Working consistently with mimetic theory would assume everything we do is imitation and should therefore be described in those terms, or in terms that could readily be converted into mimetic ones. The implications of this are, for example, that rather than asking about the “ideas” of thinkers like Rene Girard and Eric Gans we would ask whom they are imitating, and how. Mimesis is two-sided: first of all, it is unconscious and discovered (if at all) after fact, usually through some unpleasant revelation; on the other hand, more deliberately, it is a way of approaching others from the outside so as to take on their attributes and their power. Perhaps the most constructive approach to mimesis would be to narrow the gap between the two by detecting early on who is getting under your skin and getting under theirs. But I rarely see such exhaustive approaches. Gans wrote a couple of Chronicles a little while back that were the first few chapters of a prospective memoir, and so one would think the narrative would proceed from model to model, but that’s not the case at all—it’s autonomous individual all the way, even as a young child. Much imitation, maybe, in a sense, all imitation, involves getting imitation wrong—falsifying or distorting the model. That question opens up a vast field of inquiry into learning, first of all, and also into cultural difference. Mimetic theory focuses primarily on imitation that leads to rivalry, that then leads to crisis, but this itself distorts the field—that trajectory probably accounts for a tiny number of (admittedly extremely important) imitative acts, and itself must be understood against the background of less sensational imitations. If everything you do can’t be described as an imitation, or you’re unwilling or unable to engage the question, that seems to me to falsify or limit mimetic theory—the demand that the theorist account for his “subject position” is far more urgent here than in the victimary sciences.
" Getting that glimpse of yourself from another, normative and authoritative position (a position, that is, you see as original and unmediated by imitation), and finding yourself to be other than you imagined and sorely lacking, is, of course, a thoroughly mimetic affair"
Could you, dB, further clarify/expand on that part, perhaps? I cannot think of a single instance in which such a "glimpse" ever presented itself or became possible. Whilst your exploration of the mimetic here is of course highly stimulating and first-rate, i STILL feel as if i am suspended thereby in theoretical animation, without the slightest recourse to any obviously 'corroborating' worldly experience that i can point to. And i don't really 'get' your use of "normative" and "authoritative' there. And who could ever be identified as specific *model* for s/he who is hooked on a screen? Did not in effect 'the screen get there first'? Or wouldn't the.. trail of models amount to a sort of reductio ad absurdum?
Another of the several questions that arose as i read was, but did anyone actually "talk (explicitly) about (the fundamentality of) imitation" prior to the "foundational" "breaking off" of postmodernity?
The first passage you quote was what I thought was a fairly recognizable description of shame, so either it isn't, or you don't have much experience with shame. Not that there's necessarily any virtue in experiencing shame.
When i'm referring to the normative and authoritative model I didn't have the screen hooked in mind--just the illusion that comes with the model that seems free of mimesis himself (almost a precondition for taking someone as a model, at least naively, I would think).
The modern/postmodern part was much more targeted to the claim, shared by Girard and Gans (a little qualified by the latter at times) that the classical realist to modernist modes of representation (Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Proust, etc.) are superior to the postmodern ones, because they themselves are imitating that position of revealing mimesis from a position freed of it.
My principal experience of shame would be one that i suppose is ultimately mimetic in nature, but not readily apprasiable as such . It's when i first realized i didn't want to share photos of certain family members because i thought they now looked a bit older than they should! I understand shame to differ from guilt in that the former is felt when one knows some action could have been avoided, or done differently, the latter when one feels there to have been no alternative - when events happened beyond all one's control and had a disastrous outcome. I'm trying, dB, but am not succeeding in making the link between such shame and your own "description of shame" above. Do.you mean you met for the first time in the flesh a person whose work you had modelled your own on in some way, whose presence ...put your own to shame? I must apologize, for i am not yet getting a satisfactory sense of your meaning...
The shame you describe seems to be on others' behalf, which seems to me more like "embarrassment."
I wasn't thinking about intellectual work here, but when I did feel shame in those terms on occasions, a long time ago, when I discovered that some idea I felt I had discovered had in fact been around for awhile--the shame is in imagining a situation where someone else would point that out. But other occasions match your description insofar as it's not so much not doing something one could have, but someone else doing what you should have.
I also see "guilt" differently, as that seems to me to involve choice. Perhaps I've been taking too much for granted and there's a lot to discuss about these concepts.
" Getting that glimpse of yourself from another, normative and authoritative position (a position, that is, you see as original and unmediated by imitation), and finding yourself to be other than you imagined and sorely lacking, is, of course, a thoroughly mimetic affair"
Could you, dB, further clarify/expand on that part, perhaps? I cannot think of a single instance in which such a "glimpse" ever presented itself or became possible. Whilst your exploration of the mimetic here is of course highly stimulating and first-rate, i STILL feel as if i am suspended thereby in theoretical animation, without the slightest recourse to any obviously 'corroborating' worldly experience that i can point to. And i don't really 'get' your use of "normative" and "authoritative' there. And who could ever be identified as specific *model* for s/he who is hooked on a screen? Did not in effect 'the screen get there first'? Or wouldn't the.. trail of models amount to a sort of reductio ad absurdum?
Another of the several questions that arose as i read was, but did anyone actually "talk (explicitly) about (the fundamentality of) imitation" prior to the "foundational" "breaking off" of postmodernity?
The first passage you quote was what I thought was a fairly recognizable description of shame, so either it isn't, or you don't have much experience with shame. Not that there's necessarily any virtue in experiencing shame.
When i'm referring to the normative and authoritative model I didn't have the screen hooked in mind--just the illusion that comes with the model that seems free of mimesis himself (almost a precondition for taking someone as a model, at least naively, I would think).
The modern/postmodern part was much more targeted to the claim, shared by Girard and Gans (a little qualified by the latter at times) that the classical realist to modernist modes of representation (Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Proust, etc.) are superior to the postmodern ones, because they themselves are imitating that position of revealing mimesis from a position freed of it.
My principal experience of shame would be one that i suppose is ultimately mimetic in nature, but not readily apprasiable as such . It's when i first realized i didn't want to share photos of certain family members because i thought they now looked a bit older than they should! I understand shame to differ from guilt in that the former is felt when one knows some action could have been avoided, or done differently, the latter when one feels there to have been no alternative - when events happened beyond all one's control and had a disastrous outcome. I'm trying, dB, but am not succeeding in making the link between such shame and your own "description of shame" above. Do.you mean you met for the first time in the flesh a person whose work you had modelled your own on in some way, whose presence ...put your own to shame? I must apologize, for i am not yet getting a satisfactory sense of your meaning...
The shame you describe seems to be on others' behalf, which seems to me more like "embarrassment."
I wasn't thinking about intellectual work here, but when I did feel shame in those terms on occasions, a long time ago, when I discovered that some idea I felt I had discovered had in fact been around for awhile--the shame is in imagining a situation where someone else would point that out. But other occasions match your description insofar as it's not so much not doing something one could have, but someone else doing what you should have.
I also see "guilt" differently, as that seems to me to involve choice. Perhaps I've been taking too much for granted and there's a lot to discuss about these concepts.