 and 'Aby Warb urg: HisStudy of Ritual on Two Continents, ' October 77 ,1996, pp . 5-2 4; S. Settis, 'Kunstgeschichte alsvergleichende Kulturwissenschaft: Aby Warburg,die Pueblo-Indianer und das Nachleben derA nt i ke ' , KUn st l cr ischer Aus tauch Artist ic Exchange.Alaen des XX V11. intemationalen Kongressa JtlrKunstgeschichu, dir . T. W. Gaehtgens (AkademieVerlig: Beriin, 1993), pp. 139-58. S. Weigel,'Aby Warburgs Schlangenritual: Reading Cultureand Reading Written Texts', Ne w GermanCrltiaxie, vol . 22 , no. 2 , pp. 135-53; P . -A .M i c h a u d , A b y Warburg a l ' image e n mourement(Macula : Par is , 1998), pp. 16 9-22 3, 2 47-80(Warburg's unpublished notes for the 1923conference).5. Schlosser and Warburg were like-minded

The isolated and highly provisional experiment that I have undertaken here Is Intended as a pleafor an extension of the methodological borders of our study of art (elner metlmdlschenGrenzerwelterung unserer Kunstwtssenschaft). . . . Until now, a lack of adequate generalevolutionary categories has impeded art history In placing its materials at the d isposal of the -still unwritten - 'historical psychology of human expression' (hlstorischen Psychologic desmenschllchen Ausdrucks). By adopting either an unduly m aterialistic or an unduly m ysticalstance, our young discipline blocks Its own panoramic view of history. It gropes toward anevolutionary theory of its own, somewhere between the schematisms of political history and thedogmatic faith In genius.1

It was by approaching the image from an anthropological, then a psychologicalpoint of view that Aby Warburg was able to carry out the 'extension ofmethodological borders' that he defended before his colleagues at a conferencein 1912. The immediate consequences of such an extension could only bedisturbing for the discipline for it became clear that the time of the image isnot the time of history in general, the time of the 'general evolutionarycategories' that Warburg invokes here. Wh at, then, is the most urgent task (asuntimely and outdated today as it was in Warburg's epoch)? It is for art historyto establish 'its own theory of evolution', its own theory of time. It is for arthistory to enter into a time other than habitual chronologies, eternal'influences', old Vasarian or neo-Vasarian family myths. 2This other time is called 'survival' (Nachleben). The mysterious keyword oslogan of Warburg's entire enterprise, Nachleben der Antike, is by now familito us. It is the 'fundamental problem' which his archival research addressed,and for which he created the library that bears his name in order to grasp itssedimentations and shifting grounds.3 Warburg also confronted this'fundamental problem' during the very brief period of his famous NativeAmerican experience.4 Therefore, before interrogating the notion of survivalin the context of a 'science of culture' patiently worked out by Warburgusing images from antiquity and the modern Western world it seemsappropriate to situate the experimental emergence of this problematic on thelimited and 'displaced' ground of his voyage to Hopi country. Anthropology'stheoretical and heuristic function its capacity to de-territorialise fields ofknow ledge, to reintro duc e difference in objects and anachronism in history -will only appear in even sharper relief.The 'survival' that Warburg invoked and questioned throughout his entirelifetime is, above all, an Anglo-Saxon concept. In 1911, when Warburg'sfriend Julius von Schlosser referred to the 'survival' of figurative practices inwax, he did not rely upon the spontaneous vocabulary of his mother tongue. 5He did not write Nachleben, any more than he wrote Fortleben or Uberlebenwr ote survival, in English. This is significant evidence of a citatio n, aborr ow ing, a conceptual displacemen t, for w hat von Schlosser cites borrowed and displaced by Warburg before him is none other than thesurvival of the great British ethnologist Edward B. Tylor. In his suddendeparture from Europe to Mexico in 189S, Warburg was not making ajourney to archetypes, as Fritz Saxl thought, but a journey to survivals. And his

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Georges Didi-Huberman

theoretical landmark was not James G. Frazer, as Saxl wrote, but Edward B.Tylor .7

As far as I am aware, Warburg's commentators have not paid closeattentio n to this anthropological source . At best, they have only considered thedifferences between Warburg and Tylor; Ernst Gombrich for example, arguedthat Tylor's 'science of culture' could in no way appeal to a disciple ofBurckh ardt whose major preoccup ation was Italian art. And yet, this 'scienceof culture' was omnipresent in the opening of Primitive Culture (published inLondon in 1871), a work of such importance that, at the end of the nineteenthcentury, ethnology was commonly referred to as 'Mr Tylor's Science'. 9 Ofcourse, Primitive Culture's immense notoriety does not guarantee its status as atheoretical source. The point of contact between Warburg's Kuhurmssenschajiand Tylor's 'science of culture' lies first in the establishment of a particularlink between history and anthropology.

Indeed, both projects sought to overcome the eternal opposition whichLevi-Strauss would continue to criticise a century later 1 0 between theevolutionary model required by history and the type of atemporality withwhich anthropology is often credited. Warburg opened the field of art historyto anthropology, not simply in order to recognise new objects of study, butalso in order to open time. 1 1 For his part, Tylor intended to carry out arigorously symmetrical operation. He began by affirming that the fundamentalproblem of any 'science of culture' is its 'development of culture', and thatthis developme nt is not reducible to an evolutionary law formulated accordingto models used by the natural sciences. 12 Only through a history, or even anarchaeology, of culture can the ethnologist understand its meaning: 13

In working to gain an Insight Into the general laws of Intellectual movem ent, there Is practicalgain in being able to study them . . . among antiquarian relics of no Intense modem Interest

Warburg certainly did not disavow this methodological principle ofuntimeliness: what makes sense in a culture is often the symptom, the un-thought, the anachronic aspect of this culture. Here, we are already within thespectral time of survivals. At the beginning of Primitive Culture, Tylorintroduces this time theoretically by noting that the two competing models forthe 'development of culture' the 'theory of progress' and the 'theory ofdegeneration' must be thought dialectically, intertwined with one another.The result would be a time knot difficult to untangle because evolutionarymovements, and movements that resist evolution, cross incessantly within it. 1 5Through these crossings the concept of survival appears as a differentialbetween two contradictory temporal states.

Tylor dedicated an essential part of his work to the theoretical foundation ofthe concept of survival. But he had written die word, as if spontaneously, inanodier context, in anodier temporality of experience, a displacement a tripto Mexico, to be precise. Between March and June 1856, Tylor crossedMexico on horseback, observing and taking diousands of notes. In 1861 hepublished his journ al from the trip his own version of Tristes Tropiques inwhich, as if to his great surprise, mosquitoes and pirates, alligators andmissionaries, die slave trade and Aztec relics, Baroque churches and Indiancustoms, earthquakes and the use of firearms, table manners and modes ofaccount keeping, museum objects and street fighting, all enter the scene oneafter the odier. Anahuac is a fascinating book because we witness die audior'sastonishment diat diis very experience, in this very place and moment, couldbear such a knot of anachronisms, such a mixture of things past and present.

with regard to many aspects of Warburg'iproblematic. See Georges Didi-Hubermin,'Viscosites et nirvivancej. L'histoire de l'art al 'epreuve du materiau', Critique 104, DO. 6 1 1 ,1998, pp 138 - 62 .6. Julius von Schlosser, Gachichu daPonrStbildnerel in Wachs E la Yersuch (1911) , cT. Medicus (Akademie Verlag: Berlin, 1993),p 10. Warburg is dted on pages 76, 81 -2 ,186, 194.7. Fritz Saxl, 'Warburg's Visit to NewMexico, ' p . 326.8. E. H. Gombrich, A by Warburg: A n IntellectuBiography (University of Chicago Press- Chicago,1970), p. 16. Kurt W Fon ter , 'Aby Warburg:Hu Study of Ritual on Two Continents', October77 , 1996, p. 6. Foster ignores Tylor as far asWarburg's 'ethnological culture' is concerned9. See M. Panoff, 'Tylor (Sir Edward Burnett),1832-1917' , in Dictlonnalre du D a rw in i s m a d eI'erolutlon III , dir . Patrick Tort ( P U F : Paris,1996), p . 4 3 6 3 .1 0. Claude Levi-Strauss, 'Histolre ete thnol og ic ' (1949) , Anthropologie structurale(Plon: Paris, 1958), pp. 3-33.1 1 . WUlibald Sauerlander, 'Pour la deliverancedu passe: A by Warburg, une biographic mullectupar E. H. Gombrich', Histolre de l'art, nos 5-6,1989, pp. 67. Sauerlander tecs, wrongly, tiusdialectic as a pure and simple dUemma1 2. Edward Burnett Tylor, Primitive Culture,researches into the derelopment of Mythology ,Phi losophy , Re l ig ion, An and Custom I, (M urray:London, 1871) , pp. 23-62 .13. Tylor, Primitive Culture I, p. 131 4. Tylor, Primitive Culture I , p . 143 .15 . Tylor, pp. 14-16. See E. B. Tylor,Anthropology A n Introduction to the Study of Maan d Civilization (Macmillan: London, 1881),pp . 373400, where Tylor investigates thenotions of 'traditio n' and 'diffusion' The firstdefinition of 'survival' was offered by Tylor in1865: ' the "standing over" (superstitio) of oldhabits into die midst of a new changed state ofdungs' . In Tylor, Researches into the Early Historof Mankind and th e Derelopment of Qriiization(Murray: London, 1865), p. 21816. Tylor, A aah uac . Or Mexico and the M e x i c anAncient an d Modem (Green, Longman andRoberts- London, 1861), pp. 330-4. An index,in two columns, is provided for all of diesesubjects.

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1 7. Tylor, Aoahvac, pp 4 7-54 , 85 -9 . Thisanachronism is particularly evident in the systemof illustrations, see especially, pp. 1 1 0 - 1 1 ,2 2 0 - 1 , 2 3 6 .1 8. Tylor, Primitive Culture I , p. 16.1 9. See in particular the work of Tylor'Jfamous contemporary Gottfried Semper, Der Stilin da uchaachen and uktonhxhtn KUnsten. oderpraklxhe Asthali- Bin Handbuch fir Technlktr,KUnaler trod Kunstfreunde (Bruckman: Munich,1878- 9 )2 0. Tylor, Primitive Culture I , p. 64.2 1 . Tylor, Primitive Cuhure I , p 63 .

The Surviving Image: Aby Warburg and Tylorian Anthropology

Thus, Holy Week festivities in Mexico bring heterogeneous, half-Christian,half-pagan commemorations up to date; the Indian market in Grande actualisesa numbering system which Tylor thought could only be found in pre-Columbian manuscripts, the ornamentation of antique sacrificial knives wascomparable with the spurs of Mexican Yaqueros.11In the face of all of this, Tylor discovered the extreme variety, thebreathtaking complexity of cultural facts (something one also notes in readingFrazer). Yet, he also discovered something even more overwhelming (whichone never notes in reading Frazer): the vertiginous play of time in the present,in the present 'surface' of a given culture. Vertigo is first expressed in thepowerful sensation in itself obvious, but its consequences less so that thepresent is woven with multiple pasts. This is why Tylor insists that theethnologist must assume the historian's role in each of his observations. The'horizontal' complexity of what he sees stems above all from a paradigmatic'vertical' complexity of time:Progress, degradation, survival, revival, modification, are all modes of the connexion that bindstogether the complex network of civilisation. It needs but a glance Into the trivial details of ourown daily life to set us thinking how far we are really Its originators, and how far but thetransmitters and modifiers of the results of long past ages. Looking round the rooms we live In,we may try here to see how far he who only knows his own time can be capable of rightlycomprehending even that. Here Is the honeysuckle of Assyria, there the fleur-de-lis of Anjou, acornice with a Greek border runs round the celling, the style of Louis XIV and Its parent theRenaissance share the looking glass between them. Transformed, shifted, or mutilated, suchelements of art still carry their history plainly stamped on them; and If the history yet fartherbehind Is less easy to read, we are not to say that because we cannot clearly discern It there Istherefore no history there.18

It is characteristic of this example of survival one of the first in PrimitivCulture that it concerns the formal elements of ornamentation, the 'primitivewords' of every notion of style. 1 That this survival of forms is signified as a'stamp' is equally distinctive. Admitting that the present bears the mark ofmultiple pasts means, above all, to allow for the indestructibility of an imprintof time, or times, on the forms proper to our present life. Therefore, Tylorspeaks of 'the strength of these survivals' by which, using another metaphor,'old habits maintain their roots in a ground overwhelmed by a new cultu re'.He also compares the strength of survival to a 'river which, having dug its bed,will run for centuries'. This is a way of elucidating always via the stamp what he referred to as the 'permanence of culture'. 2 1

Warburg would have recognised his own investigation of permanence thetenacity of antique forms in the long duration of Western art history in thisexpression of a 'fundamental problem'. But that is not all. Such permanencecould have been expressed, as it was in certain strains of nineteenth-centuryphilosophical anthropology, in terms of an 'essence of culture'. The majorinterest of Tylor's thinking on this point, as well as its proximity to Warburg'sapproach, stems from this critical supplement: the 'permanence of culture'does not express itself as an essence, as a global feature or archetype, but onthe contrary, as a symptom, as an exceptional feature, as a displaced thing. Thestrength of survivals, their 'power' even, as Tylor notes, is revealed in thetenuousness of minuscule, superfluous, derisory, or abnormal things. Survival,in itself, lies in the recurring symptom and in the game, in the pathology oflanguage and in the unconsciousness of forms. So, Tylor turned his attention tochildren's games (bows and arrows, slingshots, rattles, knucklebones, orplaying cards: survivals of the old and very serious practices of war anddivination), just as Warburg would later turn his attention to Renaissance

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celebration practices. Tylor studied features of language, sayings, proverbs,and modes of salutation, just as Warburg hoped to do later for Florentinecivilisation.22Yet, Tylor was most specifically interested in the aspect of survivals which

related to superstitions. He inferred the very definition of the anthropologicalconcept of survival from its traditional, Latin meaning, superstnio:Such a proceeding as this would be usually, and not improperly, described as a superstition;and, Indeed, this name would be given to a large proportion of survivals generally. The very word'superstition', In what Is perhaps its original sense of a 'standing over' from old times, itselfexpresses a survival. But the term superstition now implies a reproach. .. . For theethnographer's purpose, at any rate, It is desirable to Introduce such a term as 'surviva l',simply to denote the h istorical fact which the word 'super stition' Is now spoiled for expressing.23

We can now understand why the analysis of survivals in Primitive Cultureculminates with a long chapter dedicated to magic, astrology, and all of theirrelated forms.24 How can we not recall the apex of the Nachleben der Antike,Warburg's analysis of the treatment of astrology in the Ferrara frescoes, or inMartin Luther's writings?25 In both cases and each time (and without evenmentioning Freud), it is the flaw in consciousness, the fault in logic, the lack ofsense in the argumentation which opens a breach, the breach of survivals, intothe currency of a historical fact. Before Warburg and Freud, Tylor admired thecapacity of 'trivial details' to make sense, or rather, be symptoms (which healso referred to as landmarks) of their own insignificance. Before Warburg andhis interest in the 'animism' of votive effigies, Tylor, among others, attemptedto construct a general theory of the power of signs. 2 Before Warburg and hisfascination for the expressive phenomena of the gesture, Tylor, again amongothers, attempted to construct a theory of emotional and mimetic language.Before Warburg and Freud, he staked out, in his own way, the lesson of thesymptom absurdity, lapsus, sickness, madness as the privileged mode ofaccess to the vertiginous time of survivals. Could the path to the symptomthen, be the best way to hear the voices of ghosts?

Throughout the whole of this varied Investigation, whether of the dwindling survival of oldculture, or of Its bursting forth afresh in active revival, It may perhaps be complained that ItsIllustrations should be so much among things worn out, worthless, frivolous, or even bad withdownright harmful folly. In fact It Is so, and I have taken up this course of argument with fullknowledge and intent. For Indeed, we have in such enquiries continual reason to be thankful forfools. It Is quite wonderful, even if we hardly go below the surface of the subject, to see howlarge a share stupidity and unpractical conservatism and dogged superstition have had Inpreserving for us traces of the history of our race, which practical utilitarianism would haveremorselessly swept away.28

Between phantom and symptom, the notion of survival becomes a specificexpression of the 'tra ce ' for the historical and anthropological sciences. As iswell known, Warburg was interested in the vestiges of classical antiquity,vestiges which were in no way reducible to the existence of material objects,but could equally live on in forms, styles, behaviours, the psyche. We caneasily understand his interest in Tylor's survivals. First, they marked out anegative reality, that which appears as a cast-off, ageless, out-of-date, or out-of-use in a culture (just as, in the fifteenth century, Florentine boti testify to apractice already removed from the present and die 'modem' preoccupationson which Renaissance art was based). Second, Tylor's survivals marked out amasked reality; something persists and testifies to a vanished moment of society,but its very persistence is accompanied by an essential modification a changeof its status of signification (to say that the bow and arrow of ancient wars have

22 . Tylor , Primitive Culture I , p p . 6 3 - 1 0 023 Tylor , Primitive Culture I, pp. 645.2 4. Tylor, Primitive Culture I , pp 101 -44 .2 5. Aby Warburg, 'Italian Art and InternationalAstrology in the Palazzo Schifanoia', and 'Pagan-Antique Prophecy in Wordj and Images in theA ge o f L u the r ' , i n The Renewal of PaganAntiquity, pp 563-96 and pp . 597-697respectively.2 6. Tylor, Primitive Culture II, pp. 1-32 7 SeeJ . Pa s c he r , Der Seelenbegrlff tm Ammismus E B.Tylors E ln Baiag zur Rellgionswissen schafi ( B e c k e r :Wurzburg , 1929) .2 7. Tylor, Primitive Culture I , pp 145-2 17 .28 Tylor, Primitive Culture I, pp 142. On thisnotion of conservatism see Tylor,'ConservatismVariationInvention,1 (1874) ,77K Collected Work of Edward Burnett T ylor VII(Routledge-Thoemmes Press- London, 1994),pp. 1378 (original pagination).29 'On Trac es of the Early Mental Conditionof Man,' (1869) and 'On the Survival of SavageThought in Modem Civilization,' (1869) inProceedings of the Royal Institution of Great Brita in,vol . 5 (1866-1869) , pp . 83-93 and pp . 522-35respectively See Margaret T H odgen, 77KDoctnne of Survivals. A Chapter in the History ofScientific Method in the Study of Man ( A l l e n s o n :London, 1936) , pp . 67-1 07 , 1 22 , 130 , 142 .

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3 0. Aby Warburg, 'Pagan-Antique Prophecy',in 77K Renewal of Pagan Antiquity.3 1 . Sec, for exam ple, S. A Cook , "TheEvolution and Survival of Primitive Thought,'Essays and Studies Presented to William Ridgeway,dir. E. C. Quiggan (Cambridge UniversityPress: Cambr idge , 1913) , pp. 375-^12; Ar thurWeigall, Survirances paiennes dans le monde chtttlen(192 8), trans. Ariane Flourny (Payof Pans,1934); P. Saintyves, D marge de la Legende doree.songes, miracles et surrivances Essai sur la formationde quelques themes hagiographiques (Nourry- Pans,1930); G. J. Laing, Surrivals of Roman Religion(Harrap: London , 193 1) Chi the critical fortuneof Tylonan survival, see M. T. Hodgen, 77KDoctrine of Surrirals, pp 10839, whichunfortunately only treats the Anglo-Saxondomain.3 2 . See, for example, L C G Clarke,'Modem Survivals of the Sumenan Chatelaine,'Essays Presented to C G Scligman, dir EdwardEvan Evans-Pntchard et al (Kegan Paul, Trench& Trubner- London, 1934), pp. 41 -7 . AndreLeroi-Gourhan, Evolution et techniques I- L'hommea la matiere (Albin Michel. Pans, 1943 ), pp. 9 -11 3 (on the notion of the 'technicalstereotype').33 See M T Hodgen, 77K Doctrine of Surrirals,pp. 140-74.34 Marcel Mauss, 'Essai sur le don Forme etraison de l'echange dans les societes archaiques'( 1 9 2 3 - 4 ) , Scciologie et anthropologle (P U F.:Paris, 19S0), pp 2 2 8-5 7.3 5. Mauss, 'Essai sur le do n' , p 2 28 .36 Mauss, 'La Volkskunde comme science'( 1903) , Oeuvres, 111 Cohesion sociaJc et divisions dela sociology, ed. Viktor Karady (Minuit- Paris,1969), p. 372


survived as a children's game is to demonstrate the transformation of theirostatus and their signification).In this sense, the analysis of survivals seems to be the analysis.ofsymp tomatic and ghostly man ifestations. They designate a reality of effraction,if tenuous, or even imperceptible, and for this reason they also designate aspectral reality. Astrological survival will thus appear as a 'ghost' in Luther'sdiscourse, a ghost whose effectiveness Warburg recognised because of its

intrusive and interfering nature as symptom in the logic of the preacher othe Reformation p reacher's argum entation. It comes as no surprise that thecritical richness of Tylor's survivals first concerned phenomena of belief: thefirst applications of this concept took place in the domain of the history ofreligions. 3 1 Nevertheless, in anticipation of what Andre Leroi-Gourhan called'technical stereotypes', several archaeological studies of long durationsapproached the history of objects from the angle of survival. 32

We must note, however, that the notion of survival has never been very wellreceived and not only by art history. In Tylor's time, survival was accused ofbeing too structural and abstract a concept, a concept which defied allprecision and factual verification. The positivist objection consisted in asking:bu t, how do you date a survival? This is precisely to misunderstand a concep tthat meant to identify a non-'historical' in the trivial and factual sense typof temporality. Today, one would accuse survival of lacking structure, of beinga concept, as it were, marked by the evolutionist seal, therefore out-of-date,and outdated; in short, an old nineteenth-century scientific ghost. One mightspontaneously infer this from modern anthropology which, from Marcel Maussto Claude Levi-Strauss, effected the necessary reorientation of too essentialist(Frazer) or too empiricist (Malinowski) ethnological concepts.However, in bringing out the critical aspects themselves, one notices thatthings are more complex and nuanced than they appear. Survival itself is not inquestion, but a certain use-value made of it by several Anglo-Saxonethnographers during the nineteenth century. Mauss, for example, did nothesitate to use the ter m. The third chapter of Essai sur le don (Essay on the Gititled 'Survival of these principles [where an "exchange of gifts" is carried out]in ancient rights and econo mies .' There he explained that the principles ofthe gift and counter-offer coun t as 'survivals' for the historian and for theethnologist:

They have a general sociological value, since they allow us to understand a moment of socialevolution. But there Is more They also have an Importance for social history. Institu tions of th istype have effectively provided the trans ition to our forms, our own forms, of law and economy.They serve as historical explanations of our own s ocieties. M orality and exchange practices Inuse by the societies which Immediately preceded our own maintain the more or less Importanttraces of a ll of the principles Just analysed [In the framework of so-called primitive soc ieties]. 35

Elsewhere, Mauss went so far as to extend the notion of survival to 'primitive'societies themselves:There Is no known so ciety which has not evolved. The most p rimitive of men have an Immensepast behind them; thus diffuse traditions, and survival play a role even for them. 3*

This was not only a manner of saying that 'primitive societies have a history' which some had long denied, hence the expression 'people w ithout history' but that this history may be as complex as our own-. It, too, is made up of theconscious handing down of 'diffuse traditions', as Mauss wrote. It, too, formsOXFORD ART JOURNAL 25.1 2002 6S


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itself within a play of or a knot of heterogeneous temporalities a knot ofanachronisms, even if the absence of written archives makes this difficult toanalyse. Mauss does not criticise the usage of survival in order to call intoquestion this complexity of temporal models. On the contrary, he does so torefute ethnological evolutionism as a simplification of temporal models. Thus,when Frazer describes survival as a 'confusion between ancient magic andreligion', Mauss responds that 'the hypothesis does not tell us very mu ch'; thatis, the hypothesis that there was a confusion between magic and religionfollowed by the autonomisation of the latter, which became more rational andmoral, in sum, more 'evolved'. 3 7

Mauss also perceptively criticised what we might call archetypism, theremaining key trap in any analysis of survivals. Archetypism not only resultedin the simplification of temporal models, it led to their pure and simplenegation, their dilution into an essentialism of culture and the psyche. Theprinciple lure of such a trap is analogical perception. When resemblances turninto pseudomorphisms; when they serve to bring out a general and atemporalsignification, then survival of course becomes a mythification, an epistemo-logical obstacle. It mu st be pointed o ut that it has been possible to interpr etand use Warburg's Nachleben to such ends. How ever, what distances Nachlebenfrom any such essentialism is Warburg's philological effort, his perception ofsingularities, his constant attem pt to tug at all direads, to identify each strand even when he knew that the threads escaped him, had been broken, or ranunderground. Symptomatic anamnesis has strictly nothing to do widiarchetypal generalisation.

Levi-Strauss's criticism in the introductory chapter of Structural Anthropologyseems even more severe. Because it is more radical, it is more partial, andsometimes inaccurate, if not disingenuous. Levi-Strauss starts off by walking inMauss's footsteps: he criticises archetypism and its erroneous usage ofsubstantialised analogies, of universally applicable pseudo mo rphism s. No w,it turns out that he sought its traces in Tylor's work. The bow and arrow nolonger form a 'species', as Tylor had claimed in a language modelled on diebiological bond of reproduction, because 'between two identical tools, orbetween two different tools which are as alike in form as they can be, there isand there will always be a radical discontinuity, which comes from the fact thatone is not issued from another, but each of diem are issued from a system ofrepre sentatio n'. No te that Warb urg would have agreed widiout hesitation tothis first point, which situated the organisation of symbols as the foundingstructure of the empirical world.

Levi-Strauss stumbles w hen he goes one step further, claiming diat studiesstemming from a problematic of survivals 'teach us nothing about unconsciousprocesses translated into concrete experiences'. He invalidates this a few pageslater by granting Tylor a nearly fundamental place in the evaluation of the'unconscious nature of collective phenom ena'. But to his mind, Tylor'sethnology remained devoid of any historical character. He cites as evidence abrief passage in Researches into the Early History of Mankind (1865) , wi thout eventaking into account the title of the work. Moreover, Levi-Strauss does notrecognise that, six years later, in Primitive Culture, Tylor developed a reflectionon the historicity of primitive cultures that he credits only to Franz Boas. 42 In1952 , die author of Structural Anthropology announced a thesis on die'unattainable' historicity of primitive peoples, clearly an entirely unconsciousparaphrase of the passages from Tylor cited above. 43

None of this changes the fundamental question, which is still a matter ofknowing what survival means. And it is first a matter of knowing how, in what

3 7. Mauss, 'La magic selon Frazer,' (1913),Orurra, I. Lafonaions soaala du sccrt , ed.V. Karady (Muiuit: Paris, 1968), p. 155.3 8. 'Tous lea faita de sjroiljtude ne sont pas desfaits de "recurrence", d'invenrionindependante, de "survivances" des souchesdevolutions parfaitement ldenOque partoutMaij invenement touj ne ont pas dej faitd'emprunts, et surtout pas des emprunts a unseul foyer. [. .] Nous deman dons done qu'o nmette, dans toute cette soi-disant histoiresoaologique, moins de soaologie et plusd'histoire, et que chaque phenomene soitappreae en lui-meme.' Mauss, 'La theone de ladiffusion urucentrique de la civilisation, 1 ( 1925),Oeurra, II Representations collecttra a direntus ddrillsatlons, ed. V Karady (Minuit: Paris, 19 74),p p . 5 2 2 - 3 .3 9. Claude Levi-Strauss, 'Histoire etethnologic ', Anthmpologie urucuiralc, p. 6 .4 0. Levi-Strauss, 'Histoire et cthnologie', p. 74 1 . Levi-Strauss, 'Histoire et ethnologic

1, pp . 9 ,2 5.

4 2 . Levi-Strauss, 'Histoire et ethnologic', pp.7,1 3 - 1 4 .43 . 'Un peuple pnmitif n'est pas davantage unpeuple sans histoire, bien que le deroulement decelle-d nous echappe souvent [. . .] l'hlstoire deces peuple nous cst totalemcnt inconnue, et, enraison de l'absence ou de la pauvrete destradition oraleset des vestiges archeologiques,elle est a jamais hors d'attein te On n 'en sauraitconclure qu'elle n'existe pas.' Levi-Strauss, 'LaNotion de l'archaisme en ethnologic',Anthropologie structuralc, p p . 1 1 4 1 5 .

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give* as an example the Axolotl (which 13 bothinfant and adult and remains a larvae capable ofreproduction throughout its entire life) andspeaks of differential rhythms, developmentalacceleration, or slowing down, known as"neotenies", progeneses, peramorphoses,hypermorphoses, etc. See also K. J. McNamara,'Heterochrony and Phylogenetic Trends',Palcohwlogy 8, 1982, pp. 13 0-42 .60 . See M. Delsol, 'Monstres prometteurs',Dtctlannalrt du darwinisme I I , pp . 3 042 44 .61 Warb urg, 'Pagan-Antique Prophecy inWords and Images in dSe Age of Luther',p. 63 562 . A. Dal Lago, 'L'arcaico e il suo doppio',Am out, nos . 199-2 00, 1984, pp 79-8 6. Seealso Leopold D. Etthngcr, 'Kunstgeschichte alsGeschichte ', ( 1 971 -76), AusgewShhc Schnjicn,pp . 4 9 9 - 5 1 3


draw from this play of debts and debated questions if not that, there,evolutionism produced its own crisis, its own internal critique? By recognisingthe need to broaden canonical models of history narrative m odels, m odels oftemporal continuity, models of objective realisation by directing himselflittle by little toward a theory of the memory of forms made up of leaps andlatencies, Aby Warburg decisively broke with notions of 'progress' andhistorical 'de ve lop m en t'. He thus played evolutionism off against itself. Hedeconstructed it solely in order to recognise phenomena of survival and casesof Nachleben which now must be dealt with in terms of their specificdevelopment.Translated from the French by Di Vivian Sky Rchberg.

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