The upshot of this article is that dance functions in Irigaray’s work in the following three ways: as (1) a symbol of a more positive comportment for heterosexual relationships; (2) an indication that the ambivalence in Irigaray’s work is self-consciously strategic; and (3) an example that teases apart the concepts of negative and positive mimesis, specifically by fleshing out the latter. More concisely, dance constitutes a figure of positive ambivalence (whether between heterosexual lovers, participants in a philosophical dialogue, or aspects (...) of a concept) as self-mimetic, curved silvering in the pursuit of social justice. (shrink)

Religiously inspired violence is a global phenomenon and connects to transnational narratives, necessitating comparative analysis of socio-historical context and patterns of ideological mobilization. Northeast Africa hosts several radical-extremist and terrorist groups, mostly of Muslim persuasion, tuned in to these global narratives while connecting to local interests. Christian radicalism and violence also occur but are less ideologically consistent and less widespread. I examine key aspects of the current role and ideological self-positioning of Islamist radicalism in state contexts, comparing Somalia, affected by (...) Islamist violence since the late 1990s, and Ethiopia, where Islam’s mobilization followed a different path and where the state so far contained politicization and open radicalism of Muslim groups. A brief contrastive case from Nigeria is also provided. It is observed that Islam, while of course not ‘equalling’ violence, easily provides a militant political theology, frequently instrumentalized in conflicts and situations of (perceived) grievance, and via mimetic rivalry then becomes radically ideological. Securitized response patterns of state authorities toward militancy play a role in furthering violent radicalization. I follow a sociological-anthropological approach but also refer to key aspects of national-legal frameworks regarding state and religion, next to societal and political bases of Muslim militant mobilization for collective aims and self-presentation. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine Adorno’s controversial claim that human rationality is inherently mimetic. To do so, I break this claim down into three puzzles (the natural historical puzzle, the metaphysical puzzle, and the epistemic puzzle) and consider each in turn. The first puzzle originates in Adorno’s assertion that in the course of human history the mimetic moment of human thought “is melted together with the rational moment”. So whereas, on his narrative, mimesis has become an intrinsic component of human (...) rationality, it appears that we are oblivious to this state of affair and unable to recognize the workings of mimesis in what we otherwise refer to as rationality. The second puzzle concerns the traditional metaphysical question regarding the possibility of knowledge. Adorno holds that the key to this question lies in the “mimetic moment of knowledge”, which he characterizes as the “moment of the elective affinity between the knower and the known.” The third puzzle concerns his views on how the mimetic moment of thought plays out in our epistemic practices. As he puts it, “consciousness knows of its other as much as it resembles that other,” which seems to entail that our very efforts to conceptualize objects somehow rely on imitative processes. I work out what I take to be the basics of Adorno’s understanding of mimesis and use them to make sense of each puzzle. I argue that Adorno’s insistence on the mimetic component of human rationality isn’t meant to promote more mimetic modes of comportment, but a reflexive awareness of the extent to which our rational activities already rely on imitative (or immersive) processes, even those we view as embodying the strongest claims to the contrary. (shrink)

“Christianity is a μίμησις of the divine nature.” This definition of what it means to be a Christian, given by St Gregory of Nyssa in his letter De pro- fessione Christiana, employs a term commonly translated as “imitation” or “representation.” Even a brief study of some of the seminal sources of classical Greek thought, however, will show that the concept of mimesis surpasses any of these translations and effortlessly crosses the boundaries of the sphere of aesthetics, towards the fundamental questions (...) of epistemology, metaphysics, ontology, and ethics. An analysis of Gregory’s letter, together with the related treatise De perfectione, will then show his nuanced familiarity with the subtleties of mimesis, which he consciously employs to arrive at his definition of Christianity. With this in hand, I will argue that even some of Gregory’s most perplexing scriptural exegesis in his homilies on the Song of Songs grows out of his coherent concept of mimesis, which ultimately is of fundamental importance to Gregory’s anthropology, cosmology, and Christology. (shrink)

In book X, Plato's rejection of mimetic poetry can be read as a parallel to rejecting the conventions of the poetic style contemporary to his time. This rejection can, owing to the premises derived and the analyses made in this paper, further be read as to suggest that Plato presses for a reformation of the poetic vocabulary. That is, as to suggest that Plato proposes that the non-rational imagistic tradition, embodied in mimetic poetry, get replaced by a rational and noetic-aspiring (...) rhetoric that opts for knowledge and truth. (shrink)

This study investigates Phillipe Lacoue-Labarthe's claim in "The Caesura of the Speculative" that Hölderlin is a "modern" writer. Its aim is to establish what is at stake in this claim and to evaluate whether it can be substantiated. In Chapter One I discuss the relationship between tragedy and philosophy. I show that the uneasy relationship between philosophy and the arts is premised upon Plato's understanding and judgement of mimesis. I contrast Plato and Aristotle's treatment of poetry by examining how they (...) understand the mimetic process. In Chapter Two I focus on Hölderlin's understanding of the relationship between Ancient Greece and 18th Century Germany. After discussing the background to Hölderlin's work I provide detailed readings of two texts, The Perspective from which We Have to Look at Antiquity, (1799) and the first letter to Böhlendorff, dating from 1801. I argue that in these texts Hölderlin, through his acknowledgement of the divided nature of Greek culture, offers a unique understanding of the relationship between Greece and Germany which isolates him from his contemporaries. In Chapters Three and Four, I examine Hölderlin's understanding of tragedy. After establishing the centrality of the aesthetic presentation for Hölderlin's project I examine the "poetological" writings which date from 1798-1800. I give a close analysis of the implications of Hölderlin's statement that the tragic "is the metaphor of an intellectual intuition" which occurs in the text On the Difference of the Poetic Modes, (1800), showing why the tragic form is central to Hölderlin's poetological project. To illustrate the problems inherent in this project, in Chapter Four I examine Hölderlin's attempts to write a tragic drama which corresponds to his theoretical beliefs. I discuss the two theoretical texts - The Ground to Empedocles and Becoming in Dissolution - which accompany Hölderlin's drama Empedocles. In analysing these texts I argue that there is an inherent tension between the presuppositions of the theory and the way they can be realised in the drama. In Chapter Five, I turn to Hölderlin's final work, his project to translate Sophocles' tragedies. Through close analysis of the theoretical Remarks which accompany the translations, I show how Hölderlin's theoretical and poetological interests in Greece and Tragedy are brought together through this project. I argue that these texts give an insight into the problems which confront Hölderlin's poetological project. However, simultaneously, these texts provide an alternative way of understanding the function of the tragic form. In this discussion I show how the questions concerning the status of dramatic mimesis and the "mimetic" relation between Greece and Germany coincide in the analysis of Sophocles' dramas. In conclusion I return briefly to the questions that I raised in the introduction concerning the status of tragedy in the present time, and assess the accuracy of the claim that Hölderlin is a "modern" thinker. (shrink)

Compelling voices charge that the theological notion of “sacrifice” valorizes suffering and fosters a culture of violence by the claim that Christ’s death on the Cross paid for human sins. Beneath the ‘sacred’ violence of sacrifice, René Girard discerns a concealed scapegoat-murder driven by a distortion of human desire that itself must lead to human self-annihilation. I here ask: can one speak safely of sacrifice; and can human beings somehow cease to practice the sacrifice that must otherwise destroy them? Drawing (...) on Gregory the Great (ca. 540–604), I propose an understanding of sacrifice that both distinguishes Christian sacrifice from sacred violence and accounts for how to overcome the roots of the sacred violence identified by Girard. I make four claims: First, Girard recognizes two kinds of sacrifice—one, the scapegoat murder, overcomes community rivalries by unanimous imitation of an accuser, shifting blame onto a third party who is collectively murdered; the other sort of sacrifice practices renunciation and forgiveness in imitation of God. These I respectively designate the “Satanic” (Girard’s term) and the “theomimetic” (mine). Second, I analyze the intrinsic instability that keeps the Satanic from sustaining the societal order and unity that it promises. Third, by a constructive reading of Gregory the Great, I posit that satanic sacrifice overlooks and indeed exacerbates the root of human covetousness—a failure to love. Fourth, Gregory’s teaching on the imitation of Christ enables us to expand on Girard’s account of the theo¬mimetic sacrifice of renunciation, to clarify how this latter might not only oppose but also systematically subvert the Satanic by healing the disorder out of which mimetic rivalry and scapegoating first take their rise. (shrink)

According to René Girard, mimetic theory and philosophy cannot go together; mimetic theory must go beyond philosophy. More than an ideological disagreement, there is here an actual methodological divergence. Philosophy, he argues, tends to remain at the superficial level of pure intellectual understanding, whereas other human faculties must be accessed to overcome the illusions of an independent desire: In reality, no purely intellectual process and no experience of a purely philosophical nature can secure the individual the slightest victory over mimetic (...) desire and its victimage delusions. Intellection can achieve only displacement and substitution, though these may give individuals the sense of having .. (shrink)

This article offers an account and defence of constructionism, both as a metaphilosophical approach and as a philosophical methodology, with references to the so-called maker's knowledge tradition. Its main thesis is that Plato's “user's knowledge” tradition should be complemented, if not replaced, by a constructionist approach to philosophical problems in general and to knowledge in particular. Epistemic agents know something when they are able to build (reproduce, simulate, model, construct, etc.) that something and plug the obtained information into the correct (...) network of relations that account for it. Their epistemic expertise increases with the scope and depth of the questions that they are able to ask and answer. Thus, constructionism deprioritises mimetic, passive, and declarative knowledge that something is the case, in favour of poietic, interactive, and practical knowledge of something being the case. Metaphilosophically, constructionism suggests adding conceptual engineering to conceptual analysis as a fundamental method. (shrink)

Abstract: This entry elucidates causal and constitutive roles that various forms of imagining play in human action. Imagination influences more kinds of action than just pretend play. I distinguish different senses of the terms “imagining” and “imagination”: imagistic imagining, propositional imagining, and constructive imagining. Each variety of imagining makes its own characteristic contributions to action. Imagistic imagining can structure bodily movement. Propositional imagining interacts with desires to motivate pretend play and mimetic expressive action. And constructive imagination generates representations of possibilities (...) and actions on the basis of which we choose what to do. [Version archived here is a penultimate draft.]. (shrink)

The Parmenides is arguably the pivotal text for understanding the Platonic corpus as a whole. I offer a critical analysis that takes as its key the closely constructed dramatic context and mimetic irony of the dialogue. Read with these in view, the contradictory characterizations of the "one" in the hypotheses dissolve and reform as stages in a systematic response to the objections that Parmenides earlier posed to the young Socrates' notions of forms and participation, potentially liberating Socrates from his dependence (...) on sensible simile and yielding a distinctively conceptual articulation of the difference and relation of forms and their sensible participants. The dialogue as a whole thereby functions as the means for the "conversion" of the soul to eidetic being for which Plato has the elder Socrates call in Republic VII. (shrink)

A significant strand of the ethical psychology, aesthetics and politics of Plato's Republic revolves around the concept of poikilia, ‘fascinating variety’. Plato uses the concept to caution against harmful appetitive pleasures purveyed by democracy and such artistic or cultural practices as mimetic poetry. His aim, this article shows, is to contest a prominent conceptual connection between poikilia and beauty (kallos, to kalon). Exploiting tensions in the archaic and classical Greek concept, Plato associates poikilia with dangerous pleasures to redirect admiration toward (...) a distinctly philosophical pursuit of the nature of beauty. This is to displace a prominent and problematic cultural sensibility—the aesthetics of poikilia—not to deny that fascinating variety, even in mimetic poetry, may be beautiful. Rather, Plato's cultural critique lays bare an epistemological problem in the ethical psychology of beauty: since they cannot be distinguished from what seems beautiful, how should one respond to fascinating yet dangerous attractions? (shrink)

Lisa Zunshine stayed at Hotel Laxmi Park at Bishnupur, I do not know whether that hotel exists now or not. I sparred with Rukmani Bhaya Nair at an international literary meet at Dehradun in 2017 and I have that video. In this hurriedly written essay for an FDP conducted by a Central University in India in collaboration with a College in New Delhi, I point out the need to distinguish between philosophy and darśana while accessing the corpus of Raja Rao. (...) Zunshine in her work on literature and cognitive studies and, Bhaya Nair in her mimetic mode disregards Eastern hermeneutics to read all Indian authors in English. This essay which is not proofread, nor intended for publication shows the sorry state of Indian letters in English today. Indian scholars of Indian literatures in English do not refer to Indian thinkers but rush into aping their Western dole-givers. Therefore, I turn to Arif Dirlik's work on Third world scholars in the First world and make a case for rethinking the methodologies in approaching Indian letters in English. This author hopes that others in the future will not simply quote Plato to understand Raja Rao. (And, he was awarded an A+ for this work.) Both Zunshine and Nair effect an elision of everything Indic from world and Indian letters respectively. (shrink)

In the "Republic," Plato has Socrates attack poetry’s use of mimēsis, often translated as ‘imitation’ or ‘representation.’ Various scholars (e.g. Blondell 2002; Frank 2018; Halliwell 2009; K. Morgan 2004) have noticed the tension between Socrates’ theory critical of mimēsis and Plato’s literary practice of speaking through various characters in his dialogues. However, none of these scholars have addressed that it is not only Plato the writer who uses mimēsis but also his own character, Socrates. At crucial moments in several dialogues, (...) Socrates takes on a role and speaks as someone else. I call these moments “Socratic mimēsis.” While previous commentators have noticed some of these moments, they have either overstated their rarity or they have not studied them collectively. My dissertation is the first in-depth investigation of this phenomenon in the dialogues. Socrates’ dramatic imitation of others is way of teaching in a voice separate from his own, and it is also a way for Plato to speak to, and to educate, different kinds of audiences. Although “Socratic mimēsis” occurs throughout the Platonic corpus, I focus on three passages from three different dialogues, which are paradigm instances: [1] in the "Crito" Socrates plays the part of ‘the Laws’ (50a-54c); [2] in the "Theaetetus" he acts the part of ‘Protagoras’ (166a-168c); and [3] in the "Menexenus" he recites a funeral speech learned from ‘Aspasia’ (236d-249c). Instead of one-sidedly reading the dialogues as either only literary works of art or as only a series of philosophical arguments, this study gleans philosophic insights from the literary and dramatic details of the dialogues. In chapter one I argue that in the "Crito" Socrates tries to convince Crito of a universal and absolute ethics based on never committing injustice, but Crito is not able to understand. In order to make Crito more just—but not yet at the level of Socratic ethics—Socrates creates ‘the Laws’ to persuade Crito to expand his personal notion of justice. Socrates instills a political obedience in place of Crito’s existing lawlessness as a second-best recourse. Plato expects the astute listener or reader to see the contrast between Socrates’ earlier ethical principles, said in his own voice, with what he says in the voice of ‘the Laws.’ In chapter two I argue that in the part of the "Theaetetus" where Socrates defends Protagoras (often called ‘the Defense’), Socrates, by imitating ‘Protagoras,’ is actually criticizing Protagorean relativism. The Protagorean theory cannot account for mimēsis and Socrates’ mimetic act performatively contradicts the identity of appearance and reality, which the theory presupposes. Finally, in chapter three I argue that in the Menexenus the funeral oration that Socrates recounts for Menexenus that he heard from ‘Aspasia’ is actually a disguised criticism of political rhetoric and of Athenian imperialism. Although the speech is never interrogated within the dialogue, Plato provokes the listener or reader outside the dialogue to question its message and to see how it conflicts with many of Socrates’ positions in other dialogues. Beyond reconsidering the long-standing and persistent view that Plato was against poetry and mimetic performance, I re-examine the role that performance and role-playing can have in philosophy and pedagogy more generally. Actors, by taking on other personas, and audience members, in observing actors and their actions, are both involved in acts of imagination that can expand their horizon of thinking and feeling. (shrink)

This paper will analyze the evolution and the key aspects of René Girard’s critique of the Hegelian “struggle for recognition” and the master-slave dialectic. Through a discussion of Girard’s views on Identity, Difference, Violence, Desire and Negativity, the study will aim to highlight the philosophical uniqueness of the mimetic theory in respect to French Hegelianism and postHegelianism.

Aristotle’s Poetics is the first philosophical account of an art form and is the foundational text in the history of aesthetics. The Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Aristotle and the Poetics is an accessible guide to this often dense and cryptic work. Angela Curran introduces and assesses: Aristotle’s life and the background to the Poetics the ideas and text of the Poetics , including mimēsis ; poetic technē; the definition of tragedy; the elements of poetic composition; the Poetics’ recommendations for tragic (...) plot patterns; catharsis ; epic and comedy; the nature of our emotional response to drama; the proper pleasure of tragedy; and the role that art plays in a human life the relevance of Aristotle’s work in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and philosophical psychology to the Poetics a comparison of Plato and Aristotle on the value of mimetic art the continuing importance of Aristotle’s Poetics to contemporary philosophy, aesthetics, and philosophy of film. (shrink)

Plato’s most infamous discussions of poetry in the Republic, in which he both develops original distinctions in narratology and advocates some form of censorship, raises numerous philosophical and philological questions. Foremost among them, perhaps, is the puzzle of why he returns to poetry in Book X after having dealt with it thoroughly in Books II–III, particularly because his accounts of the “mimetic” aspect of poetry are, on their face, quite different. How are we to understand this double treatment? Here I (...) will focus on a single aspect of this question, the compatibility of the notion of μίμησις and its cognates in the two books. As Nickolas Pappas has said, “Whether Books 3 and 10 offer compatible accounts of mimêsis, and how one might make them compatible, remains the most controversial question about Plato’s aesthetics”.2 I will show that there is a single notion of μίμησις operative throughout, namely that of representation by resemblance. I will take an unusual tack. I will not begin with the most problematic part of Book III for this interpretation about poetic, linguistic μίμησις, but with the later sections on musical μίμησις. Once we have an account of this, I claim, it is easier to see how narrative μίμησις is also a kind of representation by resemblance. (shrink)

This paper defends the idea that Cassirer's methodology is idealistic in regard to validity claims and the structuralist views he holds and at the same time empiric in regard to the facts and genealogy of culture. This perspective is best to be unfolded along Cassirer's model of representation. The author does so by showing that Cassirer's triad of symbolic articulation (expressive, presentational, significative) and the triad of symbolic development (mimetic, analogical, symbolic) form a coherent and exhaustive theory of symbolic formation. (...) In order to defend this view, two main objections from the secondary literature against the consistency of this essential theory piece of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms have to be rejected. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this paper, I will offer some examples of the effectiveness of Adorno’s concept of mimesis for an analysis of extreme violence and for a defence of democratic institutions against possible regressions into authoritarian regimes. I will start by reading the concept of mimesis through the lens of the interlacement between the concepts of play and power. My aim is twofold: first, I wish to further the analysis of Adorno’s concept of mimesis by showing that it can be interpreted (...) as a form of play, which either empowers subjectivity or becomes a means of domination; second, I will use these speculations to highlight the relevance of Horkheimer and Adorno’s explanation of anti-Semitic violence when seen through the lens of the concept mimesis. Before concluding, I will briefly highlight Adorno’s ideas about what makes democracy vulnerable to potential regressions into extreme violence, and examine what can be done practically – from an Adornian perspective – to avoid regression: defending democratic institutions, and working towards a removal of those barriers that obstruct genuine mimetic experience and self-reflection. (shrink)

This paper is one (among many) approach to the question, “are AIs persons or are they conscious?” from a Heideggerian perspective. Here I argue for two claims. First, I argue that René Girard’s mimetic analysis of mitsein (being-with), one of Heidegger’s foundational concepts, illuminates what Heidegger takes mitsein to be. Second, I claim that this Girardian analysis gives us a way to answer the question of whether AIs have Dasein, to which I argue that the answer is negative. Specifically, I (...) claim that Dasein requires mitsein, and mitsein (according to Girard’s analysis) requires mimesis. Moreover, mimesis requires that the mimetic being finds truth in the mimetic object, that is, it comports in a meaningful way toward the unconcealed object being imitated by Dasein. But since AIs cannot comport in meaningful ways toward the object of imitation, i.e., they are not truth-apt, they cannot engage in mimetic behavior, hence cannot have mitsein. But, necessarily, Dasein is being-with-others, Therefore, AIs cannot have Dasein. If we assume (as I think Heidegger would) that every person has Dasein, we may justifiably conclude that AIs are not persons, at least from a Heideggerian ontology. (shrink)

Resumen: Este artículo tiene como objetivo indagar si la mímesis ―o imitación― tal como la entiende René Girard (1923-2015), afecta el juicio ético ―o evaluación moral― de una acción que el ejecutivo realiza en la empresa. En la primera parte, se caracteriza el juicio ético de acuerdo con una revisión de la literatura de ética empresarial (2010-2020). En la segunda parte, se sintetiza cómo Girard explica la conformación de la sociedad a partir de la mímesis, una fuerza impulsora ambivalente que (...) se manifiesta en el deseo de ser como el otro y de diferenciarse del otro, el deseo de apropiarse de lo del otro y la rivalidad. En la tercera, se ilustran las ideas de Girard con ejemplos de la dinámica organizacional. En la cuarta y última parte, se realiza la discusión a fin de responder la pregunta de investigación. Se concluye que, si el sujeto decide no ejercer su capacidad de discernimiento, la mímesis ofrece elementos y oportunidades o bien para el autoengaño respecto de la moralidad y responsabilidad de una acción, o bien para la omisión del juicio ético individual. Abstract: This article aims to investigate whether mimesis ―or imitation― as understood by René Girard (1923-2015), affects the ethical judgment ―or moral evaluation― of an action that the executive performs in the company. First, this text offers a characterization of the ethical judgment according to the business ethics literature review (2010-2020). Second, this article provides a synthesis of Girard´s theory of mimetic desire. Girard conceived the mimesis as a main social driving force from which emerge both, the desire to be like the other and to differentiate from the other. This ambivalent and paradoxical force leads human beings to order and union, or to rivalry and revenge. Third, this inquiry illustrates Girard's ideas with examples of organizational dynamics. In the fourth and last part, the discussion leads to answering the research question. Study’s limitations are pointed out. This inquiry concludes that if the decision-making subject decides not to exercise his/her discernment and rather to remain in the mimesis' blindness, the executive will find elements and opportunities for self-deception or substitution of his/her own ethical judgment with others imitation. (shrink)

Mimicry, camouflage, transvestism, chance or cryptic anamorphism, fascination – all ways of changing clothes, habits and habitats in nature as well as in culture, in any symbolic field created by human beings during their history. Art and artification, aestheticization, stylization and beautification are all practices reflecting the need and desire for biological as well as social adaptation, all performances producing functional and fictional frames, boundaries or hierarchies in ordinary life, including the artworld. They can persuade and convince by creating consensus (...) and belief, but they can also lead to a different common sense, a sensorium – a sensorial medium and an aesthetic mediation open to a new world and to new experiences. -/- By investigating mimetism as a fundamental and polymorphic aesthetic performance, this issue of «Aisthesis» aims to rethink the concept, value, and function of mimesis and its media in the context of camouflage, simulation, and dissimulation, where images do not reveal themselves as such, but are to be perceived unambiguously as what they are not – as hieroglyphs or puzzles. In the animal kingdom, as well as in war or in ordinary public life, camouflage consists in taking on the traits, colours, and shapes of a given form or environment. This is a twofold process: on the one hand, by blending two or more shapes in one, the camoufleur seeks to remain hidden and to mislead the others in order to keep a vital secret or an ephemeral whim; on the other hand, however, he/she aims to be recognized by a specific milieu or group, thus betraying a craving for communication and familiarity, as well as a need to convey an agreeable appearance and to share a way of life. (shrink)

The recent publication of André Bazin's Écrits complets, an enormous two-volume edition of 3000 pages which increases ten-fold Bazin's available corpus, provides opportunities for renewed reflection on, and possibly for substantial revisions of, this key figure in film theory. On the basis of several essays, I propose a drastic rereading of Bazin's most explicitly philosophical notion of “ontology.” This all too familiar notion, long settled into a rather dust-laden couple nonetheless retains its fascination. Rather than attempting to provide a systematic (...) reworking of this couple along well established lines, particularly those defined by realism and indexicality, this article proposes to shift the notion of ontology in Bazin from its determination as actual existence toward a more radical concept of ontology based on the notion of mimesis, particularly as articulated, in a Heideggerian mode, by Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe. This more properly ontological concept, also paradoxically and radically improper, is shown to be at work already in Bazin's texts, and it allows us to see that far from simplistically naturalizing photographic technology, Bazin does the contrary: he technicizes nature. If Bazin says that the photograph is a flower or a snowflake, he also implies that, like photographs, these are likewise a kind of technical artifact, an auto-mimetic reproduction of nature. Bazin likewise refers to film as a kind of skin falling away from the body of History, an accumulating pellicule in which nature and history disturbingly merge. This shifted perspective on Bazin's thinking is extended further in reference to Georges Didi-Huberman on the highly mimetic creatures known as phasmids, insects that mimic their environement. I extend this into the dynamic notion of eternal return, an implicit dimension of Bazin's thinking, clarified here in reference to Giorgio Agamben and the “immemorial image” which, like Bazin's “Death Every Afternoon,” presents an eminently repeatable deathly image, an animated corpse-world that can be likened to hell. (shrink)

Aristotle’s works on natural science show that he was aware of the affective powers of colour. At De an. 421a13, for example, he writes that hard-eyed animals can only discriminate between frightening and non-frightening colours. In the Nicomachean Ethics, furthermore, colours are the source of pleasures and delight. These pleasures, unlike the pleasures of touch and taste, neither corrupt us nor make us wiser. Aristotle’s views on the affective powers of colours raise a question about the limits he seems to (...) place on the affective powers of pictures at De an. 427b15-24, where he implies that pictures do not affect us immediately. In this paper, I examine the contrast between the affective powers of colour and the affective powers of pictures. I argue that colours can give rise to pleasure and pain in themselves and generate emotions incidentally. Similarly, pictures can please us or affect us in themselves and incidentally. In light of this account, I suggest that, on a plausible reading of De an. 427b15-24, the affective powers of pictures as mimetic objects are not immediate because they require an intervening cause in order to be effective. The representations of pictures and statues affect us either with the mediation of deception or with the mediation of interpretation. (shrink)

I read René Girard so you don't have to.

This paper attempts to reconcile two apparently opposed ways of thinking about the imagination and its relationship to literature, one which casts it as essentially concerned with fiction-making and the other with culture-making. The literary imagination’s power to create fictions is what gives it its most obvious claim to “autonomy”, as Kant would have it: its freedom to venture out in often wild and spectacular excess of reality. The argument of this paper is that we can locate the literary imagination’s (...) complementary power of cultural articulation in this fictional activity. The suggestion is that we should conceive of the literary imagination as expressing its interests in culture not mimetically but by producing a certain kind of meaning. This meaning is irreducibly narratological, and understanding it helps us to see the role of narrative in bringing into harmony the literary imagination’s interests in both the imaginary and the real. (shrink)

Evidence for a Parmenidean influence on Plato’s Republic typically focuses on content from Bks. V-VI, and the development of Plato’s Theory of Forms. This essay aims to suggest that Plato’s censorship of poetic content in Bks. II-III—particularly the rules for portraying divine nature (376e-383c)—also draw heavily upon the Eleatic tradition, particularly Parmenides’s. Identifying this further Eleatic influence will be enhanced by my own reading of Parmenides. This reading advocates understanding Parmenides in a more Xenophanean-vein—i.e. by taking What-Is to be an (...) explication of the essential qualities of divine nature, and the overall poem as rejecting traditional, mythopoetic accounts of divinity. Recognizing this Eleatic influence on the censorship of poetic content, a tension arises. For Plato infamously censors poetic styles next, concluding that mimetic dialogue may only be rarely employed, and only then in imitation of virtuous persons and actions (392c-398b). This would entail banning all poetic works relying exclusively on mimetic dialogue. Yet, not only do Plato’s own dialogues entirely consist of mimetic dialogue, so does Parmenides’s proto-dialogue. Furthermore, by so closely imitating Parmenides’s thought and language in Republic, has not Plato himself engaged in a type of intellectual and compositional mίμησις? Just as it would be strange to ban the very dialogue (Republic) which outlines and justifies Kallipolis in the first place, it would also be troubling to ban a philosophical work (i.e. Parmenides’s poem) which Republic is so heavily indebted to. Such a ban would also seem strongly at odds with Plato’s general reverence for Parmenides. In an attempt to address these tensions, I suggest that in Republic II-III, Plato’s lack of concern for banning philosophical works along with mimetic poetry should further suggest that he intends the ban to be far narrower than it first appears: as a rejection of performative, rather than compositional, mίμησις. (shrink)

Blanchot’s rejection of vision as the fundamental philosophical metaphor is well known: “Seeing is not speaking” (The Infinite Conversation (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1993) 25). Furthermore, his central idea of the limit-experience (borrowed from Bataille) is a “detour from everything visible and invisible” (210). As part of his Heideggerian heritage, the increased importance of hearing (and aurality in general) lacks the critical appraisal it deserves. Pari passu for voice. Blanchot’s investigation of voice, spoken, interior, literary, is extensive. Various works (...) of fiction, notably The One Who Was Standing Apart From Me, explore the meme, which is intensified in critical essays on Hölderlin, Kafka, Rilke, and Valéry, where the voice’s musicality is given to performance. The studies exemplify the operation of “pure voice,” voice no longer in relation to and under the constraints of the interlocutor: its rhythm, tempo, and melody. His clearest, though lapidary, remarks on voice appear in discussion of the Narcissus mythomeme. There, voice is related not only to Narcissus’ love of an (unrecognized) self but also to the intrigue of Echo and her mimetic reproduction of voice. I give a close reading of Blanchot’s rendition of Ovid’s story to show the central role that voice plays in his “great refusal” of philosophy and concomitant opening to the outside, the “beyond being,” its nomadism and messianism. (shrink)

In this paper I suggest that, over and above the need to explore and understand the technological newness of computer art works, there is a need to address the aesthetic significance of the changes and effects that such technological newness brings about, considering the whole environmental transaction pertaining to new media, including what they can or do offer and what users do or can do with such offerings, and how this whole package is integrated into our living spaces and activities. (...) I argue that, given the primacy of computer-based interaction in the new-media, the notion of ‘ornamentality’ indicates the ground-floor aesthetics of new-media environments. I locate ornamentality not only in the logically constitutive principles of the new-media (hypertextuality and interactivity) but also in their multiform cultural embodiments (decoration as cultural interface). I utilize Kendall Walton’s theory of ornamentality in order to construe a puzzle pertaining to the ornamental erosion of information in new-media environments. I argue that insofar as we consider new-media to be conduits of ‘real-life’, the excessive density of ornamental devices prevalent in certain new-media environments forces us to conduct our inquiries under conditions of neustic uncertainty, that is, uncertainty concerning the kind of relationship that we, the users, have to the propositional content mediated. I conclude that this puzzle calls our attention to a peculiar interrogatory complexity inherent in any game of knowledge-seeking conducted across the infosphere, which is not restricted to the simplest form of data retrieval, especially in mixed-reality environments and when the knowledge sought is embodied mimetically. (shrink)

Architecture and Deconstruction Case of Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi -/- Introduction Towards deconstruction in architecture Intensive relations between philosophical deconstruction and architecture, which were present in the late 1980s and early 1990s, belong to the past and therefore may be described from a greater than before distance. Within these relations three basic variations can be distinguished: the first one, in which philosophy of deconstruction deals with architectural terms but does not interfere with real architecture, the second one, in which (...) a collaboration between Jacques Derrida and a group of architects interested in his concepts is commenced, and the third one, in which completed or only designed objects or new concepts of deconstruction created by architects gain their supremacy over philosophy. The following book analyses these three possible ways, first of all with the reference to Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi. -/- Peter Eisenman -/- Misreading… and Other Errors -/- The issue of relations between Peter Eisenman’s work and philosophy of deconstruction may be referred to his activity more than ten years preceding his direct collaboration with Jacques Derrida (in 1985) and organisation of the exhibition Deconstructivist Architecture at Museum of Modern Art in New York (in 1988). As soon as at the stage of designing the first houses (House I-III, 1967-1970), which almost entirely inscribed in formalistic aesthetics of Modernism, the architect analysed the problem of architecture dependence on its assumptions. All his later designs may be treated as consequence of this initial interest in relations between practice and theory, and at the same time as an introduction to manipulations later on led at the level of metaphysics of architecture. Beginning with the issue of presence, considered in comments to House VI (1972), the number of ideas having their analogies in philosophy of deconstruction increased. The text entitled The End of the Classical: The End of the Beginning, The End of the End (1984), in which Eisenman criticised questions of representation in architecture, its delusive strive for truth and comparably unattainable attempts at ultimate definition of elementary rules, should be acclaimed the breaking point. This attitude was extended by numerous strategies disturbing architecture rules defined at metaphysical level in an essay Moving Arrows, Eros, and Other Errors: an Architecture of Absence (1986). The issue of Eisenman’s passage from formalism to deconstruction has already been much discussed in the literature (Rosalind Krauss, Thomas Patin among others), still it should be mentioned that the threads similar to Derrida’s concept included in Eisenman’s writing reveal untranslatability of architecture and philosophy. -/- Choral Works or Separate tricks -/- In 1985-1986 a series of seven disputes between Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman took place. The pretext for them were designs concerning Parc de la Villette in Paris. The situation of many months of collaboration between a notable philosopher of the second half of the 20th c. and an architect that already had a huge theoretical oeuvre, ended up with a publication of a large volume entitled Chora L Works and it became at the same time a vast study area for historians of contemporary architecture and philosophers. Derrida’s contribution to concept works were his considerations over the idea of chôra, the properties related to this concept were about to be reflected in shapes of the park. Therefore, Chora L Works became an example of the abilities of contemporary art, both in its capability of translation from philosophical ideas to artistic forms and its resistance to tradition of representing in architecture some phenomena and values originating outside this discipline. In the final period of their collaboration both interlocutors started to polemicise with each other more decidedly, what became a separate part of their thought exchange. The exchange of letters between Derrida and Eisenman at the turn of 1989 ended up the period of their direct contacts, nevertheless, at this time precisely a large group of experts in issues of deconstruction joined the discussion and extended the revealed in the former dispute problems into more than ten years of further considerations and publications. Except for a long text by Jeffrey Kipnis, who had participated in the meetings of the philosopher and the architect, there appeared also comments of researchers of artistic theories (K. Michael Hays, Thomas Patin), philosophers (Andrew Benjamin), and even experts in Greek literature (Maria Theodorou or Ann Bergren). Following these debates a contemporary reflection on architecture has saturated with indeed numerous concepts originating in philosophy of deconstruction. -/- Architecture which imitates mute philosophy -/- The series of Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman meetings, which took place in the period of 1985-1987, induced many authors to make comments. Some of them (Jeffrey Kipnis, Ann Bergren, Maria Theodorou) developed the subject of chôra which was introduced to the discussion by Derrida. The problem that was about to be solved was the question of tying up the concept of chôra with architecture, including Eisenman’s architecture and the series of meetings within frames of Chora L Works project. Kipnis on this occasion paid attention to chôra and its character of anachronia which infects any being created within chôra. In other words any event has its counterpart (analogon) in another, earlier event. He demonstrated the similarity of structure of many events and statements from the times of Derrida and Eisenman’s meetings to the almost identical behaviour of figures in Plato’s dialogue Timaeus. The loss of beginning present in this phenomenon was appropriate to both features of chôra and the effects of typical analyses of philosophy of deconstruction. Bergren’s analyses focused on accentuating gender of chôra, which, according to this author, had been neglected hitherto in discussions. She collated chôra descriptions with characteristics of women in myths, early Greek epic and philosophy and she arrived at a conclusion that chôra has features of a single woman and a married one at the same time. And yet Theodorou’s studies showed that in the Homeric epics chôra is not treated as an idea but is related with single things and events. The other part of the comments (represented by Andrew Benjamin and K. Michael Hays’ utterances) concerns Eisenman’s attitude to tradition which was treated as a variety of iteration understood philosophically. Benjamin commenced his considerations at the point of closeness between a definition of tradition and a concept of chôra understood as perpetuation (placement). A problematic issue was for him Eisenman’s complex relation to tradition based on its contest and affirmation at the same time. Overcoming the simple subordination to tradition – according to Benjamin – was based on awareness of the role of repetition in culture not known before. Hays made an attempt to explain the pleasure and torment of repetition with the support of Sigmund Freud and Roland Barthes’ concepts. According to Hays repetitions are attempts of a single being to a certain primal state perceived as free of any tension. In a similar way Rosalind Krauss explained a motif of a grate present in Modernistic art and also exceptionally frequent in Eisenman’s work. -/- Annex Architecture is still writing Balzac novels. Peter Eisenman and literature -/- Architecture’s approach to writing, script or literature, present within Peter Eisenman’s work, is an exceptional phenomenon, furthermore a complex one. The article considers four possible relations. The first one relates to Eisenman’s characteristics as a person extremely gifted with the ability to wordplay, which very ‘play’ reveals skills to create architectural images. In the second approach the attention has been paid to Eisenman’s interests – in the first period of his oeuvre – in linguistic works by Noam Chomsky and his transformational-generative grammar. The third kind of relations applied to overcoming the need for autonomy of architecture (and of modernist aesthetics at the same time) and renew interests in questions of meaning in architecture. The fourth sort of relations occurred when Eisenman started to create reflections of historic or literary narrations in architecture – ‘stone stories’ and architectural fictions of their kind. -/- Bernard Tschumi -/- From perversion to deconstruction In Bernard Tschumi’s writings from the 1970s and 1980s we can find a transposition of important threads of post-structuralist ideas deriving from Georges Bataille, Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida’s works. The analysis of the architect’s writings also shows roots in Phillippe Sollers, Michel Foucault and Denis Hollier’s works. The analysis of borrowed elements from the beginnings of Tschumi’s theoretical activity may be helpful in explaining the contents of his later writings motre inspired by philosophy of deconstruction. The set of his earliest views was inspired by Marxism, Neo Marxism and French Structuralism, mainly by the writings of Henri Levebre and Guy Debord. From the thought of Levebre Tschumi took interest for city as not only a question of urbanistics but also a political issue. From Debord’s concepts he borrowed a conviction about the role of situational violation for changes in the society structure. Some of these beliefs were preserved in his own concepts of architecture as an event. From this period derived also his will to change conservative elements of social structure not by means of political revolution but of theoretical and creative activity. Tschumi acknowledged that the effective way of the proceedings towards achieving his aims would be accepting the role of both a critical intellectualist and architecture expert who would not hide away his left-wing orientation. The speculations defined by the architect as ‘revolting analyses’ were about to characterise contradictions which tear the society apart, penetrate architecture and constitute the basis of culture. Spreading away of the conscience of false assumptions hidden away in various disciplines could have weakened cohesion of a conservative society and influence the will to change among the elites. This way the beginnings of political revolution were rooted in philosophy of architecture. In 1977 Tschumi published his text entitled The Pleasure of Architecture inspired by Roland Barthes’s The Pleasure of the Text, it also included some concepts derived from Georges Bataille and Jacques Derrida. First of all the author used Barthes’s concept which made an assumption that literary activity is pervaded by the spirit of resistance towards social rules, and Tschudi transferred this remark onto architecture. From the ideas of Bataille, acquainted via Holier’s work, he derived his belief that two concepts of space, a conceptual one (defined as Pyramid) and a sensual one (defined as Labirynth), not losing their distinct features, they join in the concept of experienced space which exceeds contradictions. The exceeding itself was defined as the basic rule of architecture and it was referred to situations in which architecture not only negates social needs, but also disavows its own tradition. Crossing the borders applies not only to political issues or permanent rules of the very discipline but also interfering with other fields (especially literature and film). The fact that architecture is associated with organising events turned Tschumi’s attention to questions of violence that result from upsetting architectural order of a given building by its users and the one hand, and on the other from forcing the users to specific acts imposed by this very order. The analysis of the concepts used by Tschumi in his early writings indicates that they are close to definitions that would occur in his reflection in the following years influenced by philosophy of deconstruction. -/- Approaching deconstruction Tschumi in his theories developed in the 1980s presumed that the current social world had undergone a deep process of decay, and the reaction against which ought to be based on ordering-up actions, and also preserving the main outline of disintegration of the whole and its elements in the state of conflict. The statements concerning the nature of the contemporary to Tschumi social relations were applied by him to the world of architecture, this led him to coming up with designing strategies that took into consideration the destabilised character of conditions in which works of architecture were created. New ways of conduct invented by Tschumi drew their inspiration from literature and research on literature, psychoanalysis, structural linguistics, structuralism and post structuralism, and eventually also deconstruction philosophy. The proposed methods were opposed by their author both to functionalism continuity trends and postmodern architecture. Tschumi’s proposals contradicted any forms of conservatism or traditionalism in political sphere as well as in reference to tendencies in architecture. They were not simple contradictions of social or architectural rules, they intrude them from the inside, weaken or escalate the already existing incongruities, they move the boundaries between the areas. Revolutionary illusions about the possibility of radical changes were replaced with strategies which completed, tainted or test former rules in the series of formal games of permutation and combination. Quite different from avant-garde formalism Tschumi’s games were not about maintaining the autonomy of a given area, but on the contrary – polluting it with other areas’ influences. Tschumi enjoyed demonstrating illusions of architecture concerning simple relations between form and function, or between form and meaning. Making use of Freud, Lacan and Foucault’s research he introduced a category of “madness” into architecture allowing an observation that the recognised norms are nothing but merely ones of many possible principles of behaviour, and their recognised status resulted from unjustified hindering innovativeness which is crucial for architecture. To reborn architecture’s capability of changing Tschumi also made use of Barthes’s discoveries concerning rules of narration and works by writers who applied in their writing knowledge on linguistics. Making a work’s author unclear by various mechanical transformations of its elements was however apparent only, and formal rigours imposed on the process of designing liberated possibilities difficult to obtain in more traditional creative action. Another mode of acting introduced by Tschumi was combining his work of elements deriving from outside architecture; joining space records with notation of motion and events accompanying architectural objects among others. These architectural and extra-architectural elements were not unified, on the contrary their heterogenous and conflictual character was stressed. This is how shock, anxiety and instability, typical for live in great metropolises, infiltrated architecture. Taking some ideas of deconstruction philosophy as a pattern Tschumi also took into critical consideration in his essays traditional in architecture oppositions between form and figuration, or theory and practice. By combining various inspirations he eventually worked out an idea of architectural event, which he understood as a series of actions contesting its own field, redefining its sources, principles and elements. An event, understood in this way, was not so much producing works as rather creating conditions of their production and at the same time designing the society different from a hierarchic one. -/- Park of deconstruction Among numerous philosophical strategies of deconstruction most frequently used was questioning the practice of strong opposition of two reasons. In many cases Bernard Tschumi’s writings just consider functioning of the conflict juxtaposition of the ideas of structure and ornament or theory and practice in history of architecture. Violation of traditional relations between terms of this kind, both old and modern, raised Jacques Derrida’s objections, when he was induced for the first time to co-operate with architects’ milieu. During this long lasting thought exchange the philosopher eventually acknowledged Bernard Tschumi’s arguments for reasoning the encroachment of architecture’s fundamental rules. Deconstruction applied in architecture was not a simple transposition or analogy of practices that had been applied by philosophy of deconstruction. We may even say that considering architectural terms became an important formula of deconstruction. Architecture understood in philosophical way became something beyond the practice and theory of its own discipline, a sort of metaphysics of both philosophy and architecture. The deliberate encroachment of simplicity of dividing architecture into theory and practice, for the first time became a clear aim for Tschumi in his drawings and texts entitled The Manhattan Transcripts. The contents of this series of works was a record of characteristic features of this New York district in such a way that not only objects were the subject of the record but also relations between objects, people and events. The record was about to take into consideration a conflict character of elements of this representation and at the same time to avoid applying to them the rule of mimetism. The record became a form of reflection over the very record by an increased control over the ways of representation. Architecture which was considered in the The Manhattan Transcripts was not directed to fulfill the needs of inhabitation or production, it was rather related with hitherto usually marginalised liminal situations: building ostentatiously big monuments, religious cult, war etc. Architecture operating in these relations focused also the attention on the included in it continuous tendency to overpass its own restrictions, the role of violence as its not recognised factor, or the meaning of excess and shock in its operation. Architecture moving from reason towards madness became even more visible in the design of Parisian Parc de la Villette, whose pavilions were defined as folies (in French it means both small park buildings and follies). The park was supposed to be on the one hand a reflection of traditional society disintegration while on the other it questioned basic rules of producing a work of architecture. The traditional rules of designing, based on ordering up, were replaced with the strategies of dysfunction and dissociation. In Tschumi’s opinion methods of this kind may be equivalent of what Derrida named différance. Instead of aiming at mergence, any diversity, plays or variations were strengthen. Tschumi’s texts, in which he explained his attitude, were completed by Derrida’s extent statement entitled Point de folie – Maintenant l’architecture. Derrida’s article is the most significant of all his statements on architecture as a form of thinking and activity. According to the philosopher, architecture should divide space (in French defined as espacement), what enables both thinking and action – it arranges the space of an event. Tschumi’s buildings, defined as folies, in an essential way destabilise any created order, and at the same time they refresh it. Derrida’s statement suggests that architecture may become both metaphor of an order merging a language or a society but also of inner forces which deconstruct and reconstruct it. Therefore architecture is at the same time a construction, a deconstruction and a reconstruction. Parc de la Villette stands out in this system with its attempt to step beyond the scheme of an easy repetition and its heading for chances of achieving more radical otherness. -/- Conclusion Destruction as construction. Paradoxes of deconstruction in architecture -/- Scepticism about persistence and common importance of fundamental values of human culture evinced in philosophers and writers’ works as early as in Greek antiquity, nevertheless it was not expressed so strongly as in the second half of the 20th century. Especially in Heidegger’s work Being and Time (although originated in 1927, still influential in all later philosophy) the following states were characterised: the state of losing the ground (Abgrund), of being out of sight (Unheimlichkeit) and of being out of dwelling (Un-zuhause-sein) – as the basis of self-confidence of conscious being there (Dasein). The entire criticism of philosophy of home and dwelling draws the inspiration from this early writing of the German philosopher, it combines crisis of basic terms of metaphysics with social conditions which are dictated by living in large metropolis. The crisis of both metaphysical foundation and home appears to be similar to the situation of weakening the relations between a man and his dwelling in extensively expanding cities. Whereas philosophy, as well as many disciplines of social sciences, have diagnosed for a long time the destabilisation of fundamental ideas of Western culture and crucial changes in the ways of dwelling, architecture itself occurred to be “the last fortress of metaphysics” (J. Derrida). Among contemporary architects, Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi were the ones who engaged most decidedly in the issues of critical analysis of architecture foundation and its social role. Both the architects noticed new formulas of contemporary social and individual existence, tremendously different from the entire history, and at the same time they affirmed lack of adequacy of architecture concepts to new situations. Both Eisenman and Tschumi used to describe the existing architecture as a tool for consolidation of highly integrated and hierarchised societies, and also as a discipline extremely uncoincidental with the current character of social life based on ideas of freedom and diversity. The means to transform architecture and make a factor of further social changes out of it, was a concept that accentuated revealing the inner contradictions of this discipline, and considering them in designing strategies. Eisenman’s activity, in regard of what has just been noticed, was focused on questioning the basic rules of traditionally comprehended architecture, especially the rule of purpose. The American architect noticed that the concept of architecture as fulfilment the need of location, hides away the fact that the location has to be constantly reconsidered, and hence it is overtaken by change (dislocation). Therefore new concept of architecture propounded architectural activity to translocate the concept of location – more than before – but also to change its status perpetually. Such comprehended architecture should claim, as its main purpose, the constant revision of this purpose and create itself anew permanently. Even Eisenman’s earliest designs of houses nos. I-IV broke with such values as the sense of safety, closeness and familiarity, and just on the contrary they accentuated senses of strangeness, homelessness and loss of confidence. The contradictions within architecture noticed by Tschumi referred to combination of intellectual and sensual values in architecture, when their non-appropriation was defeated by an additional condition, namely the way of experience based on pleasure of excess, marked by insanity. The features of folly were especially visible in his designs of gardens, where the order of planning was mixed with sensual experience introduced by particular elements (both the ones created by nature, and the buildings defined as folies). Parc de la Villette designed by the French architect in Paris put in question not only the common understanding of purpose in architecture but also the ideas of order and integrity, as its plan was based on the combination of independent layers with records of grids of points, various lines and planes. The architecture that collides inadequate elements with each other was supposed to be a kind of an event with no beginning and no end. The architecture treated as an event became a form of a space weakened articulation that maintains its diversity and lack of accordance of the elements building it up. The analyses of Eisenman and Tschumi’s theoretical writings indicate how much the aims of architecture have actually changed; instead of supporting social persistence, the architecture is rather intensifying contradictions, and instead of providing people with the sense of safety, it sublimes danger. From simple acts of defamiliarisation, increasing the distance to itself and enhancing the role of theory, through discomfort, anxiety, not feeling someone at home, weirdness, excess, shock and violence, architecture reached the edge of stability and uncertainty, only to make an attempt at penetrating what is impossible and unutterable, and recording what cannot become the subject of any records. -/- . (shrink)

This book reconstructs some of the phases and themes of the debate - never completely celebrated - between René Girard and Jacques Derrida. The volume recapitulates the essential aspects of mimetic theory and traces the development of the theoretical tools underlying the thought of deconstruction to set up the confrontation and meeting between the two great French thinkers. With a preface by Paul Dumouchel.

In the Panathenaic Games, there was a torch race for teams of ephebes that started from the altars of Eros and Prometheus at Plato’s Academy and finished on the Acropolis at the altar of Athena, goddess of wisdom. It was competitive, yes, but it was also sacred, aimed at a noble goal. To win, you needed to cooperate with your teammates and keep the delicate flame alive as you ran up the hill. Likewise, Plato’s philosophy combines competition and cooperation in (...) pursuit of the goal of wisdom. On one level, agonism in Plato is explicit: he taught in a gymnasium and featured gymnastic training in his educational theory. On another level, it is mimetic: Socratic dialogue resembles intellectual wrestling. On a third level, it is metaphorical: the athlete’s struggle illustrates the struggle to be morally good. And at its highest level, it is divine: the human soul is a chariot that races toward heaven. This volume explores agonism in Plato on all of these levels, inviting the reader—as Plato does—to engage in the megas agōn of life. Once in the contest, as Plato’s Socrates says, we’re allowed no excuses. (shrink)

Mimesis can refer to imitation, emulation, representation, or reenactment - and it is a concept that links together many aspects of ancient Greek Culture. The Western Greek bell-krater on the cover, for example, is painted with a scene from a phlyax play with performers imitating mythical characters drawn from poetry, which also represent collective cultural beliefs and practices. One figure is shown playing a flute, the music from which might imitate nature, or represent deeper truths of the cosmos based upon (...) Pythagorean views (which were widespread in Western Greece at the time). The idea that mimesis should be restricted to ideals was made famous by Plato (whose connections to Pythagoreanism and Siracusa are well-known), and famously challenged by his student Aristotle (not to mention by the mimetic character of Plato’s own poetry). This volume gathers essays not only on the philosophical debate about mimesis, but also on its use in architecture, drama, poetry, history, music, ritual, and visual art. The emphasis is on examples from Hellenic cities in Southern Italy and Sicily, but the insights apply far beyond – even to modern times. Contributors include: Thomas Noble Howe, Francisco J. Gonzalez, Gene Fendt, Guilherme Domingues da Motta, Jeremy DeLong, Carolina Araújo, Marie-Élise Zovko, Lidia Palumbo, Sean Driscoll, Konstantinos Gkaleas, Anna Motta, Jure Zovko, Alexander H. Zistakis, Christos C. Evangeliou, Dorota Tymura, Iris Sulimani, Elliott Domagola, Jonah Radding, Giulia Corrente, Laura Tisi, Ewa Osek, Argyri G. Karanasiou, Rocío Manuela Cuadra Rubio, Jorge Tomás García, Aura Piccioni, and José Miguel Puebla Morón. (shrink)

In the history of technologies and materials the transfer from soft to hard plays a central role. From a dialectic point of view it seems to be a clear-cut matter of one overpowering the other, yet conceptually things are more convoluted. What we call the chiastic model of history is driven by the exchange of empowerings where the one inhabits the other. By taking the most antithetical examples of materiality from architectural history, the plastic and the lithic, we begin to (...) understand the psychological aspects of this exchange: a history of dreams, imagination and even hallucination. The technologies involving the plastic offer an enormous array of such imagery, which we start to analyze as part of a fundamental aspect of technology itself. Using the notion of the pharmakon, as developed by Derrida and Stiegler, we study its ambiguities: technology by its nature is both remedy and poison, cure and addiction. Accepting this ambivalence is the explicit goal of pharmacology, which makes the history of soft and hard one of prosthetic extension as much as of mimetic absorption. We will be guided by two architectural fantasists to investigate the what we call the pharmacology of architecture, J. G. Ballard’s fantasy of a house automaton in the case of the plastic, and G. B. Piranesi’s hallucinations of a reversed archeology in that of the lithic. (shrink)

Kazimir Malevich’s style of Suprematist painting represents the inauguration of nothing less than a new form of culture premised upon a demolition of the Western tradition’s reifying habits of objective thought. In ridding his canvases of all objects and mimetic conventions, Malevich sought to reconfigure human perception in such a way as to open consciousness to alternative modes of organization and signification. In this paper, I argue that Malevich’s revolutionary aesthetic strategy can be illuminated by a return to the very (...) basis of this tradition, namely by a reconsideration of Aristotle’s account in De Anima III.2 of the initial possibility of objective perception as such. (shrink)

When it comes to the notion of creativity, both R. Dawkins and D. Dennett argue that creativity is a matter of random mutation, in the same way that genes randomly mutate. Neither Dennett nor Dawkins see anything else in the mimetic theory of creativity than a process of Darwinian evolution. However, this complete reliance upon the extension of evolution for understanding creativity needs to be supplemented by combining it with other ideas such as those of "schema theory," because creativity always (...) occurs within a structured context and is not simply a matter of random mutation of ideas. Schema theory comes largely from the works of E.H Gombrich, who argued that "schemas" play a crucial role in how it is that we are able to be creative. He defines schemas as structure and traditions in society that help to convey the meaning of our creative efforts. Just as semantics needs syntax within language in order to formulate and convey meaning, so by analogy memes need schemas for the creation and expression of new ideas. Rather than being the antithesis of creativity, existing forms of expression and traditions are important for the creation of new ideas. This needs to be factored into any theory of creativity in order to account for the effect of the social context on creative endeavours in addition to a Darwinian account of memes. The unconscious processes at work within the brain that are involved in the generation of ideas and other creative products can be understood using the notion of a "generator", as originally conceived by D. Dennett. This notion goes beyond mere concrete Skinnerian behavioural trial and error. Within this generator, there appear to be at work processes such as those of bisociation and association, as discussed by A. Koestler, as well as processes such as the role of language, memory, generate-and-test and intentionality that must be acknowledged in addition to the syntactic operations of schemas and the replicating contents of memes. The operation of all of these ingredients within the generator, when understood together, can be seen as responsible for our ability to be creative. (shrink)

This article seeks to further the discussion of mimesis in the current new materialist philosophies that are charged with doubts about the potential of mimetic practices, i.e., practices of reflection, and propose a more differential /diffractive notion of mimesis. It argues that the concept of mimesis and performative approaches to knowledge making can be compatible. The figures of mimesis appear in the conceptualizations of both reflective and diffractive practices, and if mimesis is considered rather as a diffractive operation, it could (...) be seen as having a different efficacy and ethico-political function. Drawing on Karen Barad’s and Isabelle Stengers’ arguments, I start by showing why in the representationalist view of knowledge making, the tool of mimesis is dysfunctional—it is a way of separating and classifying copies of reality. Then, I introduce a diffractive notion ofmimesis in line with the mimetic re-turn in posthuman studies. From the perspective of relational understanding of knowledge making supported in Barad’s and Stengers’ ethico-political proposals, mimesis can be perceived as a tool for provoking change and thus, imply a need to do it carefully. (shrink)

2019 Applied Technology Award for the Media and the Moving Image Awards at University of Houston. -/- The Google algorithm, as a ranking and ordering structure, cannot be “objective” as long as the page-ranking mechanism produces social effects and always inadvertently and inescapably affects social priorities. Imitable units of information (memes) on the internet change according to the laws of exponential growth, like other social phenomena, which include Google rankings. Mathematically and graphically represented, the effects of mimetic inflation on Google (...) rankings and other site-specific information can be proposed and projected. Current algorithmic policies may actually preserve and exaggerate the social priorities of the status quo in spite of “objective” intentions. These considerations in mind, the concept of “monology”, “the monopoly on information”, might be implemented to further analyze network effects online. Algorithmic regulation could be used to enforce artificial inequalities, to permit natural inequalities, or to enforce artificial equalities: each option has implications for the justice and fairness of online and offline environments. (shrink)

Visual literacy has long been important as a way of reading images beyond mimetic illustration. It also allows the reader to tap into a logic of representation in order to create different representations and narratives. In this essay I argue that images provide crucial temporal complexity to the study of narrative, with particular resonances for narrative historiography. The complex temporality of the image, especially the graphic narrative or comic, points toward a historical time which may be neither linear nor causal. (...) Moreover, images demand interaction from the reader, but offer many avenues of interpretation, suggesting that the reader pay attention to their own constructions of meaning and practices of narrativizing. -/- La litéracie visuelle a longtemps été importante comme façon de lire les images hors de simple illustration mimétique. Elle permet aussi le lecteur d’entrer dans une logique de représentation pour créer des différentes représentations et des différentes narrations. Dans cet essai, je soutiens que les images fournissent une cruciale complexité temporale pour l’étude des narrations, avec valence particuliaire pour l’historiographie narrative. La temporalité complexe de l’image, surtout la narration graphique ou bande dessinée, indique une temporalité historique qui sera peut-être ni linéaire, ni causative. Par ailleurs, les images exigent l’intéraction du lecteur, et au même temps ils offrent plusieurs avenues d’interprétation, ce qui attire l’attention du lecteur à ses propres habitudes de lecture et à ses propres narrations construits. (shrink)

Shaped by Hegel, philosophy’s approach to Antigone has always been firmly rooted in all the assumptions of realism, with proper, true-to-life, consistent, and plausible characters. These characterological mimetic interpretations often feed off of each other within the context of what’s perceived as “realist” drama, with its focus on characters and their insoluble, hence tragic, conflict. Starting with the twentieth-century avant-garde, however, theatre became less and less interested in characterological mimicry as a foundation of drama and what follows, as the foundation (...) of the theatrical experience itself. Along with the shift in our approach to character, we have also experienced a shift in our understanding of other Aristotelian components of drama and dramatic genres. As our sense of character and Thought shifted from stable to unstable, so did our understanding of tragedy and its role at the junction of theatre and philosophy. Tragedy has shifted from dialectic to aporia, from binary to polynary. Antigone—with its multiple interpretations and critical lenses—illuminates this fundamental shift in our understanding of tragedy and, thus, the fundamental shift in the relationship between theatre and philosophy in postdramatic theatre. (shrink)

The cultural project is a therapeutic melding of emotion, symbols, and knowledge. In this paper, I describe how spiritual emotions engendered through encounters in imaginative culture enable fixation of metaphysical beliefs. Evolved affective systems are domesticated through the social practices of imaginative culture so as to adapt people to live in culturally defined cooperative groups. Conditioning, as well as tertiary-level cognitive capacities such as symbols and language are enlisted to bond groups through the imaginative formats of myth and participatory ritual. (...) These cultural materializations can be shared by communities both synchronically and diachronically in works of art. Art is thus a form of self-knowledge that equips us with a motivated understanding of ourselves in the world. In the sacred state produced through the arts and in religious acts, the sense of meaning becomes noetically distinct because affect infuses the experience of immanence, and one's memory of it, with salience. The quality imbued thereby makes humans attentive to subtle signs and broad “truths.” Saturated by emotions and the experience of alterity in the immanent encounter of imaginative culture, information made salient in the sacred experience can become the basis for belief fixation. Using examples drawn from mimetic arts and arts of immanence, I put forward a theory about how sensible affective knowledge is mediated through affective systems, direct perception, and the imagination. (shrink)

Classical authors were generally artistic realists. The predominant aesthetic theory was mimesis, which saw the truth of art as its successful representation of reality. High modernists rejected this aesthetic theory as lifeless, seeing the truth of art as its subjective expression. This impasse has serious consequences for both the Church and the public square. Moving forward requires both, first, an appreciation of the strengths and weaknesses of the high modernist critique of classical mimetic theory, and, second, a theory of truth (...) which makes adequate reference to both subject and object. This paper argues that Lonergan offers just such an account of truth, and so cashes out the high modernist rejection of classical mimesis in Lonergan’s terms, thereby creating the opportunity for a synthesis of the two views. (shrink)

This paper will examine poetry and rhythm in relation to biological and evolutionary models in order to develop a hypothetical methodology by which certain aspects of literature may be examined through an evolutionary lens. It is by no means an attempt at a finalizing or totalizing way of examining literature, but as such attempts have largely been ignored or assaulted, there is a rather large niche to fill. Hence this article will attempt to redefine literature as a ‘Third Level Darwin (...) Machine’ and parallel the science/culture/Theory debate with that in physics/string theory and then it will connect poetry to Boyd’s idea of ‘rhythm and attention’ along with 'motor resonance', mirror neurons and music theory. It will then look at the influence of Emily Dickinson’s rhythmic and metaphoric compression on the poetry of Hart Crane as a mimetic function following Boyd’s notion of attention, pattern and play as functions of a Third Level Darwinian Machine which will be the operative foundation for a naturalized (but not totalized) account of poetic effect and its relation to the human species’ evolved history. (shrink)

Derek Jarman’s Wittgenstein (1993) is one of the very few films made about a philosopher’s life. Almost a parody of a late twentieth-century art-house movie, it contains a mimetic performance by Karl Johnson in the title role, plus cameos by Michael Gough (Bertrand Russell) and the ubiquitous Tilda Swinton (Russell’s lover, Ottoline Morrell). There is a green Martian (played by Nabil Shaban) who quizzes the young Ludwig Wittgenstein, and a collection of handsome young men sitting on deckchairs, looking puzzled and (...) gazing adoringly at the Master. The action, such as it is, takes place against a theatrical black background with a few props, and the whole thing lasts a brisk seventy minutes... (shrink)

This paper concerns the theory of triple mimesis formulated by the contemporary French philosopher, Paul Ricoeur, in his three-volume book Time and Narrative. It is a hermeneutical interpretation of the classical Aristotle’s definition of mimesis from his Poetics. Ricoeur’s argument is aimed at proving, that the way an imitative transformation of the reality in narrative operates, presupposes a circular relation between living experience and a narrative, which mutually determine each other. The main aim of this paper is to answer the (...) question, how the communication between an author, a work and a reader should be viewed in the context of triple mimesis and what factors determine understanding of a mimetic work of art. (shrink)

This article presents some reflections on the concepts, terminology, and epistemological grounds of narrative theory. Our remarks are focused on the proposals advanced at the first RRN conference and they concern in particular two issues: the theoretical difference between classical and postclassical narratology and the paradigms of the contemporary debate. In the first part of the paper we focus on the definitional task of narrative theory; in the second part we describe the epistemology of and the theories built on two (...) opposite paradigms: the mimetic and the constructivist. Our conclusions highlight the continuity and the break points between contemporary theories, soliciting narratologists to answer to the many questions raised. (shrink)

By examining the evolution of Husserl’s philosophy from 1901 to 1914, this essay reveals that he possessed a more robust philosophy of gestures than has been accounted for. This study is executed in two stages. First, I explore how Husserl analyzed gestures through the lens of his semiotics in the 1901 Logical Investigations. Although he there presents a simple account of gestures as kinds of indicative signs, he does uncover rich insights about the role that gestures play in communication. Second, (...) I examine how Husserl augmented his theory of gestures in his 1914 Revisions to the Sixth Logical Investigation. Husserl describes some gestures as signals, which are experienced as intersubjective communication, as having a temporally diachronic structure, and as possessing an obliging tendency. Husserl also contrasts gestures to language by showing how language habitually leaves traces on us. (shrink)

In his book, On the Pleasure Principle in Culture (2014), Robert Pfaller argued that our relationship to sport is one grounded in “illusion”. Simply put, our interest in and enjoyment of sport occurs through a process of “knowing better”. Here, one’s knowledge of the unimportance of sport is achieved by associating the illusion of sport with a naïve observer – i.e. someone who does believe in sport’s importance. In the wake of the global pandemic, COVID-19, it would seem that Pfaller’s (...) remarks have taken on an added significance. With major sporting events and domestic competitions being indefinitely postponed or canceled, Liverpool manager, Jurgen Klopp, commented that football was “the most important of the least important things”. In light of these remarks, this paper will critically locate sport’s sudden unimportance in relation to Pfaller’s contention that sport reflects an “illusion without owner”. (shrink)