Virtual Materiality: The Intersection of Aby Warburg and Gilles Deleuze

Summary The article analyses intersecting points between Aby Warburg’s theory of memory and Gilles Deleuze’s concept of virtuality. This study aims to supplement Warburg’s interpretations by Giorgio Agamben, Georges Didi-Huberman, Philippe-Alain Michaud, and other scholars who rely on poststructuralist theories. These ideas highlight several aspects of the problematic field in contemporary art history, including criticism of traditional art research methods and the idea of the dynamism of the artwork. Based on a comparative genetic method, Warburg’s theory of memory is examined through Gilles Deleuze’s concept of virtuality, which unites the theories of both scholars via the virtual memory concept of Warburg’s contemporary, Henri Bergson. The study reveals how the ontological connotations of Warburg’s Pathosformel and Dynamogramm are unveiled through Deleuze’s philosophical framework. This approach localises a part of Warburg’s theory as a starting point for a poststructuralist-inspired rereading of Warburg’s image theory. It is argued that the dynamogram, when adapted through Deleuze’s philosophical concepts, emerges as a material expression of memory encompassing the plane of virtuality.