Violence and the Mimetic Unconscious, Volume 2

Nidesh Lawtoo is professor of Modern/Contemporary European Literature and Culture at Leiden University, Netherlands. He previously led the ERC project Homo Mimeticus: Theory and Criticism, and he is the author of several books inaugurating a new theory of mimesis at the intersection of philosophy, literature, and politics, including The Phantom of the Ego (2013), Conrad’s Shadow (2016), (New)Fascism (2019), and Violence and the Oedipal Unconscious (2023).

In this impressive sequel on violence and the unconscious, Nidesh Lawtoo accounts for the horrorism at play in new forms of contemporary media violence that generate contagious pathologies in the digital age. Sensitive to the pathos of vulnerable subjects in terms of age, gender, race, and education, this remarkable study reloads Plato’s ancient question on the influence of art for mimetic studies from Nietzsche to Arendt, affect theory to the neurosciences, Greek tragedy to video games to the storming of the U.S. Capitol.—Adriana Cavarero, honorary professor of political philosophy, University of Verona, and author of Horrorism: Naming Contemporary ViolenceTo grasp the speed, complexity, and contagiousness of violence today, as it crosses daily experience, the new media, neofascist movements, and circles back again, Lawtoo finds it imperative to supplant the Freudian unconscious with a mimetic unconscious that is at once collective, differentiated, porous, and suggestible. The result is an innovative, courageous, and powerful study that is indispensable today.—William E. Connolly, author of Resounding Events: Adventures of an Academic from the Working ClassIn this latest installment of his long-standing inquiry into the “will to mime” that drives humans at an unconscious level, Lawtoo moves mimetic theory into the present, in order to confront what he calls the “hypermimetic crises” associated with contemporary media. Moving from the ancients and Nietzsche to pop culture and the most up-to-date scientific work on the operation of mirror neurons in the human brain, this fascinating book suggests that maybe Plato was right, after all, and representations of violence—fictional or real—pose a threat of '"mimetic contamination," of an irrationally compelled imitation of the represented acts.—Henry Staten, professor in the humanities at University of Washington, and the author of Techne Theory: A New Language for Art

• Contents Acknowledgments Prologue Introduction. Mimetic Studies Chapter 1. The Banality of Violence: A Taste of Hypermimesis Chapter 2. Vita Mimetica: Platonic Dialogues Chapter 3. Dionysian Intoxications: Cults, Conspiracies, Insurrections Chapter 4. The Mimetic Unconscious: A Mirror for Contagion Chapter 5. Dangerous Simulations: Mirror Neurons, Video Games, E-Motions Conclusion. How a Fiction Became Reality Notes Bibliography Index