Between Matter as an Obstacle and Matter as a Condition

Nachleben and Pathosformeln are among the notions that made the theoretical fortune of the Warburgian legacy. At first glance, the link between these two notions seems to lie in the material. It is the capturing of pathos in a multitude of material guises that allows their continued life, a life that exceeds the death of the individuals who shaped these formulas or who were their first witnesses. However, matter is not always the support for the survival of forms and their continuing impact on generations of human beings. It can also represent an obstacle to this “afterlife”, and is perhaps even the first obstacle to the possibility of an afterlife understood not only as a Nachleben but also as a Nach-erleben (the subjective possibility of experiencing this continuous life), as a series of fragments on expression ( Fragmente zur Ausdruckskunde , 1888–1903) suggest. This chapter explores this oscillatory movement, at once contradictory and fertile, between the material as a condition of possibility and the material as an obstacle to the Nachleben .