Suffering and Emancipation: Tracing “Herstory” through Hysterical Gestures

Abstract

This paper explores selected images from the Salpêtrière Hospital that were later featured in L'Iconographie photographique de la Salpêtrière. It then compares these images to a nude series of photos of the dancer Claire Bauroff, taken by Viennese photographer Trude Fleischmann in 1925, in which Bauroff’s movements are seemingly impregnated with the hysterical gestures of Charcot’s patients at the Salpêtrière. Hereby, I argue that there are distinct continuities between the exaggerated postures in the Salpêtrière photographs and in Fleischmann’s images of Bauroff. To support this argument, I employ the concept of “pathos formula” posited by German art historian Aby Warburg.

Keywords

• Hysteria
• Pathos Formula
• Gestures
• Agency
• Trude Fleischmann
• Claire Bauroff