Femicides of Mothers-Territory

A gender studies look at the Mnemosyne Atlas as a living archive

Abstract

From a gender studies perspective, this paper focuses on understanding Aby Warburg's proposal of a Mnemosyne Atlas as a living archive, with the aim of elucidating the potential and limits of this methodology of collecting and organizing images as a tool for rethinking a patriarchal past.

Following this guideline is taken as a case of study the photographs published in the book La Violencia en Colombia - estudio de un proceso social, sexual, and gender violence registers occurred in the context of the war in Colombia. These images show how women and their bodies, in the context of a patriarchy exacerbated by the war, become repositories of violence by being codified as territory and origin of life. These photographs are the axis of a Mnemosyne Atlas, considered an archive, that compiles works of art from other contexts and temporalities that dialogue with the woman-land-life relationship.

These collected documents will serve to define the limits and possibilities of the archive, as a form of montage that allows us to reformulate the narratives of the past and make historical gender biases visible. However, a final section focuses on highlighting the caveats that gender studies can pose to Aby Warburg's methodology.