In the Image: Towards an Emulation Economy

How far has any mimetic theorist taken the notion of mimesis not merely as an originary anthropological concept, and a source of conflict, but as the basis for any morality or understanding of “interest” and “motivation”? Not very far, as far as I know—but I’m willing to be proven wrong. But I’m going to test it out here. In the course of continuing to think through the problem of replacing or dissolving money as the essential economic technology and media, I was confronted with the question: so, if we’re not going to talk about “self-interest” as the all-purpose incentive for economic and other activity (an incentive produced by the transformation of money from tokens distributed by the center for exchange with the center to a product of economic activity delegated so as to enable private actors to loan money to the center, making the center dependent on the “self-interest” of those actors), what do we replace it with? And then the answer presented itself: the desire to be like others—which is really what we want the money we pursue through our “self-interest” for, anyway. So, as always, I want to formulate this in the most radical way possible, and in a way that generates a range of “transitional programs” getting us from money to post-money: everything everyone does is in order to be like someone else, and the entire social order would therefore best be designed so as to leverage and channel this desire. One interesting thing about this approach is that it reveals something essential about liberalism: liberalism’s privileging of the individual is a way of denying, concealing and opposing our basic mimetic nature—in fact, for liberalism, anything about us that can be traced back to an imitation of another is inauthentic and discredited.

Anyway, it’s easy to see why mimetic theorists would resist this thesis—actually promoting mimesis (which in their view hardly needs promoting) would seem like an invitation to chaos. The response is that if we’re conceding that we’re already doing this anyway, it would be better to make it explicit so that certain models can be privileged over others. There’s clearly a kind of commonsensical and “folk” morality that already works this way, as we can see in the care good parents take in regulating who influences their children. (To take another poke at liberalism, the fact that the liberal subject is always a full grown adult in full possession of the faculties the liberal theorist needs to attribute to her, helps to explain liberalism’s ignoring of our mimetic constitution.) For more philosophical versions of morality to be credible, we must assume there comes some point at which we cease being mimetic beings and it thereby becomes possible to address arguments specifically to our “reason”—a sort of political theory version of the age of consent (which might make “political philosophy” as such intrinsically liberal from the start). But, no—as mimetic theorists we insist that one is always modeling oneself on models, even if those models are especially good reasoners.

The Girardian approach to the problem, I assume, would be to seek to restore “external mediation” in place of the “internal mediation” that supplanted it (this would more or less be the Girardian theory of modernity): our models should be inaccessible to all, and therefore a limited source of conflict. Girard rejected this approach, presumably because it would require the re-establishment of such institutions as monarchy, aristocracy and orthodoxy, and he simply saw no way in which this might be done—and I don’t know of any mimetic theorist that has attempted to “overrule” him on this. Girard’s solution is to have us all agree to imitate one person: Jesus of Nazareth. Gans’s (rather Madisonian) hope is that the omnicentric market will create little eddies of contained mimesis that generate their own local modes of deferral, supplemented by a consumerist economy that reduces everyone’s inclination to resort to violence. In both cases one can see a kind of terror at the sort of “pyramid” of models that follows most logically from taking mimesis as constitutive. Such a pyramid is far more likely than a Hobbesian war of all against all, but the terror here is that it could just as easily lead to some monstrous Aztec system of human sacrifice as any other order, if emulation itself is taken as the sole “incentive” binding the social order and restraining violence.

The other is always within us insidiously, a word that almost always has a pejorative connotation but, strictly speaking, need not: the Merriam-Webster definition is simply “having a gradual and cumulative effect,” and more to the point, in reference to disease, “developing so gradually as to be well established before becoming apparent.” And, pursuing this very superficial search a bit further, we find the Latin word from which “insidious” derives to mean “ambush.” And this is, indeed, something like what it is like to discover you are like someone else, which, except for very deliberate efforts at imitation, will always be the case: if you don’t suppress or deflect this realization that the other is already within you, and you are already the other, the experience will be horrifying as well as terrifying—at least within a culture that is predicated on universal self-immunization against such “usurpation.” But in other orders, this experience might very well be the welcome or at least necessary visitation of an angel or demon. The God of the ancient Israelites prohibited the creation of idols that would “resemble” God because God has already created the being who resembles Him: humans themselves, who would therefore be arrogating God’s creativity for themselves by creating idols. But what, exactly, did it mean for humans to be “in the image of God”? Joachim Schaper’s analysis in Media and Monotheism: Presence, Representation and Abstraction in Ancient Judah traces this conception to the spread of literacy so that in reading God’s voice is within you and you are the vehicle of God’s presence: the illusory self-presence generated by replicating the other’s voice through alphabetic script is attributed to God as his defining feature and as constituting your similitude to Him. A difference between the Hebrew and Greek alphabets helps to account for why this process of abstraction took on different shapes in Judah and Greece, respectively (although I also get the sense, from reading Schlaper’s study in the light of Richard Seaford’s study of money and philosophy in ancient Greece, that Greece, or at least certain decisive city-states, were far more monetized than Judah): the lack of vowels in the Hebrew alphabet meant that the human voice was decisive in “completing” the written utterance, as opposed to the more fully “programmed” pronunciation enabled by the Greek alphabet.

At any rate, to say that humans are “like” God while also claiming that God is completely different than humans precisely because He, and only He, produced humans in His likeness, offers a kind of external mediation—but, much like Girard’s solution (not coincidentally, of course), it seems to cut out the middle: any more local emulation would have to be suspect, insofar as it could “insidiously” end up replacing the worship of God with the worship of a human model. (Hence the extreme suspicion in Hebrew scripture toward monarchy, or, indeed, anything tending toward “haughtiness.”) And, since scripture itself has us taking on the divine first person singular in reading the name of God offered to Moses, such a possibility seems to be built into the system. Schlaper points out the centralizing implications of monotheism, in, for example, what is almost universally taken to be an enormous moral advance: God’s promise to no longer visit punishment of sinners unto the third and fourth generation. Schlaper points out that this is an implicit subversion of kinship and tribal models predicated upon extended clan responsibility. I think that very few of us today could bear to “visit” the sins of a grandfather upon his grandson in any literal way, so the monotheistic conversion is thoroughly inscribed within us (aside, I suppose, from metaphorical versions which would point out the ways in which certain behaviors “curse” succeeding generations)—but that just sets the terms on which we would need to construct a “layered” form of emulation in order to enact a mimetic morality.

Here’s the kind of shift in discourse we’re talking about: instead of telling someone to “be good,” you would tell him to “be like George”; now, you could tell someone to be like George Washington, and thereby attempt to reinstate external mediation, and George Washington in fact left us some pretty detailed notes on how to become like him, but, still much of what it was like to be George Washington is bound up in being an 18th century plantation owner with certain norms regarding being a country gentleman, and so on. To really address the problem, we need to assume that external mediation will not be revived or, if it is, only in contingent ways as a result of developing a new system of internal mediation. So, the George one is exhorted to be like must be taken to be a brother, or uncle, or neighbor—someone we’re all familiar with, can observe regularly, converse with, and so on. We’re starting, then, with precisely that which mimetic theory tends to consider the most dangerous kind of mimetic intensification: an invidious comparison with someone with whom one might be in direct competition for resources, a mate, honor, and so on. The point here is to imagine a social order where this is the privileged mode of moral discourse and is therefore “handled” effectively. And, remember, this moral discourse is at the same time the privileged economic discourse (which means there’d be no real dividing line between morality and economics): whereas now, in looking at someone working hard, we’re likely to say, “he’s trying to get ahead,” in this hypothetical order we would be charting his progress through various models.

A constant topic of conversation, then, would be, what is George like? What exactly does he do, how and why? Who is he like? Describing George would have us describing his family, teachers, and other influences. Maybe there are quite a few different ways of being like George, several hypothetical models of Georgeness. There’s going to be a difference between describing what George is like and designing a program of becoming like him. The distance between you and this George may not be nearly as great as the difference between you and George Washington, but it’s still there—George’s conditions are not exactly your own, so being like him on your own terms is going to mean being different from him as well. Others might say your attempts are failing and you are not like George at all—George himself will be around to say that. But maybe you could convince them. These comparisons, in order to minimize mimetic dangers or, even better, convert mimetic dangers into a more comprehensive moral and political economy, would have both stay very focused on George while “de-Georging” George. George can be reduced to a set of practices—practices which he has honed and mastered but has also inherited and articulated with the practices of others. Figuring out how to become like George means figuring out how George became George, and maybe becoming more of an expert in Georgeness than George himself, and thereby significantly different than George.

Let’s return, as I often recommend, to Gans’s analysis of the succession of speech forms in The Origin of Language in order to design a way of measuring one’s “becoming like.” The mistakenness entailed in the emergence of the imperative out of the ostensive and the declarative out of the imperative implies a model of cultural transmission focused on the maintenance of linguistic presence. So, someone refers to an object that is not present and another on the scene, in order to “point” to the object like one does on the scene, retrieves that object. Gans assumes that the inappropriate ostensive will be issued by an inexperienced sign user, likely a child, and this is a very reasonable assumption. In this case, it’s a reasonable assumption because a child is more likely to be an inexperienced sign user, and an inexperienced sign user is more like to use a sign inappropriately. But it’s a powerful lens to bring to cultural practices more generally, because we’re always doing something other than what we think we’re doing. Not necessarily something worse, not necessarily something better—but definitely something other—and not necessarily instead of what we think we’re doing, but along with it. No practice is exhausted by the intentions we can ascribe to the doer. If you follow another’s intention, as it is inscribed in his actions, as closely as you can, you will get to the point where you can see that you are in fact doing something different, and in that something different you are picking up on something in the model’s practice that exceeds his intentions. Not necessarily something that “contradicts” his intentions—more like something he could leave tacit but you need to make explicit to iterate the practice. To maintain your relation to the model you need to create a new cultural form.

Insisting that someone ‘be like George,” then, isn’t a way of demeaning him—it’s a proposal that he engage in a rather complex cultural practice, dependent on a pedagogy that all social institutions would be designed so as to provide. We can now imagine transactions that are now mediated by money as mediated by requests that one follow the precedents set by one’s predecessor—a very ancient mode of transaction, even if it now takes place through the collection of data rather than intuited understandings of traditions. It would always be possible to break with precedent, but in that case one would have to refer to another precedent—precedents might be invoked inventively, provocatively, idiosyncratically, but the need to invoke one means that “self-interest” can never be put forth as a legitimate motive of action. Rather than assuming that everyone needs the spur of money to extract them from their inertial state, we would assume that everyone is already acting and interacting, already imitating and extrapolating from the actions of others, wanting to be admired, liked, accepted, and, ultimately, imitated in turn, with the main problem being how to provide for people who, no matter how hard they try, can, by no measure, in accord with unanimous judgment, obey the imperative to “be like George.” It’s a real problem—we will always have to ask people to emulate models without knowing in advance what the results will be. The only solution is to have a wide enough range of models so that everyone can be like someone that one would not object to being like. We will never eliminate the disappointment that will come from having to settle for a lesser model, but that means designing the narratives that ennoble the lesser models and finding something greater in them. Designing such narratives will also mean being like someone, and those who help others try to emulate models will see the need for such narratives and will insist those who compose them be supported and will therefore call upon those who provide for the needs of others be like those who have provided for such needs in the past. Making the range of available models public and explicit would also entail being like someone and would help maintain standards—there would have to be reasons for why we should try to be like that particular someone. The insidiousness of our mimetic investments would be minimized and our desires would become more intelligible—everyone can understand why someone might like to be like George, or Jim, or Mary. Privileged models would emerge, and, as I suggested above, along with it a more tentative mode of external mediation. And, always, I hope with these inquiries, this is something we could all start doing any time: instead of asking someone for their reasons, their values, their principles, etc., ask them who they’re trying to be like, how, and with what “remainder”—request that a study be made in that form of attempted likeness. If done well, this approach will lead to more honest and less cliche-ridden discussions.

The more one studies the composition of scripture, the more one sees that all the genres in scripture have their origins in earlier, more constrained, less literary genres: the covenant between God and Israel is modeled on treaties between imperial and vassal states; God’s law is modeled on previous law codes, themselves based upon cases decided by the emperor or his  representative; God’s threats and curses and doomsday prophecies are modeled on prophecies and threats made on behalf of emperors to nations about to be subordinated; divine messages delivered to the Israelites are modeled on letters delivered to and from monarchs by emissaries; and no doubt many pleas and prayers to God are modeled on petitions to monarchs and other superiors. The imitation always involves significant transformation, but what is important here is that one is always working with a model that one revises, and a part of building an emulation economy would be noting the ways our political, moral and ethical discourses are invariably translating legal and bureaucratic ones, that is, transactions involving power and authority. (The current trend of studying early Christianity in terms of the economic discourses of debt, currency, slavery and so on is a good model for this way of thinking.) The most obvious example: all of “woke” discourse and performance can be read off of actual and possible pathways within civil rights legislation, which is why political disputes are almost always framed in terms of “personae” derived from the political theatrics of the 60s and 70s; for that matter, civil rights legislation is itself a translation of the international law created at the Nuremberg Trials, elevating individual over state rights so as to justify intervening in and waging war against other states in the name of vindicating the rights of residents of those states—which is why political discourse also so often sounds like mopping up exercises of World War 2. We are all puppetized in these ways, and to step outside of these tightly scripted scenarios we would need other models. The difficulty is with contending with models developed and reinforced by an imperial state at the height of its power. Invoking the defeated side in these conflicts simply reinforces the frame. Nor is it possible to reverse the directionality of anti-discrimination law so that it defends white interests, or even just the interests of individuals who have suffered discrimination—the laws are designed to defend blacks, and other minorities that can be deemed “similar” to blacks against whites (of course, I would not be sorry to be proven wrong regarding this tactic.). If your enemy has been empowered to emulate the prosecutor, it does you no good to emulate the defendant, or another, rival, prosecutor. It might be, though, that the central anomaly of civil rights legislation is that it tends towards the establishment of an increasingly rigid caste system where every group’s role and ascriptive characteristics are fixed. Much demonizing language has been directed towards whites, but, looked at carefully, and read creatively, the persona attributed to whites might be quite inhabitable. Meanwhile, the groups supposedly protected by such laws, if their members were to look at what is ascribed to them, implicitly and explicitly by those laws, as descriptions, might want to renegotiate the terms. It’s hard to represent people as oppressors without attributing to them quite a bit of competence, and it’s hard to represent people relentlessly as victims without portraying them as helpless—this is the kernel of truth in “liberals are the real racists.” Practices constructed so as to preserve political priorities established in the wake of these imperializing legislative acts end up producing parodies of the hierarchies they claim to challenge, and thereby affirming, involuntarily (which might be the best way) the inevitability of hierarchy. If a way could be found to extract from the generative legal and bureaucratic discourses in practical ways these descriptions of what everyone involved is “like,” new pathways toward a new emulative economy might be opened up. One might ask, for example, what place there might be for all of the competencies that apparently need to be mitigated, for the energies (yes, we might concede, potentially destructive) used to conquer a continent and space. And the emulative path taken in response by the officially victimized groups might be to deny the qualities ascribed to them (or to own them explicitly, if they like). There seems to be the possibility of a saturation of the space here as anti-discrimination law, like any ritual system, must eventually leave no practice unmarked: how could we inhabit and shape the picture of the world painted by anti-discrimination infrastructure? Of course, legal and bureaucratic strategies would have to be involved here—perhaps by finding some way of gaining formal recognition of “privileges”? The implicit imaginary feudalism which is the target of anti-discrimination law (an order organized around “privileges”) ends up being acknowledged as the horizon of possibilities by that law. So, some kind of feudalized imperialism, implicit in anti-discrimination law, and offering a competing imperial path to that forged at Nuremberg might, regardless of the fears of today’s nationalists and populists, offer the most inhabitable models.