A Kind of World War

On the image politics of Aby Warburg’s legendary lecture on the Hopi snake ritual

Aby Warburg’s famous lecture on the Hopi snake ritual in Arizona is one of the most commented-upon art history documents of the 20th century. But while Warburg’s essay is firmly anchored in the canon of art history, to a wider public―especially in Europe―little is known about its source, the snake ritual and its history.
A Kind of World War addresses what Warburg largely ignored himself: that not only the ritual, but also the images of the ritual―to whose global distribution Warburg contributed―have a political history. The volume seeks to demonstrate that Warburg’s art history, insofar as it outlines an internal history of the European psyche, must be read in conjunction with its external counterpart, the history of colonization, war and cultural entanglement.