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Ambivalence of the Notion of “”: Between the Opening towards the Other and the Citation: Antonio Valentini (2018) Ambivalence of the Notion of “Mime- Repetition of the Same sis”: Between the Opening towards the Other and the Repetition of the Same. Aisthesis 11(1): 193-205. doi: 10.13128/Aisthesis-23283 Antonio Valentini

Copyright: © 2018 Author.This is an (Università “La Sapienza” di Roma) open access, peer-reviewed article [email protected] published by Firenze University Press (http://www.fupress.com/aisthesis) and distribuited under the terms of the Abstract. One of the main characteristics of the contemporary aesthetic debate is the Creative Commons Attribution License, recovery of the concept of mimesis, as a dimension that is originally involved in the which permits unrestricted use, distri- foundation of and the processes of cultural learning. This is evident in bution, and reproduction in any medi- the aesthetic reflection developed by Gunter Gebauer and Christoph Wulf. For these um, provided the original author and two authors, mimesis is never a mere reproduction of the given reality, but always source are credited. implies the production of the New, of the Other, of the different with respect to the empirical world, i.e. to the existing categorical order of the world. In particular, Gebau- Data Availability Statement: All rel- evant data are within the paper and its er and Wulf underline the constitutive ambivalence of the notion of mimesis: on the Supporting Information files. one hand, it favors the processes of reification fueled by capitalist society and, on the other hand, it contributes to the affirmation of a critical and “utopian” instance that Competing Interests: The authors can counter “instrumental reason” and the primacy of identity. have declared that no competing inter- ests exist. Keywords. Mimesis, identity, otherness, work of art, critical-utopian function.

1. MIMESIS IN ANTHROPOGENESIS: CULTURE, GAMES, RITUAL

In a world characterised by the dissolution of all traditionally nor- mative aesthetic paradigms, and by the tendential juxtaposition or overlapping of new heterogeneous and mutually conflictual paradigms, the philosophical research of Christoph Wulf and Gunter Gebauer, through its original historical-anthropological approach, can be cred- ited with having reaffirmed the crucial importance of the concept of mimesis, mostly over the past thirty years, by supplying the investiga- tion about it with fertile new trans-disciplinary theoretical foundations. This has allowed the notion of mimesis, which has always constituted one of the cornerstones of Western culture1, to undergo a profound conceptual redefinition that is both theoretical and historical2.

1 See Mattioli [1993]; Halliwell [2002]; Desideri, Talon-Hugon [2017]. 2 See Fischer, Perret [1998]; Jeffrey [2011].

Aisthesis. Pratiche, linguaggi e saperi dell'estetico 11(1): 193-205, 2018 ISSN 2035-8466 (online) | DOI: 10.13128/Aisthesis-23283 194 Antonio Valentini

Wulf and Gebauer argue that mimesis «plays (Darstellung), «emulation», «becoming similar», a role in nearly all domains of human action, «miming» in the sense of bodily-performance and representation, speech and thought», as it is «an gesture, «simulating», «expressing» and «mimeti- essential condition of social life» (Wulf [1995]: 9): cally anticipating» (vor-ahmen). every possible act of writing or reading – every Far from supplying a definition that is meta- linguistic act or intellectual process – is found- historical and normative, Wulf and Gebauer ed on a mimetic practice. Their starting point is emphasise that the concept of mimesis cannot be that, taken alone, the empirical world is nothing, determined once and for all, since it escapes any that is to say, nothing that is “already-given”. To systematic, totalizing and all-encompassing effort. understand the world means establishing relation- For them, mimesis is not an univocal and homo- ships between different worlds that are primarily geneous notion, but is one that, in Aristotelian mimetic. Thus our understanding of the world is terms, pollachòs lèghetai, «can be said in many dif- always an understanding of multiple relationships, ferent ways». Moreover, one of the distinctive fea- both of a theoretical and a practical order, that are tures of the notion of mimesis advanced by Wulf established between heterogeneous worlds, each of and Gebauer is the fact that it never results in a which acquires meaning and clarity only in rela- simple reference to something that is already-giv- tion to the others. en and already-structured, that is, to something Mimesis presents itself to us as the foundation whose mimetic image would constitute a simple of processes of socialisation, civilisation and the doubling or mirroring (according to a semiotic construction of thought. It appears as a decisive and denotative paradigm). Rather mimesis creates instance capable of rendering an account of modes the qualitatively “new”, in the sense that it produc- and forms in which our collective life is histori- es difference, alterity, and the non-identical with cally realised, but also of all of those actions, prac- respect to the existing categorical order of the tices, and symbolic-cognitive strategies through world, and therefore with respect to the forms that which the processes of the elaboration and inter- already effectively obtain within a given empirical subjective organisation of sense are always and reality. again renewed. Thus mimesis is to be understood In this perspective, the surprising cogni- as an original principle capable of in some way tive and inventive power of mimesis consists in rendering an account, in historical-anthropologi- its capacity to create something «original» (Wulf cal terms, of the very genesis of culture, as well as [1995]: 11), that is, something that «cannot be of the various modes of its effective transmission, explained with reference to something given» reception, and dissemination (cf. Jeffrey [2011]). (ibid.). What is produced is an unexpected and Wulf and Gebauer start from the assump- nondeterminate horizon of possible meanings tion that mimesis cannot be reduced in any way that was not there before. Understood in this to a mere practice that reproduces what exists. way, mimesis is always the carrier of a «surplus of The idea of mimesis, that is, cannot be naively and sense» (cf. Wulf [2014]) that cannot be precise- banally reduced to Nachahmung, which holds that ly foreseen, and that attests to the lack of rigid- the imitative act consists in the pure and simple ity of the life of culture: the non-calculability of repetition of a pre-existing model, whether exter- its incessant transformations. Thus the surplus of nal or internal to the mind of the subject that sense that qualifies every mimetic practice can be imitates. On the contrary, the notion of mimesis understood as an «anthropological constant» and simultaneously holds in itself a vast multiplicity of it is exemplary of the «eccentric» character of the meanings, valences, and semantic connotations. human condition, i.e. of its constitutive incom- Upon the idea of imitation as nachahmen (as pro- pleteness, and therefore of the possibility of con- duction of an image-copy or Abbild) are superim- tinually renegotiating its relationship with the posed ideas such as «bringing to representation» world in new ways. Ambivalence of the Notion of “Mimesis”: Between the Opening towards the Other and the Repetition of the Same 195

From the historical-anthropological perspec- strategy for self-preservation, but one that results tive of Gebauer and Wulf, mimesis and ritual- in the rigidity and alienation of the human being. ity are intimately connected dimensions (cf. Wulf At work here is what Freud called the «death [2003]; [2004], [2005], [2014b]). Every symbolic drive», understood as a drive to restore a previ- and cognitive practice takes on a ritual form, ous state, «repeating it» (and this occurs mimeti- which always implies processes of inclusion and cally), with the goal of re-establishing a tensionless exclusion, i.e. acts of differentiation. And at the condition that – precisely in its lack of tension – is base of this ritual a mimetic process is always experienced by the subject as «pleasing». discernable. Mimesis is involved in every process Nonetheless, even at this level mimesis puts concerned with the formation of our social identi- into play an element of difference, even as it pro- ty, every process concerning self-representation or duces assimilation (and therefore identification) self-presentation that is carried out within a social with something outside the self. Mimesis means and communitarian horizon, and every process of that the human being does not dissolve without sense production and of the shared participation residuals in , but that it has set itself up of such sense. alongside nature as something different, as a Self From this point of view, mimesis can be under- that attempts to assert and legitimate itself. Hence stood as a partial exemption (Entlastung) from in the “pre-civilised” phase of human , an otherwise pervasive sense of fragility and human beings “formed” themselves by giving insufficiency, i.e. as a compensatory and adap- themselves over to the external environment and tive strategy able to defend and protect us from subjecting themselves in some way to its unspeak- the non-sense of reality. In other words, mimesis able and threatening power, perceived by constitutes a necessary but always contingent and as an expression of unassimilable otherness, of revocable remedy against the sense of finitude and unsettling strangeness. This implies, however, the narrowness that weighs upon us. Hence Gebauer permanent risk of self-dissolution and of collapse and Wulf’s claim that «mimesis is an integral and into the heterogeneous. constitutive part of anthropogenesis» (Gebauer, In a later stage, a mimetic practice is estab- Wulf [2003]: 29): «it is a conditio humana; with- lished that is based on the use of rationality. Here out mimetic capabilities, man could not become reason figures as a faculty oriented towards the what he has over the long of phylogenesis» pursuit of control – its primary adaptive scope (Gebauer, Wulf [2003]: 31). Unsurprisingly, «at the – and dominion, which is exercised by the sub- beginning of ontogenesis, the first images, sounds, ject over nature. In this phase, now fully “histori- and bodily reactions are adopted and re-elaborat- cal”, the subject is no longer placed in a relation ed mimetically through instincts, without being of equivalence to the object (to external nature), channeled through a controlled conduit» (Gebau- i.e. in a relation of “organic” and “sympathetic” er, Wulf [2003]: 31). attachment to the Other, but tends to exercise its Thus, prompted by feelings of terror and anxi- own power over the world. As is already the case ety in the face of the «absolutism of reality» (Blu- in the mythical-prehistoric phase, mimesis here menberg), it is precisely to guarantee their surviv- is inextricably related to an instance of domina- al in a hostile natural environment that primitive tion: a dominion which, in an earlier historical- humans initially attempted to escape this fear by cultural phase, already manifested itself in the carrying out procedures of a mimetic nature. This emergence of magical thought, and in its attempt consisted in their adaptation to, and assimilation to “influence” nature through effective represen- with, the external environment, with the aim of tations, symbolic practices and mimetic anticipa- rendering themselves indistinguishable from, and tions (i.e. through practices capable of producing on a par with, plants and animals. In this sense, “effects” on things by grasping the relationships of mimesis (understood as mimicry) constitutes a contiguity, similarity and contrast between them). 196 Antonio Valentini

Nevertheless, the archaic subjection of the subject of an ulteriority (an “excess”), that the subject can- to nature is now replaced by the subject’s submis- not control and that escapes their logical-rational sion to the “new” mythical power of instrumental dominion. In so far as it is an expression of empa- reason that is busy in its “enlightened” work of thetic behavior – a tendency to valorize the other- building civilization: what becomes theoretically ness of the object, for the object to assimilate the essential to the subject is its attempt to reduce the subject – mimesis enters into a dynamic and ten- chaotic multiplicity of the empirical world to the sional relation with the violence of demonstrative abstract unity of the concept. thought that is founded on the rigid opposition Thus the supremacy of the abstract over the between subject and object, and which then tends concrete in human life replaced the dominion to integrate every difference into its own categori- that nature had held over human beings, implying cal order. the dominion of the human as a subject over the human now reduced to an object. And so abstrac- tion exercises its identitarian coercion on empiri- 2. BETWEEN REPETITION AND DIFFERENCE, cal experience. All of this entailed a “sacrifice”, not RULES AND INNOVATION, GIVENNESS AND the sacrifice demanded by ancient magical prac- POSSIBILITY tices, but rather the sacrifice of sensibility, that Gebauer and Wulf state that mimesis implies vital dimension of the subject that is one with cor- an instance together assimilative and differenti- poreality. What is sacrificed is the “vital” affinity ating. On the one hand, it mirrors and repeats between man and nature i.e. the fluidity and inde- pre-existing socio-cultural models, an action that terminacy of our original “commerce” with the gives rise to a tendential identification with the world. Thus the dominion of the Self over nature already-given. On the other hand, it implies a translates into a repression of the sensible by the space for freedom, creativity, and innovation, to intelligible, of the concrete by the abstract, of the which is owed the virtually unlimited expansion intuition by the concept. of our perceptive, imaginative, symbolic and cog- And thus the constitutive ambivalence of nitive horizon. While a given community estab- mimesis comes into view: on the one hand, it con- lishes and perpetuates itself through the mimetic stitutes the initial moment of the process whereby dimension of ritual action, securing for itself con- instrumental rationality is asserted, which leads tinuity over , the very same mimetic action man to achieve full dominion over nature (with simultaneously produces an experience of discon- all of the consequences mentioned above); on the tinuity, consisting in the creation of the new. Thus other hand, as an expression of an ineradicable it might be said that mimesis takes part in both relationship with the sphere of corporeality and «the improvement and the “non-improvability” of the vitality of nature, it appears as a productive man» (Gebauer, Wulf [2003]: 35). and creative dimension that is capable of resist- Moreover, if mimetic and ritual processes of ing the triumph of instrumental rationality, and social construction are always the expression of therefore the triumph of abstraction and reifica- the grammar of the “interactive” and dynamic tion. Indeed, mimesis originally holds this capac- body – a grammar in movement – there is the ity to refer to the indeterminateness, non-defina- continual implementation, absorption and trans- bility, and non-explicability of nature, which, as mission of an eminently practical and performative Wulf writes, «offers to man the possibility of a knowledge at the root of such rituals3. This knowl- vital experience» (Wulf [1998]: 162). Mimesis is therefore capable of certifying the need for a ref- 3 erence to something that transcends the identical, On the centrality of the «performative dimension» for the “given”. It is, in other words, an affirmation of understanding the ritual processes underlying the «gen- esis of the social», see in particular Gebauer, Wulf [1998] the possible existence of an “other” dimension, i.e. and Wulf, Zirfas (ed.) [2004]: 7-45. Ambivalence of the Notion of “Mimesis”: Between the Opening towards the Other and the Repetition of the Same 197 edge can be understood as a complex network of ence and absence, visible and invisible, past and similarities and differences – in Wittgensteinian future (cf. Wulf [2014]: 10-14). sense of « similarities», according to Wulf’s The kind of learning and knowledge connect- interpretation of the «genesis of the social» (Wulf ed with mimesis, being necessarily conditioned [2005]: 9; 74) –, a network in which the repetition by the variability and irreducible singularity of of the “same” is always productively connected to the ways in which it is enacted, escapes any defi- the creation of the “new”. The manifestation of this nition that claims to be exhaustive, univocal, and knowledge takes the form of a “staging” or “game”, totalising. This means that the practical knowl- understood – again in a Wittgensteinian sense – edge set in motion by mimesis exceeds the sphere as the indissoluble union (a short-circuit) between of theorèin, thereby eluding any possible attempt “rules” and “innovation”, between necessity and to render an account of such knowledge in ana- freedom, between necessity and contingency. The lytical terms through classifications and logical- very notion of a “game” implies a practice that is conceptual explanations. And so mimesis, play and structured by rules, but which cannot be reduced ritual exclude any determinism and any herme- entirely to those rules in a deterministic way. This neutical reductionism. Ritual and mimetic prac- is because the application of the “general” rule tices, while necessarily presupposing a system of to the “particular” case is not itself structured by pre-structured rules, codes, and conventions, are rules – something that would require an infinite never conceivable as the mere reproduction of regress – but requires a creative, constructive, and schemas that are immutable and so not subject “meta-operative” capacity, and as such one that is to temporality. On the contrary, it is always and not determined by the valid a priori “legality” of only through time, and thus in the horizon of concepts (cf. Garroni [2010]). becoming, that we mimetically learn and apply the The learning expressed by mimesis is elastic rules of various games – games in which we are and flexible, and as such is infinitely malleable. It immersed and involved chiefly on an emotive and is historically conditioned, and precisely as such, affective level. We perform these rules time and is always open to additions, re-elaborations and again, ceaselessly modifying and modeling them. transformations that can be mutually contradic- Hence mimesis’ capacity to expand and restruc- tory and conflictual. This guarantees the continual ture our concept of reality, as well as that of expe- emergence of difference within the very identity of rience – understood as the mobile and variable the symbolic-operative model that is repeated and horizon of our understanding, i.e. of the way in reproduced through learning and memorisation. which we represent the world to ourselves – that is, Thus, it is through the inseparable connection of time and again, dominant. This is due to the fact repetition and difference – of stability and modi- that «in the mimetic appropriation of the given, fication – that the processes of the acquisition and the imaginative faculty of the recipient informs renewal of our cultural inheritance, understood the imitative process such that the given acquires as an intangible patrimony of forms and learn- a new quality for the person who imitates» (Wulf ings, can develop concretely. And this allows for [1995]: 11). This production of the “qualitatively the enrichment and expansion of our imagina- new” is a consequence of the fact that the mimet- tion, and with it our vision of the world, which ic act always implies the enactment of procedures becomes increasingly complex, dense and articu- that transform the given, through integrations and lated. Thus a close connection between mime- omissions, additions, accumulations, and subtrac- sis and imagination is established: in virtue of its tions. These are all elements that make mimesis character as both reproductive and productive, something far from obvious and simple, both from imagination is able to institute new «relations of an aesthetic and an epistemological point of view. sense» between things, on the base of a «ludic» Mimesis proceeds by way of exclusions and and «associative» dynamic able to connect pres- inclusions, assimilations, incorporations and read- 198 Antonio Valentini justments, simultaneously: in imitating, the sub- not» only «oriented towards what is behind» it, ject adds something to the imitated object that not only aimed at the pre-constituted givenness of is irreducibly their own. This takes place within the model that it is called to represent, but «looks a very complex dynamic that is marked by – and ahead», pointing towards the «not-yet-created» productively permeated by – tensions, distor- (Wulf [1995]: 11-12). It aims at the “non-existent”, tions, errors, partial misunderstandings, inaccu- at the other of the given, i.e. the “possible” that is racies and imprecisions. To imitate is therefore not yet realised but which has only been imagined to attempt to render one’s own something that is or is only imaginable in the concrete changes of the extraneous, but without ever succeeding in this effective situations in which the subject is engaged. attempt. In fact, what is imitated is never some- In this perspective, the mimetic act can be well thing perfectly transparent, but is instead complex understood only if it is seen in light of the com- and irretrievably “opaque”. plexity and richness of its implications. More in From this point of view, the mimetic act detail, the two authors explain the mimetic act appears as something eminently hermeneutic, by connecting it to some essential anthropologi- inasmuch as it is the expression of an interpretive cal and evolutionary characteristics of humanity: process that puts into play an indefinite multiplic- their constitutive dependence upon learning; their ity of meanings and historical-cultural contents, residual instinctual endowments; their adaptive as well as , moods, sensations, hopes, nature; and the hiatus that always exists between desires, promises, expectations and intentions, the perceptive stimulus and the subject’s response. more or less hidden and more or less capable of In the explication of the mimetic function, it is being made explicit. What is exhibited and pro- therefore necessary to consider the close inter- duced by mimetic practices is therefore a type of connection between imagination, language, and knowledge founded in the first instance on ais- corporality, as well as between theory and praxis, thesis, on the pragmatic and performative con- and thus between subject and object or ego and creteness of experience, i.e. on the “aesthetic” world. In this sense, as much as the human aspires dimension of feeling as a dimension that pre- to identify an original model to employ as prius cedes the “logical-conceptual” instance of intel- (i.e. as a foundation of mimetic representation), lection. As Wulf affirms: «Mimetic learning is a mimesis always reflects a reality that is already sensory, body-based form of learning in which constructed, or rather already symbolically mediat- images, schemas and movements needed to per- ed, and not something that is originally pure and form actions are learned» (Wulf [2017]: 8). Mime- ontologically neutral. sis therefore is to be understood as a process of incorporating “imprints” and “frames” – social, cultural, historical and symbolic materials, as well 3. BETWEEN REIFICATION AND OPPOSITION, as behavioral patterns – that the subject “recipi- BETWEEN IMPLOSION OF DIFFERENCE AND ent” transforms through the transcending and UTOPIA innovative power of their imagination. It is a pro- It is in light of these preliminary considera- cess of making sense that expands and renews our tions that in particular Wulf reconstructs the his- life-worlds in order to create new ways of experi- torical development of the idea of mimesis. In encing and acting. his volume Mimesis (Wulf [1995]), which could The notion of mimesis contains within it both be understood as a synthetic review of his more the imitated object and the subject that imitates, extensive research project on this topic carried both the final result of the imitative process and out with Gebauer (cf. Gebauer, Wulf [1992]), he the imitative process as such, together with all the shows the various changes of paradigm that char- possibilities of change and re-configuration of the acterised this notion: from the ancient poetics to imitated reality that it implies. Thus mimesis «is Ambivalence of the Notion of “Mimesis”: Between the Opening towards the Other and the Repetition of the Same 199 the Critical Theory of Theodor W. Adorno; from The “reifying” feature of mimesis is a conse- Plato and Aristotle to the reflection on the nexus quence of the eminently adaptive nature of the between mimesis and violence proposed by René mimetic act. In this way, Wulf argues, mimesis Girard; and from the mythical-archaic forms of «contributes, through adaptation to the devastated “magical thought” to the modern “civilisation of environment, to the hardened social structures simulacra” theorised by Baudrillard. His enlight- and relationships of domination, to the coercion ening analysis confirms at every step the idea of a of chronocracy and the mechanical logic of self- constitutive plurivocity of the notion being exam- referential processes, to reification and estrange- ined, underscoring its always historically condi- ment» (Wulf [1995]: 70). Wulf’s conclusion here tioned character. is clear: in a constitutive sense mimesis contains But beyond the remarkable observations that instances both of passive adaptation and assimila- Wulf makes regarding the history of the idea tion to the dominant factual order existing in the of mimesis in Western culture, he also makes a world. If this order happens to be founded – à notoeworthy contribution concerning the con- la Adorno – on the incontestable primacy that vergence between social mimesis and aesthetic instrumental reason assigns to the “principle of mimesis, which has profound relevance to current identity”, and if such primacy carries with it the philosophical debates. It is in his discussion of tendential exclusion and removal of the non-iden- this subject, in the third chapter, that Wulf offers tical (the Other, the different, the heterogeneous), a renewed understanding of the concept of mime- then what mimesis implies, at least from a cer- sis in light of some of the most urgent problems tain standpoint, is precisely a confirmation of this in the contemporary debate concerning image dynamic. It implies a ratification of those process- and representation. These include: the relationship es of negation and assimilation of alterity that are between art and reality, or art and life; the theme always operative within capitalist society. of the reification of experience and of the homolo- In this sense, mimesis simply reproduces gation of sense within the modern “society of the the structures of domination: the imperialist spectacle” (a society of triumphant globalisation and totalitarian logics immanent in instrumen- in which the characteristics of the “culture indus- tal reason. The consequence is the triumph of an try”, in Horkheimer and Adorno’s sense, are radi- “autoreferentiality” – the autoreferentiality of cal- calised); and the question of the political nature of culative and objectifying thought – that ends up the image, with reference to the possible utopian flattening all difference, thereby suppressing any and critical function – i.e. the function of “resist- possible tension towards ulteriority and any pos- ance” – that it might perform within postmodern sible creative and innovative instance. Hence the and post-industrial civilisation. triumph of reification and estrangement, i.e. the The central point raised by Wulf is that in triumph of “dead objectivity”, that is of “nature” the contemporary world mimesis is characterised (which is always identical to itself) with respect to first and foremost by its structural ambiguity and the historicity of “culture” (which is always poten- ambivalence. If, on the one hand, it seems com- tially creative and capable of producing novelty). plicit in the processes of the homogenisation of From this point of view, the industrial capi- sense, that is, of its contraction, leveling and can- talist world unilaterally imposes a notion of time alisation, processes which are typical of the glo- that is essentially empty and abstract. It is an idea balized world, on the other hand, it contains with- of temporality irretrievably deprived of its origi- in itself the capacity to present an alternative to nal multidimensionality, its intrinsic dynamism these very same processes, and thereby to offer an and polymorphism, the product of the many dif- instance that is at once critical and utopian. Let us ferent ways in which past, present, and future can analyse the first of these two possible dimensions be woven, layered, articulated and short-circuited. implicit in the idea of mimesis. To speak of «chronocracy» here means to speak of 200 Antonio Valentini the triumph of a homogeneous, linear, and cumu- stitution of signs of the real for the real itself, but lative time – a time that is serial, automatic, and also the nullification of any possible manifestation mechanical. Wulf observes: «Chronocracy entails and utopian function attributable to the image the reduction of different actions, interactions, itself. Instead of revealing the Other, the simula- and lived experiences to the quantity of time they crum-image neutralises it, thereby negating with require time and again. Events are transformed itself the idea of culture, making it implode just as into temporal offices (Zeitposten) that must be car- the dimension of the “social” implodes. In bring- ried out. Their qualitative difference is disregard- ing about the extermination of the real the simu- ed». And again: «chronology homogenises, syn- lacrum destroys any alterity, any illusion, since chronises, and functionalises the vital time of man illusion always entails the dimension of absence, from the point of view of the growth of rationality of non-existent, of non-identity. Simulacrum, in and effectiveness» (Wulf [1995]: 73-74). It is pre- other words, is to be understood as absolute pres- cisely this kind of time that mimesis, understood ence, as pure surface that does not refer to any as a reproduction of the existent, helps to feed. depth of implicit sense, and therefore as appear- This is a devitalised time, lacking any concrete ance without apparition (in Adorno’s sense) and as qualitative dimension, a time that is essentially form without content (if by “content” we mean the uniform and irreversible, based on the eternal “beyond” to which the sensible givenness of the return of the same, of the indefinite repetition of image refers: the “aura” of the image itself, in Ben- a deterministic logic. And this logic is that of the jamin’s terms, i.e. the “other of the given”)4. production of profit, of mere revenue-generating What is accomplished, then, is what Baudril- that subordinates all other values to it: the logic of lard termed the «perfect crime», alluding to the consumption and the unconditional commerciali- ability that simulacral images have of killing real- sation of every aspect of existence. ity – the “off-camera” of the image. Hence the dis- Therefore it is precisely in this way – with- solution of any distinction between reality and in the horizon of the mercantile-capitalist fiction, between image and reality, between what world – that mimesis, always understood in its represents (the sign) and what is represented (the complicity/affinity with the strategies of domina- signified), and thus between fictum and factum. tion implemented by instrumental reason, «con- Images no longer “represent” the world but are tributes to the transformation into image (Verbild- the world, the only world possible, which does not lichung) of the world and to the processes of simu- tolerate alternatives. Thus, in giving space to the lation» (Wulf [1995]: 70). Wulf is clearly referring simulated world – virtual and hyper-real – mime- here to Baudrillard and his key notion of “simula- sis becomes totalising and all-encompassing; it no crum”. From this point of view, what mimesis fos- longer represents a world that is different from the ters and promotes is a process of the “aestheticisa- image, but results in a sort of self-illustration and tion” of the world: images, far from referring to an self-presentation. external reality, end up enclosing and rigidifying What prevails is a hypertrophic flow of imag- themselves in absolute self-referentiality, in their es – principally, media images, and in particu- intransitivity. Thus the simulacrum-image tends to lar “advertising” images – that prove to be empty absorb all of reality, creating a world entirely sepa- of any “truth content” (in the sense that Adorno rate from the real one, and against which reality defines the notion inAesthetic Theory). These are itself – as the “other of the image” – dissolves and images that are incapable of referring to the out- vanishes. side world, and precisely because of this are no The result is the production of a “hyperreal- longer able to critically question it by taking a ity” – spawned by the media and new technolo- conscious and responsible position with regard to gies – that presupposes not only the liquidation of every possible referent of the image, and the sub- 4 See Di Giacomo, Marchetti [2013]; Di Giacomo [2013]. Ambivalence of the Notion of “Mimesis”: Between the Opening towards the Other and the Repetition of the Same 201 it. This is what happens in the case of the simu- it: a potential waiting to be reawakened and acti- lacrum-image, which is characterised by the fact vated. that, rather than “inaugurating a world”, it blocks Mimesis holds an authentically revolutionary the world in the univocity of a coercive message force within itself, and as such is potentially sub- that is fixed once and for all. Thus the image is versive of the existing order. It counters the logi- no longer able to refer to a “horizon of sense” that cal-conceptual, inferential, deductive, and demon- is open to indeterminacy and the transcendence strative way that instrumental reason puts in place of the possible. It is no longer able to elicit and – presupposing the dualism between subject and mobilize the symbolic and productive resources object, their separation and “head-on” opposition of the imagination. On the horizon of simulation, – with a modality of thought that is fundamen- the violence of an assimilation is unleashed that tally other and ulterior. From this point of view, does not allow remainders, scraps, or leftovers that mimesis entails the capacity to critically question could evade the vertigo of mimetic appropriation. the dominant and ossified structures of sense, From this point of view, the triumph of simu- the categorical determinations that are held to be lation and of simulacra is the triumph of an idea incontestable and the configurations of experi- of mimesis that is essentially idolatrous, fetish- ence that logos assumes as something unchange- istic and apologetic with regard to the effective able and intranscendable. This is due to the fact order of the world. It is apologetic with regard to that mimesis, by allowing the subject to get out- what Adorno called the «administered world», the side of themselves, and by simultaneously deter- world dominated by the principle of identity. Thus mining the mutual reversibility of interiority and Wulf can claim that simulacral images «suffocate exteriority (of subject and object), tends to divest the imagination and nullify the unavailability of the subject of their power, escaping their cognitive the Other and the resistance of the Extraneous» control, which instead postulates the unity of con- (Wulf [1995]: 71). They dissolve the very possibil- sciousness. This is what Wulf calls the «empathetic ity of thinking the indeterminacy of the possible, behavior» of mimesis (Wulf [1995]: 75). i.e. the “more” that exceeds the given. What simu- In this perspective, mimesis implies first and lacra destroy, in other words, is precisely the tran- foremost an opening to the “possibility of the pos- scendence incorporated in the immanence of the sible”. It has the capacity to bring out from the given: the difference that the identical keeps with- given the “other of the given”, i.e. that “excess” of in itself and that makes it always transformable. the non-identical that identitarian coercion tends But the analysis up to this point is of only one to suffocate, remove and neutralise. This is one of of the possible dynamics attributable to mime- the most significant theoretical features of Wulf’s sis within contemporary society. «On the other analysis on the concept of mimesis. Mimetic prac- hand», Wulf notes, «connected with mimesis is tice contains within itself the capacity to resist the also the hope of a new form of opposition against oppressive domination of the identical, having the the processes just described, since mimesis makes power to upend its primacy. In this way, the revo- it possible for man to get outside himself and to lutionary force of mimesis consists in its capacity approach objects and men». From this point of to disclose new possibilities and imaginative con- view, it is undeniable that mimesis «contains a figurations of the existent – configurations that are possibility of opposition to abstraction, reification, never entirely predictable, and so are always sur- and the transformation into image of the world: prising. mimesis opposes itself to inclusive logic and it Here, Wulf’s theoretical debt to Adorno’s perseveres in its theoretical unavailability» (Wulf aesthetics is clear. To speak of the critical func- [1995]: 71-72). Understood in this way, mimesis tion of mimesis means bringing the dimension of qualifies itself as the expression of an inexhausti- artistic experience to the forefront, together with ble critical and utopian potential immanent within Adorno’s idea of the work of art as an expres- 202 Antonio Valentini sion of a “determined negation” of the existent, a image is brimming, and which should be under- determinate negation of that “which merely is”. It stood as its inexhaustible semantic productiv- is not surprising then that Wulf highlights how ity (see Adorno’s illuminating and decisive defini- «for Adorno, aesthetic theory and mimesis at the tion of the artistic form as «sedimented content»: center of it» constitute «a response to the crisis of Adorno [2009]: 8). critique» (Wulf [1995]: 76). From Adorno’s point Thus it is precisely in virtue of the fact that of view, it is art – and only art – that can counter it is already loaded with a pluristratified seman- the domination of the identical with the unhing- tic content that a work of art is mimesis of itself: ing and overturning power of utopia. «mimesis of works of art», writes Adorno, «is simi- This is due to the fact that art is, of course, larity with themselves» (Adorno [2009]: 140). The mimesis, but it is a mimesis not of the “given” – work of art does not reproduce the world outside of natura naturata (the world as it is in its mere in a naturalistic way, but generates from within facticity) – but rather of natura naturans. It is, in itself a new world that is unexpected – a world other words, an imitation of that very same crea- that was not there before. The work of art, thus, tive and productive power intrinsic to nature (an is «self-referential without thereby resting on the instance expressed, in an exemplary way, in the coercion to the identity of the identitarian logic» poetics of the artist Paul Klee). In this way, it is (Wulf [1995]: 76-77). Therefore, if art is charac- precisely in virtue of the fact that art is mime- terised, as Adorno holds, by “mimetic impulses”, sis of the unlimited creative force of nature – of this means that it is capable of critically referring its dynamis – that it is for Adorno characterised to reality, in the sense that it is capable of calling by “truth content”, i.e. capable of speaking to us into question its presumed incontestability. But to about the world. In imitating the productivity of be able to refer to the outside world, art must be physis, art points to reality, giving voice thereby to “self-equivalent” and “self-sufficient” in the first the tensions, dissonances, and contradictions that place. It must above all “show itself”, in the sense inhabit it. that it must recall our attention to its own sensi- Therefore, Wulf observes, if «imitation of ble configuration, i.e. to the physical and material nature means» for Adorno «imitation of natu- elements that comprise it (its “lines and colours” ral » (Wulf [1995]: 76), then the point that in figurative art, or its “words” in the case of a lit- must be underscored here is the fact that the dis- erary work). «As a model of art», Wulf explains, tinctive trait of such beauty is its “non-objectivity”, «what is required is l’ar t pour l’ar t, in which the its indefinability and indeterminacy, its escaping reference point of art is art itself» (Wulf [1995]: of any possibility of explanation in logical-con- 77). ceptual terms. This is what artistic mimesis brings This clearly does not mean claiming that the to light: the indefinable-indeterminate that the work of art is exclusively self-referential (this phenomenal given keeps within itself, the unrep- would result in an empty tautology, lacking in any resentable that representation always presuppos- authentic cognitive function). Rather, it means es, the invisible that the visible preserves within understanding that it is precisely because it is itself, that invisible without which the visible itself self-referential – and thus precisely in virtue of its would lose its immanent force, its vital energy, autonomy and independence from external reality its capacity to be interpreted in multiple different – that the work of art can refer to what is beyond ways. This dimension that is never entirely repre- it, that is, to the (heterogeneous) world, contrib- sentable, and not completely visible, which artistic uting thereby to the critical re-comprehension of mimesis is tasked with bringing to light, coincides empirical reality. This is made possible by the fact with what Adorno defines as the “more” of the that history’s unresolved antagonisms, its tensions work of art (Mehr) or its “spirit”. In fact, “spirit” and contradictions, are already incorporated and for Adorno is the transcendence with which the coagulated in the very physical-material structure Ambivalence of the Notion of “Mimesis”: Between the Opening towards the Other and the Repetition of the Same 203 of the work. Thus the work offers itself to us as established. The artist themselves, in producing the always renewed and never exactly predictable their work, does not reproduce an external model, production-representation of its own «sediment- but rather gives voice to objects, and to the unex- ed content» (cf. Di Giacomo [2009]; Di Giacomo pressed and inexpressible depth that they hold [2015]). within themselves. In its experience of the work of It is in light of this eminently Adornian per- art, the subject “recipient”, productively stimulated spective that Wulf claims that mimesis «can do and solicited at a pulsional-pathemic level as well without univocity, can give life to movements as at a cognitive one, opens itself up to exploring without finality and can open space to the non- new possibilities, ways and patterns of articulating identical, and can plead the rights of the moment experience (a process made possible by the inex- in the face of chronocracy». This is because mime- tinguishable “anticipating function” of the “aesthet- sis implies the capacity of giving voice to the Oth- ic” as a “meta-functional” dimension: See Desideri er – the other of the given, the other of the real [2009]; Desideri [2011]). As a consequence there – establishing a relationship with the world that is a re-configuration of the same relationship that is no longer «instrumental» and objectifying, i.e. unites ego and world, ego and non-ego, subject calculative and manipulative, but rather authenti- and object. It is precisely thanks to artistic mime- cally «critical». This is a relationship in which «the sis, then, that the subject ends up “surrendering” particular is defended against the universal and to the sudden irruption of the Other, opening itself shown respect for the things and human beings» up to the possibility of seeing the world otherwise. (Wulf [1995]: 85-86). What’s more, this experience leads to a radical re- In this perspective, the truly utopian func- definition of the relationship that connects ration- tion that mimesis acquires on the horizon of aes- ality and sensibility, i.e. logos and pathos. A passage thetic experience testifies to its irreducibility in from the “realm of necessity” to the “realm of free- the sphere of discursive and predicative knowl- dom” is opened up. Thus art gives voice again to edge, i.e. its irreducibility to that knowledge that everything that the primacy of logos had repressed, entails theoretical and intellectual domination removed, or hidden. It gives voice to the dimen- by the subject over the object. Aesthetic experi- sion of particularity and singularity, in its irreduc- ence is instead characterised by the suspension of ibility to normative and classificatory schemas. the primacy that scientific knowledge attributes Wulf is extremely clear on this point: in its to rational-objectifying thought. This is a suspen- experience of the work of art «the subject becomes sion (at least provisional and temporary) of the ‘opened by force’ and expanded. Its shaking leads separation between subject and object that is the to its partial suspension» (Wulf [1998]: 170). In unavoidable presupposition of all of our cognitive its reception of the work of art, and thus by par- strategies. Thus artisticmimesis suspends the prin- ticipating in a «sympathetic» way in its internal ciple of reality itself. In the case of aesthetic expe- dynamic, the subject becomes «subjugated» by the rience, mimesis expresses the renewed primacy non-conceptual element that the work makes vis- of the object, the primacy of the Other and the ible (in virtue of the fact that the work of art is an non-identical, the primacy, in other words, of that «insoluble enigma»). What prevails is the instance which escapes the subject’s epistemological and of involvement and sharing: shared participation intellectual control. in pathos, beyond any Cartesian dualism between As we have already noted, aesthetic experience subject and object. This has to do with a «light- above all implies the establishment of an emotive ning contact» (Wulf [1998]: 167), which, in its and affective affinity between the work of art and suddenness and immediacy, is not susceptible to the subject that experiences it. What Wulf calls explanation in logical terms (just as it is, for Witt- an «active passivity that allows people to be made genstein, in the case of «perspicuous vision»). The “similar” to the work of art» (Wulf [1998]: 166) is result, Wulf observes, is that «in the condensation 204 Antonio Valentini of a moment, there is an ‘aesthetic shaking’ that REFERENCES makes the ego tremble at its very foundations» (Wulf [1998]: 167). 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