THE SELFIE-GESTURE. COULD THE SELFIE BE A ‘NACHLEBEN DER ANTIKE’?

Abstract

The epidemic of the selfie in the 21st century may only be the continuity, with new technology, of human movements present since antiquity. Archaic gestures both in the ambit of the desire to express the identity of the author of several images (as are the cases of the hands printed on walls of caves by authors of ancient rock paintings) and in the repertoire proper of expressive human gestures of emotions. This is the case of the gestures of expression of the Pathos of Victory, for example, as defined by the German writer Aby Warburg (1866-1929). Warburg was dedicated to detecting the continued presence of elements of ancient culture in later times, in children's games, in renewed myths, in the composition by the Renaissance artists of works that use images identical to others Greek or Roman, among other forms of manifestation of what he called Nachleben der Antike or vitality of the Antique. The concept of Warburg seems to embody itself in the gesture of the contemporary person who makes a selfie as one sees the ancient statue of Apollo in the Louvre Museum in which he seems to produce a selfie after achieving victory over the serpent Python. Warburg also may inspire questions, such as: could the selfie be a Nachleben der Antike? Is the movement we make to produce a digital self-photograph a manifestation of the continued presence of an ancestral gesture?