Didi-Huberman's 'Peuples exposés' Explores Political Representation

Georges Didi-Huberman's 'Peuples exposés, peuples figurants' (Éditions de Minuit) is the fourth volume in his series rethinking art history in the wake of Aby Warburg. The book collects disparate essays framed by a prologue on Philippe Bazin's photographic portraits and a conclusion on Wang Bing's 2009 film 'L'Homme sans nom'. Its central theme is political: the term 'people' designates what lies at the limits of representability. Didi-Huberman distinguishes the political people (from Rousseau to Michelet) from the anthropological or ethnographic concept. The volume could serve as a guide to his recent exhibition at Le Fresnoy, which used montages of film extracts including Pasolini's 'La Rabbia' and 'La Ricotta'. Didi-Huberman recounts Pasolini's encounter with Ernesto De Martino to show how history is challenged by anthropology at the heart of Europe. Pasolini's work reveals that the archaic persists outside Europe: an archaeology of seeing encompasses an archaeology of knowledge, making the Oresteia African and Oedipus sub-Saharan. These archaic traces also appear in the gestures, songs, and customs of poor Italian peasants.