A dimensão política das imagens: figurações da Shoah na obra de Georges Didi-Huberman

Abstract

The following work aims to expose and articulate the testimonial and political function of the image in Georges Didi-Huberman’s thinking, taking as reference the four clandestine photographs taken by the Sonderkommando in Auschwitz-Birkenau in August 1944, in dialogue with Walter Benjamin and Aby Warburg. It starts from an anachronistic conception of art history, according to which the image is understood as a form of temporal survival and critical operator, in order to discuss how certain images, especially those produced in extreme historical contexts, persist as traces capable of questioning the present. The study adopts a theoretical-critical approach, based on the philosophical analysis of the image and the conceptual examination of Didi-Huberman’s central works dedicated to the Shoah, such as Images in spite of all (2008), When images take a position (2018) and Bark (2017). It is argued that the visual testimony is not organized as totalizing evidence nor is it limited to a documentary function, but rather constitutes the interval between the image and the gaze that receives it, requiring the observer to take an ethical and political stance. From this perspective, the Sonderkommando records are understood as testimonial images that survive despite everything and resist both the denial and the sacralization of the visible, keeping the memory of the extermination in a critical state. It is argued that the material precariousness of these images — marked by fragmentation, off-screen elements and formal instability — does not diminish their cognitive reach, but rather underpins their political potential by preventing their historical neutralization of trauma.