mimesis

30 Oct 2021 02:15 - 16 Dec 2022 12:22
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    • A key term in Taussig, Benjamin, Adorno, Girard, probably others. I don't claim to understand it very well. That is, I know what the term means, more or less, but not why it appears so fundamental and spiritually-charged as they do.
    • Or maybe I feel like I can't cash it out in the currency of cognitive science.
    • Neurology has mirror neurons, but mimesis is something different. Perhaps its a higher-level skill built out of very basic mirroring capabilities, like music is built on the basic rhythms of breathing and walking.
    • In Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment, mimesis (once a dominant practice) becomes a repressed presence in Western history in which one yields to nature (as opposed to the impulse of Enlightenment science which seeks to dominate nature) to the extent that the subject loses itself and sinks into the surrounding world. They argue that, in Western history, mimesis has been transformed by Enlightenment science from a dominant presence into a distorted, repressed, and hidden force.
    • From Potolsky, Mimesis