The pathosformel of aggression

from mithra’s tauroctony to images of contemporary racial violence

Abstract

A survey of the iconographic sources of Aby Warburg's Atlas Mnemosyne leads to the Mithraeum of the Basilica of San Clemente al Laterano in Rome. At the Basilica, we see reliefs with the image of Mithras sacrificing a bull, identified as the pathosformel of aggression in the Panel 8 of the Atlas. With Fritz Saxl, we associate this image with the formula of the bent knee, presenting its transfigurations until contemporary times, in scenes of racial violence, but also, paradoxically, in the gestures of anti-racist protests. The phenomenon can be explained through the Warburguian concept of pathosformel, especially in its aspect of dynamic inversion, polarization and depolarization of the image.