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Reconsidering Mimesis: Freedom and Acquiescence in the Anthropocene

Johnson, Elizabeth R.

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Abstract

In 1993 Michael Taussig's Mimesis and Alterity revitalized the power of the mimetic faculty to craft a vision of nature that was neither the alienated subject of modern science nor the passively malleable medium of late twentieth-century social constructivism. Taussig drew explicitly on a tradition of earlier twentieth-century scholarship—Walter Benjamin, Roger Caillois, and Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno—that located in the mimetic faculty a way out of a techno-fetishized social milieu. This essay explores how mimesis has once again been endowed with revolutionary potential in the contemporary moment through the growing field of biomimicry. I show how mimesis promises a way toward a future free from human hubris and ecological catastrophe—and a way out of the conditions that have created the Anthropocene. I explore how this works in biomimetics, with a detailed look at one of the most celebrated examples of the biomimetic paradigm: the gecko's foot. But, I ultimately suggest that what has been so seductive about mimesis throughout history is that it offers a “way out” of political confrontation. In doing so, I argue mimesis too easily serves as a double mirror—rather than transform production, nonhuman life at the level of biology becomes a force for production.

Citation

Johnson, E. R. (2016). Reconsidering Mimesis: Freedom and Acquiescence in the Anthropocene. South Atlantic Quarterly, 115(2), 267-289. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-3488409

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Nov 16, 2015
Online Publication Date Apr 15, 2016
Publication Date Apr 1, 2016
Deposit Date Oct 9, 2017
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal South Atlantic Quarterly
Print ISSN 0038-2876
Electronic ISSN 1527-8026
Publisher Duke University Press
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 115
Issue 2
Pages 267-289
DOI https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-3488409

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© 2016 by Duke University Press





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