Homo Mimeticus

Author : Nidesh Lawtoo
Publisher : Leuven University Press
Page : 359 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 2022-11-15
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9789462703469

Get Book

Homo Mimeticus by Nidesh Lawtoo Pdf

Imitation is, perhaps more than ever, constitutive of human originality. Many things have changed since the emergence of an original species called Homo sapiens, but in the digital age humans remain mimetic creatures: from the development of consciousness to education, aesthetics to politics, mirror neurons to brain plasticity, digital simulations to emotional contagion, (new) fascist insurrections to viral contagion, we are unconsciously formed, deformed, and transformed by the all too human tendency to imitate—for both good and ill. Crossing disciplines as diverse as philosophy, aesthetics, and politics, Homo Mimeticus proposes a new theory of one of the most influential concepts in western thought (mimesis) to confront some of the hypermimetic challenges of the present and future. Written in an accessible yet rigorous style, Homo Mimeticus appeals to both a specialized and general readership. It can be used in courses of modern and contemporary philosophy, aesthetics, political theory, literary criticism/theory, media studies, and new mimetic studies.

Author : Nidesh Lawtoo
Publisher : Michigan State University Press
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2019-08-01
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1611863295

Get Book

(New) Fascism by Nidesh Lawtoo Pdf

Fascism tends to be relegated to a dark chapter of European history, but what if new forms of fascism are currently returning to the forefront of the political scene? In this book, Nidesh Lawtoo furthers his previous diagnostic of crowd behavior, identification, and mimetic contagion to account for the growing shadow cast by authoritarian leaders who rely on new media to take possession of the digital age. Donald Trump is considered here as a case study to illustrate Nietzsche’s untimely claim that, one day, “ ‘actors,’ all kinds of actors, will be the real masters.” In the process, Lawtoo joins forces with a genealogy of mimetic theorists—from Plato to Girard, through Nietzsche, Tarde, Le Bon, Freud, Bataille, Lacoue-Labarthe, and Nancy, among others—to show that (new) fascism may not be fully “new,” let alone original; yet it effectively reloads the old problematics of mimesis via new media that have the disquieting power to turn politics itself into a fiction.

Author : Adriana Cavarero
Publisher : Stanford University Press
Page : 206 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2016-10-19
Category : Art
ISBN : 9781503600416

Get Book

Inclinations by Adriana Cavarero Pdf

In this new and accessible book, Italy's best known feminist philosopher examines the moral and political significance of vertical posture in order to rethink subjectivity in terms of inclination. Contesting the classical figure of homo erectus or "upright man," Adriana Cavarero proposes an altruistic, open model of the subject—one who is inclined toward others. Contrasting the masculine upright with the feminine inclined, she references philosophical texts (by Plato, Thomas Hobbes, Immanuel Kant, Hannah Arendt, Elias Canetti, and others) as well as works of art (Barnett Newman, Leonardo da Vinci, Artemisia Gentileschi, and Alexander Rodchenko) and literature (Marcel Proust and Virginia Woolf).

Author : Paul Dumouchel
Publisher : MSU Press
Page : 377 pages
File Size : 43,5 Mb
Release : 2014-10-01
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781628950007

Get Book

The Ambivalence of Scarcity and Other Essays by Paul Dumouchel Pdf

First published in French in 1979, “The Ambivalence of Scarcity” was a groundbreaking work on mimetic theory. Now expanded upon with new, specially written, and never-before-published conference texts and essays, this revised edition explores René Girard’s philosophy in three sections: economy and economics, mimetic theory, and violence and politics in modern societies. The first section argues that though mimetic theory is in many ways critical of modern economic theory, this criticism can contribute to the enrichment of economic thinking. The second section explores the issues of nonviolence and misrecognition (méconnaissance), which have been at the center of many discussions of Girard’s work. The final section proposes mimetic analyses of the violence typical of modern societies, from high school bullying to genocide and terrorist attacks. Politics, Dumouchel argues, is a violent means of protecting us from our own violent tendencies, and it can at times become the source of the very savagery from which it seeks to protect us. The book’s conclusion analyzes the relationship between ethics and economics, opening new avenues of research and inviting further exploration. Dumouchel’s introduction reflects on the importance of René Girard’s work in relation to ongoing research, especially in social sciences and philosophy.

Author : William E. Connolly
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
Page : 169 pages
File Size : 42,9 Mb
Release : 2017-10-12
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781452957371

Get Book

Aspirational Fascism by William E. Connolly Pdf

Coming to terms with a new period of uncertainty when it is still replete with possibilities This quick and engaging study clearly lays out the United States’ current democratic crisis. Examining the early stages of the Nazi movement in Germany, William E. Connolly detects synergies with Donald Trump’s rhetorical style. Tapping into a sense of contemporary fragility, Aspirational Fascism pays particular attention to how conflicts between neoliberalism and the pluralizing left have placed the white working class in a bind. Ultimately, Connolly believes a multifaceted democracy constitutes the best antidote to aspirational fascism and rethinks what a politics of the left might look like today. Forerunners is a thought-in-process series of breakthrough digital works. Written between fresh ideas and finished books, Forerunners draws on scholarly work initiated in notable blogs, social media, conference plenaries, journal articles, and the synergy of academic exchange. This is gray literature publishing: where intense thinking, change, and speculation take place in scholarship.

Author : Nidesh Lawtoo
Publisher : MSU Press
Page : 236 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2023-05-01
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781609177249

Get Book

Violence and the Oedipal Unconscious by Nidesh Lawtoo Pdf

Representations of violence are often said to generate cathartic effects, but what does “catharsis” mean? And what theory of the unconscious made this concept so popular that it reaches from classical antiquity to the digital age? In Violence and the Oedipal Unconscious, Nidesh Lawtoo reframes current debates on (new) media violence by tracing the philosophical, aesthetic, and historical vicissitudes of the “catharsis hypothesis” from antiquity to modernity and into the present. Drawing on theorists of mimesis from Aristotle to Nietzsche, Bernays to Breuer, Freud to Girard to Morin, Lawtoo offers a genealogy of the relationship between violence and the unconscious with at least two aims: First, this study gives an account of the birth of the Oedipal unconscious—out of a “cathartic method.” Second, it provides new theoretical foundations to solve a riddle of (new) media violence that may no longer rest on Oedipal solutions. In the process, Lawtoo outlines a new theory of violence, mimesis, and the unconscious that does not have desire as a via regia, but rather, the untimely realization that all affects spread contagiously and thus mimetically.

Author : Nidesh Lawtoo
Publisher : A&C Black
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 48,5 Mb
Release : 2012-09-13
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781441123770

Get Book

Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' and Contemporary Thought by Nidesh Lawtoo Pdf

With its innovative narrative structure and its controversial explorations of race, gender and empire, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is a landmark of 20th century literature that continues to resonate to this day. This book brings together leading scholars to explore the full range of contemporary philosophical and critical responses to the text. Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Contemporary Thought includes the first publication in English of philosopher Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe's essay, 'The Horror of the West', described by J. Hillis Miller as 'a major essay on Conrad's novel, one of the best ever written'. In the company of Lacoue-Labarthe, leading scholars explore new readings of Conrad's text from a full range of theoretical perspectives, including deconstructive, psychoanalytic, narratological and postcolonial approaches. Drawing on the very latest insights of contemporary thought, this is an essential study of one of the most important literary texts of the 20th century.

Author : Nidesh Lawtoo
Publisher : MSU Press
Page : 317 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2023-10-01
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781609177423

Get Book

Violence and the Mimetic Unconscious, Volume 2 by Nidesh Lawtoo Pdf

Representations of violence have subliminal contagious effects, but what kind of unconscious captures this imperceptible affective dynamic in the digital age? In volume two of a Janus-faced diagnostic of the cathartic and contagious effects of (new) media violence, Nidesh Lawtoo traces a genealogy of a long-neglected, embodied, relational, and highly mimetic unconscious that, well before the discovery of mirror neurons, posited mirroring reactions as a via regia to a phantom ego. Rather than being the product of a solipsistic discovery, the unconscious turns out to have haunted philosophers, psychologists, and artists for a long time. This book proposes a genealogy of untimely philosophical physicians that goes from Plato to Nietzsche, Bernheim to Féré, Freud to Bataille, Arendt to Girard, affect theory to the neurosciences. In their company, Lawtoo promotes the transdisciplinary field of mimetic studies by reevaluating the unconscious actions and reactions of homo mimeticus. As a new theory of mimesis emerges, Violence and the Mimetic Unconscious offers a searching diagnosis as to why the pathos of (new) media violence—from film to video games, police murders to the storming of the U.S Capitol—continues to cast a material shadow on the present and future.

Author : Nidesh Lawtoo
Publisher : MSU Press
Page : 365 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 2013-10-01
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781628950427

Get Book

The Phantom of the Ego by Nidesh Lawtoo Pdf

The Phantom of the Ego is the first comparative study that shows how the modernist account of the unconscious anticipates contemporary discoveries about the importance of mimesis in the formation of subjectivity. Rather than beginning with Sigmund Freud as the father of modernism, Nidesh Lawtoo starts with Friedrich Nietzsche’s antimetaphysical diagnostic of the ego, his realization that mimetic reflexes—from sympathy to hypnosis, to contagion, to crowd behavior—move the soul, and his insistence that psychology informs philosophical reflection. Through a transdisciplinary, comparative reading of landmark modernist authors like Nietzsche, Joseph Conrad, D. H. Lawrence, and Georges Bataille, Lawtoo shows that, before being a timely empirical discovery, the “mimetic unconscious” emerged from an untimely current in literary and philosophical modernism. This book traces the psychological, ethical, political, and cultural implications of the realization that the modern ego is born out of the spirit of imitation; it is thus, strictly speaking, not an ego, but what Nietzsche calls, “a phantom of the ego.” The Phantom of the Ego opens up a Nietzschean back door to the unconscious that has mimesis rather than dreams as its via regia, and argues that the modernist account of the “mimetic unconscious” makes our understanding of the psyche new.

Author : Gunter Gebauer,Christoph Wulf
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 424 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 1995
Category : Art
ISBN : 0520084594

Get Book

Mimesis by Gunter Gebauer,Christoph Wulf Pdf

"A fundamental historical account of the much-cited but little-studied concept of mimesis, and an essential starting point for all future discussions of this crucial critical concept."—Hayden White

Author : Nicoletta Isar
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 300 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 2024-07-02
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 9783031499456

Get Book

Phenomenology, New Materialism, and Advances In the Pulsatile Imaginary by Nicoletta Isar Pdf

Author : Katariina Holma,Tiina Kontinen
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 228 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2022
Category : Africa--Politics and government
ISBN : 9783030948825

Get Book

Learning, Philosophy, and African Citizenship by Katariina Holma,Tiina Kontinen Pdf

This open access book discusses and addresses the compelling questions concerning the ideals of citizenship, the processes of learning to fulfill these ideals, and possibilities of education in fostering citizenship. Rather than advocating for one framework, the authors demonstrate the continuously contested nature of the concept of citizenship as theoretically discussed and practically experienced. The monograph combines, in an unconventional way, selected philosophical accounts and everyday experiences from certain locations in Tanzania and Uganda. It provides contributions from philosophical ideas drawing on scholars such as Chantal Mouffe, Rosi Braidotti, Theodor Adorno, and Etienne Balibar on the one hand, and the conceptions articulated by groups of inhabitants of rural and urban settings in Africa, on the other hand. Therefore, the book offers fresh readings under the lenses of citizenship and learning. Katariina Holma is Professor of Education and Head of the Research Unit at the University of Oulu, Finland. Tiina Kontinen is Associate Professor in International Development Studies at the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2024-10-31
Category : Art
ISBN : 9004520562

Get Book

Mimetic Posthumanism by Anonim Pdf

Mimetic Posthumanism is a collection of international essays that furthers a mimetic turn in posthuman studies: from imitation to identification, AI simulation to hypermimesis, the all too human tendency to imitate, for good and ill, is now reloaded for the digital age.

Author : Silvia Benso,Elvira Roncalli
Publisher : State University of New York Press
Page : 273 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2021-09-01
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781438484938

Get Book

Contemporary Italian Women Philosophers by Silvia Benso,Elvira Roncalli Pdf

Gathering the contributions of eleven contemporary Italian women thinkers who share a philosophical practice, Contemporary Italian Women Philosophers embraces a general interrelationality, fluidity, and overlapping of concepts for a border-crossing that affects what it means to be subjects that are embodied and participants in the life of their communities, thereby shaping a sense of belonging. Common threads are revealed through the exploration of radically diverse themes (the body, subjectivity, power, freedom, equality, liberation, the emotions, symbolism and metaphors, maternity, reproduction, responsibility, the political, the economic) and approaches (autobiographical styles, personal narratives, rootedness in the everyday, advancement of relationality, empathic responsibility, passions, and commitment to the flourishing of the polis). In their differences, these previously unpublished essays give the reader a glimpse of the fecund and articulated philosophical work of women in the Italian context—a context which has not been and still is not always benign toward women's distinctive originality and creativity.

Author : Chander Behl
Publisher : FriesenPress
Page : 517 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 2015-04-27
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781460258026

Get Book

Anatomy of Spirituality: Portrait of the Soul by Chander Behl Pdf

The domain of spirituality, separated from its theological overburden, believes in the existence of a spiritual self, presumed to be distinctly separate from the psychological self. The spiritual eternal self, also known as the soul or spirit (sometimes supported by an overarching Spirit), is asserted to be operating behind the ephemeral self. This book takes a contrarian stance; it argues that the premise of the soul concept is obtained through the magic of language, maintained through the marvel of the brain’s biochemistry, and sustained through the mirage of the psychological juggernauts of the brain. The magic, the marvel and the mirage, together, bring about subtle shifts as the linguistic brain suppresses many psychological details, habitually applies mental templates such as inversions and dichotomies, and enhances its language by coining religious and spiritual metaphors. The consequence of these changes is that the usual flickering self begins to be impressed by itself, believing it is buttressed by something transcendental and eternal within: the soul or the spirit. The self, although indoctrinated during its formative years, also begins to assimilate and accept the opinion that the overwhelming weight of religious doctrines and dogmas, the overburden, signifies as the legitimate proof for the eternal soul.