Mimesis

Das Theater der Vorahmung wird durch die feministische Repräsentationskritik von Donna Haraway und Karen Barad beleuchtet. Der Begriff der Mimesis erhält hierdurch einen neuen Vektor. Mit Hilfe eines Begriffs von Transkulturalität lässt sich ermessen, ob ein Theater der Vorahmung als emanzipative, kulturelle Praxis das Theater der nächsten, großen Transformation sein kann.

Krešimir Purgar has assembled a striking collection of essays on Image Studies. I have not been able to stop reading them. They cover a huge range and represent intelligent and well informed opinions containing important topics of interest to all its students. Anyone interested in this relatively recent field of study will find access to some of its essential methods and theories.

ABSTRACT – Taking my cue from James Scott’s opening provocation-question in “Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States” (“How did Homo sapiens sapiens come, so very recently in its species history, to live in crowded, sedentary communities packed with domesticated livestock and a handful of cereal grains?” — 2017: 1), in this paper I engage with both past and present forms of mimetic density and acceleration, including current calls for radical metamorphosis (Latour 2021) and the new dawn of everything (Graeber and Wengrow 2021), to advance the counter-position I took recently around a further question: “Can we change the way we change?” (Pedriali 2021: 169). In that essay, I went on to suspect that the involved you of the reader had rather I disagreed with the implications of my question. This is why on this occasion I want to insist just once more, and put the further “Could you have stopped us?” I phrased there (2021: 169, 171) to the renewed test of productive disagreement with dominant theoretical positions on the futurability of change for our mimetic species.

HOMO MIMETICUS, ERC Project directed by Nidesh Lawtoo – http://www.homomimeticus.eu
Conference Registration Link – https://hiw.kuleuven.be/hua/events/conferences-workshops/mimetic-turn/registration/registrationform

In “Plato and the Simulacrum,” Deleuze distinguishes between two types of mimetic images: the icon, which is based on the model-copy relation, and the simulacrum, which is “a copy without a model.” Behind this well-known distinction, however, lies a previously unexplored distinction between the simulacrum and the phantasm. This article examines Deleuze’s treatment of this distinction in The Logic of Sense (1969), “Renverser le platonism (les simulacres)” (1966), and Difference and Repetition (1968). This paper presents a genealogical reading of the traditions that inform Deleuze’s account of the simulacrum, from the Freudian, Lacanian, and Kleinian schools of psychoanalysis, to the French rediscovery of Nietzsche by Deleuze and Pierre Klossowski, whose language of phantasms and simulacra directly influenced Deleuze. It is argued that Deleuze makes a strong distinction in The Logic of Sense between the simulacrum and the phantasm as a critique of the psychoanalytic concept of fantasy. In so doing, he reverses Klossowski’s treatment of the phantasm and the simulacrum. The Platonic concept of the simulacrum is thus linked to Nietzschean pathos and to the broader notion of a “mimetic unconscious.”

Resumen. Este artículo examina las tragedias de honra conyugal de Calderón de la Barca a partir de los esquemas hermenéuticos propuestos por Réné Girard. Estos se muestran especialmente útiles para analizar la culpabilidad o inocencia de las esposas, la importancia del código de honor como agente dramático o el mismo papel del poderoso, ya que de la interpretación de estas cuestiones problemáticas parece depender la recepción última de estas piezas.

Abstract. This paper aims at examining Calderón de la Barca's honor plays from a Girardian perspective. Réné Girard's hermeneutic theories provide useful tools to tackle controversies such as the spouses' degree of culpability or innocence, the importance of the code of honor as a dramatic agent or the role of the powerful, as the ultimate reception of the plays seems to depend on the interpretation of these problematic issues.

Mimesis ist eine zentrale Kategorie bei Walter Benjamin. Er fasst sie als anthropologisches Vermögen. Damit geht er über Platon und Artistoteles hinaus. Das mimetische Vermögen wird zu einer Erkenntnisfunktion jenseits des ideologischen Schleiers. Die Kategorie der Hellsicht, die Benjamin in seiner metaphysischen Phase untersuchte, wird in seiner materialistischen Phase in die Mimesis umgeschmolzen. Das heißt, die Mimesis ist eine materialistische Kategorie. Der Aufsatz untersucht die Bedeutung der Mimesis bei Benjamin, ihre Beziehung zur Sprache und zur Erkenntnis und grenzt sie gegen die Konzeptionen der Mimesis anderer Forscher ab. Insbesondere die Interpretationen der Benjaminschen Mimesis durch Michael Taussig und Jean-Michel Palmier sind Gegenstand einer kritischen Betrachtung.

This paper provides a brief survey of composition in which field recordings or other referential sounds are transcribed for acoustic instruments. Through a discussion of how electroacoustic music and scholarship has conceptualised the notion of mimesis, and how various forms of contemporary acoustic music have adopted electroacoustic techniques, it identifies a recent musical practice in which these concerns are brought together. The paper proposes the term mimetic instrumental resynthesis as a way of describing the common threads behind works that employ electronic-assisted or computer-assisted techniques toward instrumental imitations of environmental and extra-musical sounds. The paper also highlights some of the conceptual and aesthetic questions emerging from such a practice, including the idea of transformation, issues of referentiality, listening, the influence of different technologies and their aesthetic implications, and the tension between abstract and concrete conceptions of the works discussed. Finally, the paper raises concerns surrounding the language of discussing what is necessarily an interdisciplinary venture.


As Hellenic hero expert Gregory Nagy has effectively argued, ancient Greek athletics may be understood as the reenactment or mimēsis of the feats of heroes for the religious purpose of activating their life-giving spirits.  I would sharpen that interpretation to say that athletes were in fact re-enacting the heroes’ virtues, while the poet’s and artist’s celebration of those feats was yet another act of mimēsis which served a larger cultural conspiracy to celebrate and inspire virtue (aretē).  Mimēsis that puts athletics and poetry in the service of aretē seems like something that Plato would endorse, but it may be subject to the same criticisms that poetry and other arts undergo in Republic.  In this paper I argue that athletic mimēsis may be part and parcel of Platonic education, but only if it is understood as reenactment not of heroic persons, or even of heroic feats, but rather as the reenactment of divine virtues.

Durante todo o século XX, a arte evoluiu e enveredou por caminhos que privilegiam a interactividade. Não se estranhe por isso, que alguns modos de representação tenham cimentado uma posição fundamentalmente direccionada para a participação do público. A holografia é uma dessas artes mediáticas, que propicia ao receptor da obra, um permanente envolvimento espacial, não pela duplicação, mas antes pela mimesis da informação visual e espacial da realidade primeira. Tais representações evocam a referência a uma qualquer realidade por tradução literal e unívoca dela mesma. A holografia tridimensional regista ou “escreve”, toda a realidade, porque capta toda a informação existente na luz no momento do registo. Esta técnica poderá indubitavelmente incluir-se em vários processos “transtextuais”, relações intrínsecas aos próprios elementos de criação plástica.
No contexto artístico, ela existirá num complexo jogo de relações que permitirão a tradução do momento espacial, tornando-se um elemento acessório de compreensão: para-existencialismo. Um prolongamento da realidade é estabelecido criando-se vários momentos, em que se desenvolvem quatro dimensões: o “antes” o “agora” e o “depois”, este por sua vez inclui os diversos pontos de vista, que sucessivamente se vão alterando com a deslocação do fruidor. Todos se complementam e se correlacionam mutuamente: hiper-existencialismo. É nas ínfimas partículas de emulsão e na amplitude, comprimento e fases de ondas electromagnéticas (a Luz) e no registo de microscópicas ondas de interferência luminosas, que é formada a nossa racionalidade à realidade segunda e são estes factores, que permitem extrair a realidade física, para mudar virtualmente de espaço e de tempo.
Estaremos com certeza a evocar momentos de diálogo e de compreensão entre a natureza objectiva invariável e a factualidade espaço vectorial, de uma representação tridimensional. Esta técnica é um registo de imagem virtual idêntica à realidade, com a mesma paralaxe existente quando se vê um objecto real, sem haver necessidade de recorrer a nenhum auxiliar da visão. Questionar uma realidade sintética será paralelamente criticar o que lhe deu origem, na sua total dimensão e levar a descobrir, a possível posição do fruidor, perante um mundo, que não sendo imaginário pode ser especulativo de uma realidade imaginária, por virtude do absoluto desconhecimento dessa mesma realidade. Na verdade, a holografia é uma nova realidade, que o sujeito fruidor apreende e explora, formulando novas significações, igualmente paralelas à realidade primeira, mas sempre diferentes desta, só assim se compreendendo a artisticidade da holografia.

This article examines representations of Peoples Temple in popular culture through the lens of mimesis, understood as a process of repetition and re-creation of specific elements. This process produces what is understood as a “cult” in popular culture, which is divorced from the complex historical reality of Peoples Temple. Three symbolic strands combine to construct the concept of a “cult”: the power of a charismatic leader, isolation from outside influences, and consuming poison, or “drinking the Kool-Aid.” In popular culture, these symbols are used in order to apportion blame, to learn lessons, and to act as a warning. Peoples Temple was a collective trauma for American culture as well as an individual trauma for survivors. The process of mimesis, therefore, is a way of both memorializing and reinscribing this trauma on a cultural level. Examples from ethnographic research conducted in Sedona, Arizona, are used to illustrate how symbols of Jonestown generated by cultural mimesis continue to be invoked by participants in contemporary minority religions as a way to signal their concern about whether they belong to a cult.

All rise. As we arrive at the scene it is in the distance. Words have not yet been formed. The chapter is unwritten. The sentence has not yet been passed. I write this in a cell. It is not how I had imagined it would be. When I was a child I was taken on a visit to a zoo. The sadness was overwhelming. A gorilla picked its nose and looked past me as if I wasn't there and I questioned my own desire to exist as a human. A keeper approached the gorilla. The gorilla stood its ground. The gorilla was not intimidated. The gorilla was unmoved. There was a mirror in its cage and through this we met each other's gaze. My movements have been arrested. But I feel no sadness and do not pick my nose. The cell is empty and clean and bright and smells faintly of bleach. When I woke up this morning I was untransformed. Unreconstructed. Unreformed. There is no mirror but I will stand my ground.

La narratividad no es solo una cualidad de determinados discursos (verbales o no). Es una dimensión básica de nuestra existencia: la narratividad o relatividad ontológica. También, al experimentar la existencia como "agôn", la dimensión dramática está enraizada con nuestro mundo de la vida. En este ensayo hacemos una revisión del texto original de la Poética aristotélica, evidenciando que narración y drama difieren no por los medios ni por el objeto de la imitación, sino por el modo. Así, más allá de una oposición equívoca (diégesis vs. mímesis) proponemos la consideración, dentro de las formas de mímesis, de una dimensión puramente dietética, que reproduce con palabras las palabras y los hechos de los protagonistas, frente a una mimesis pragmática, propia del teatro, en la que las palabras son palabras, pero las acciones se representan como acciones.

In this paper, I discuss Plato’s account of mimetic production in the Sophist, and use this account to draw some potentially interesting insights about Plato’s conception of the role and nature of philosophy. In Sections I and II, I elucidate Plato’s account of artistic and sophistic mimetic production, with particular attention to the role that the artist’s and sophist’s audience plays in each. In Section III, I suggest that a specific implication of this account raises a problem for philosophy, where the latter is conceived as an enterprise which purports to put us in mind of the truth. However, I suggest that Plato’s understanding of the role of philosophy, and possibly his views on how it should be done, render his own philosophical project immune to this problem.

The purpose of the panel is to explore a specific aspect of the concept of originality in Indian knowledge systems, literature and the arts. We would like to discuss the relation of innovation and perpetuation of earlier forms and contents of knowledge and aesthetic expressions. Although within the South Asian intellectual traditions this relationship is rarely the topic of explicit reflections, it can be investigated by taking a closer look at the treatment of older materials by later authors. With a view to this, we would like to discuss, for example, the following questions.

Sebagaimana judul yang dimaksud dalam paparan ini adalah “memaparkan isu-isu global yang tercermin dalam novel Indonesia modern”. Isu-isu global adalah wacana yang dewasa ini mengemuka di masyarakat yang perlu diidentifikasi keberadaannya, sehingga dapat terpahami masalah apa saja yang muncul dan yang perlu dicari jalan keluarnya. Untuk mengetahui hal itu,  novel sebagai dokumen dalam peristiwa budaya dipandang mampu jadi sampel untuk mengung­kap fenomena isu global tersebut. Karenanya, paparan ini mengedepankan pembahasan isu glo­bal terhadap novel Indonesia modern dengan teori sosiologis. Hal ini bertujuan untuk mempe­roleh informasi tentang isu global yang tercermin di dalam novel. Bagaimana isu-isu global se­per­ti: kemiskinan, kejahatan, ketidakadilan, disorganisasi keluarga, dan seterusnya dipersoalkan dalam peristiwa seni, terutama novel Indonesia modern.         

Mimesis or imitation of nature was the main aesthetic theory of Greece and Rome, thanks not only to Plato or Aristotle. Along with a few relevant texts, nothing better than ancient Still Lifes and live portraits, in order to verify how all that was applied to artistic production and which its modern legacy is.

House of Incest - A study of the meaning of "poetical illusion" in the work of Anaïs Nin in relation with the tragedy of incest and the crisis of the subject.

Au cœur de la problématique de l’identité féminine, le thème de la métamorphose d’une femme dans une autre, de la narratrice dans son personnage, inaugure le moment archétypal où la mimesis chute dans le monde.
L’érotisme pervers est un luxe menacé par la folie, où la névrose est magnifiée par l’entrechoc d’images, dont la sensualité et le rythme se fracassent devant l’obstacle démoniaque, « the curse of orgasm ». Et là, il n’est pas question de culpabilité morale, mais plus profondément la Maison de l’inceste est le lieu maléfique où la profanation charnelle coïncide avec une impureté esthétique rendant l’inspiration soupçonnable, mensongère, quand l’aimantation même de la sensibilité s’affole, comme un tournesol désorienté.

Lo spettro del fascismo si aggira di nuovo per il mondo contemporaneo. In questo libro, Nidesh Lawtoo prende il Caso Trump per illustrare l'(in)attualità della tesi di Nietzsche che un giorno, "gli attori, ogni tipo di attori, saranno i veri sovrani." Iscrivendosi in una genealogia di teorici della mimesi-da Pla-tone a Nietzsche, passando per Tarde, Le Bon, Freud, Bataille, Girard, Lacoue-Labar-the e Nancy-Lawtoo dimostra che il (new) fascism non è del tutto nuovo, e per niente originale. Eppure, attori che giocano il ruolo di apprendisti presidenti ricaricano il vecchio fantasma della mimesi via new media che hanno il potere sconcertante di trasformare la realtà politica in un reality show.
https://www.ibs.it/neo-fascismo-contagio-comunita-mito-libro-nidesh-lawtoo/e/9788857564142
In copertina: Con/dividere, mixed media su carta, © Michaela Lawtoo

An extended conversation hosted by Amy Russell with fellow guides of Embodied Poetics : Kamili Okweni Feelings; Aurelian Koch; Lazlo Pearlman; Norman Taylor; Ed Woodall; Jonathan Young

This is an extended conversation about a shared project of canonical intervention, the new London-based training organization, Embodied Poetics, specializing in the pedagogy of Jacques Lecoq, Jacques Copeau and Suzanne Bing”. Seven pedagogues, all of whom have completed a two-year, Lecoq-based pedagogy, and hold a significantly different embodied positions vis-à-vis each other, discuss their pedagogic practices, invoking notions of physical and dramatic neutrality, aesthetic permanence, archetypes of gender and character, and a eurocentric map of theatrical territories.

"Мимесис и рефлексия: огледалата в българското литературознание", -  Надмощие и приспособяване : Сборник доклади от Международната конференция на факултета по славянски филологии 24-25 април 2017г. : Т. 1-. състав. и ред. Диана Атанасова, Мария Калинова, Надежда Александрова, Красимира Алексова, Румяна Л. Станчева, и др.Т. 1. Литературоведски четения в чест на 80-годишнината на професор Никола Георгиев, София: Университетско издателство, 2018, 362-374.

The paper focuses on the mirror as a metaphor in the Bulgarian literary studies by means of which contradictory concepts of literature in terms of its mimetic activity crystallize. The term mimetic reflection was in circulation in the Soviet Union at that time as one of the key concepts of the dogmatic Marxist-Leninist aesthetics and especially of Todor Pavlov’s theory of reflection, in which literature is seen as a realistic reflection of reality. A detachment of reflection theory can be traced in the works of Nikola Georgiev. In his theoretical works the mirror functions as a metaphor for the intertextuality and self-reflexivity as the ability of the literature to refer to its own techniques, its own process of creation and its own fictional status. In such direction is read the mirror metaphor in the works of Kleo Protohristova and Miglena Nikolchina.

Keywords: mimesis, reflection, mirror, self-reflexivity, intertextuality
Мимесис и рефлексия: огледалата в българското литературознание

Докладът се спира на огледалото като метафора в българското литературознание, през което кристализират противоречиви концепции за литература с оглед на миметичната дейност. Догматичната маркситко-ленинистка естетика в лицето на Тодор Павлов налага клишето за литературата като отражение на действителността. Отталскването от това разбиране може да се проследи в работите на Никола Георгиев. При него огледалото функционира като метафора за саморефлексивносивната способност на литературата самa да посочва техниките за своята направа, да обсъжда похватите за конструирането на собственото си фикционалност. В този ключ могат да се четат и огледалните употреби в работите на Клео Протохристова и Миглена Николчина.

Ключови думи: мимесис, рефлексия, огледало, саморефлексия, междутекстовост

Dieses Buch untersucht Konzeptionen der Mimesis und des Mimetischen in der Kontaktzone zwischen Ethnologie und (post-)surrealistischer Avantgarde im Paris der 1930er Jahre: bei Georges Bataille, Roger Caillois, Michel Leiris und im außerakademischen Forschungskollektiv Collège de Sociologie. In den Texten und Projekten der drei Autoren kreuzen sich ästhetische und ethnologische Diskurse – mit dem Ergebnis einer umfassenden ›Entgrenzung‹ der Mimesis und des Mimetischen. Die künstlerischen, wissenschaftlichen und politischen Praktiken, die im Zentrum von Batailles, Caillois’ und Leiris’ Überlegungen standen, sind nicht auf die optische imitatio oder die bloß poietische Neuschaffung der Welt beschränkt. Sie sollten vielmehr umfassende Transformationsprozesse initiieren, die nicht zuletzt das mimetisch agierende Subjekt selbst erfassen.


Eine Studie über die Einschreibung des sogenannten ›Primitiven‹ in die künstlerischen und literarischen Diskurse zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts, über die Faszination der Avantgarde für ›primitive Denkweisen‹ und den Wunsch, sich diese Denkweisen auf mimetische Art und Weise anzueignen – und über die umfassenden ästhetiktheoretischen Revisionen, die daraus folgten.

The purpose of this paper is to exemplify the outstanding potential of literary narrations, and particularly the fairy tales, to foster resilience among primary school students. The starting point of these reflections is the mimetic-cathartic vision of a literary narration proposed already by Aristotle and then developed by such contemporary authors as Paul Ricoeur, Alasdair MacIntyre, David Carr, etc. The specific application of the general idea, according to which great literary stories have a powerful intrinsic pedagogical potential, is depicted with the use of the example of a classic tale by the Grimm brothers, The Girl Without Hands, which is a clear mimesis in both textual and figurative sense of a resilient character. Moreover, the traumatizing circumstances against which the resilient attitude develops in the protagonist are related to family background, which makes the story particularly up-to-date at present times in which we observe an outstandingly high divorce rate as well as many other types of problems affecting large numbers of children in relation with their families. A variety of “pillars” or “factors” of resilience are easily observable in the behaviour of the “girl without hands,” which converts the story into a remarkable and encouraging example of overcoming all sort of difficulties and obstacles which our students encounter on their own way towards a more complete integration and happiness.

Resumo da obra O nascimento do trágico: de Schiller a Nietzsche (2006, p. 23-49), de Roberto Machado.
A poética da tragédia. A questão da poética da tragédia, menciona Peter Szondi, inicia com um embate conceitual entre dois autores de épocas e interesses distintos: Aristóteles e Schelling. Aristóteles lida com uma poética da tragédia, esta, de caráter mais empírico, observa os efeitos da tragédia (como a catarse), a arte trágica, mas não a ideia de tragédia. Sua influência transcendeu sua época e região, sendo piamente importante para o classicismo francês e para a Alemanha do século XVIII, com destaque para Schelling, sua filosofia do trágico e, ao período idealista, tanto quanto ao pós-idealista. Assim, para essa questão da poética da tragédia, destacam-se, para épocas e perspectivas diferentes: Aristóteles, Corneille e Lessing.

The article is focused on the questions, how is social reality mirrored in the "fairy" tale, how does mirabilis take place in it and what is the function of the use of mirabilis. The author is predominantly engaged with the earliest literary form of "fairy" tales from the period of Italian Renaissance when tales were both published and transmitted orally, but had yet to establish themselves as a literary genre. The author specifically studies the case of the Renaissance Cinderella tale. The most noteworthy and prolific storyteller, as well as tale writer of the period, was the Venice-based Gian Francesco Straparola who published The Facetious Nights (Piacevoli Notti), generally considered as the first European collection of fairy tales, in 1551 and 1553. Researchers have not attained consent on whether Straparola based his collection on the received oral tradition of the native population, a view held by Jack Zipes, or he had invented the fairy tales anew, as Ruth Bottigheimer believes. Referring to the Cinderella tale, the author of this article argues that Straparola reshaped some of the earlier variants of comparable tales. The author also finds interrelations between the examined Renaissance cases and Slovenian folktales, which could be considered as the variants of the first. Straparola enriched his tales, and particularly the tale that frames the collection, with vivid descriptions of Renaissance culture. The stories feature actual historical personalities and approximations of events as might have happened. The author shows that by applying this technique of referring to the cultural reality of his age, as well as with other techniques, Straparola imposed the principles of resemblance utilized by Renaissance creators in general. Furthermore, the author analyses the epistemological approach of Renaissance men to the world, which rested upon the principles of resemblance. She examines these principles through Straparola's work while comparing them to the attitudes of visual artists of the period, who have written extensively on the subject. The visual was dominant in Italian Renaissance culture, and as such, it is also to be found in Straparola's literature, which mirrors the society and culture of the time. As an epistemological principle, the search for resemblances was so essential in Renaissance that it served for establishing analogies between human and animal physiognomies and their supposedly associated temperaments. The objective of a Renaissance creator was to grasp the outside world and present it in the chosen medium. Natural sciences, humanities, and art converged. Straparola included accounts of natural phenomena and animals, as found in Pliny's Natural History, in his narratives, all the while searching for analogies between described phenomena and the temperaments as well as actions of the protagonists of his tales.
In this period in time, science on nature and its phenomena comprised of cataloguing diverse animals and various "natural things", which surprised Europeans: exotic animals and their characteristics, embryos, mutants, as well as mythological creatures, which were granted equal status and were included in the taxonomy of species. All these "natural things", as recorded, for instance, by the Italian naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi, were the marvels of the world or mirabilia. The age was so strongly signified with the marvellous that the renowned humanist Benedetto Varchi even lectured at the Florentine Academy on the generation of monsters seeming to be found everywhere. The mirroring of nature, best illustrated by the metaphor of a mirror, therefore included depictions of the marvellous and is also to be found in Straparola's work. Mirabilis, however, as the article shows, has its roots in the visual; it is etymologically and conceptually related to the idea of mirroring and thus to the principle of resemblance.
Historian Jacques Le Goff analysed the presence and conception of mirabilis in medieval era, which was adopted by the Renaissance in numerous respects. The marvellous was a way of resistance to the official Christian ideology after all. Le Goff concluded that the historicizing tendency worked against the tradition of the marvellous. It is for this reason that the author of the article focuses on the tale of the Renaissance when the marvellous was still present and the tales had a relevant relationship to the social reality they represented. The Renaissance tale, as can be found in Straparola's writings, exhibits references to nature and concurrently represents natural principles, the marvellous, which blends into the everyday, as well as it offers a glimpse into the sixteenth-century Venetian social life. Historian Robert Darnton who studied French cultural history and the history of eighteenth-century mentalities was interested in the orally transmitted tales as told by the "ordinary" people. He understood the folktale to be a historical document testifying to the "history" of a social class, which did not partake in the official writing of history. In this article, the author treats Facetious Nights as a historical document, yet understands this process of documentation differently than Darnton, specifically on account of the Renaissance episteme.
In the scope of the article, the author conducts an etymological investigation into the terminology related to tales. Terminology concerning previous forms of the genre displays a strong correlation with the Latin term historia, meaning a narration on the past events. Tales evoke worldviews of people circulating them and present the culture and possibly the history of the society that tells them. The article treats Renaissance literary tales as unique testimonies of the society and culture of the time. The documentation of culture and society is in this case authorially mediated, yet distinctly present, because the writer, as the author of the article argues, was committed to the use of resemblance techniques. This perspective, however, prompts another question the author explores in the article, namely, what was the primary function of Straparola's tales. Given the likely readership and the specific structure of his tales, many of which are tales on individual's social rise, an achievement quite unimaginable in the confines of Venetian law of the times, it seems plausible that Straparola promoted visions of a different, better social reality. The marvellous thus seems to frequently serve as a means towards attaining this objective.

El trabajo examina los planteos teóricos y metodológicos expuestos por el filólogo y crítico literario alemán Erich Auerbach en torno del problema del realismo.
Para tal fin me basé fundamentalmente en su texto Mímesis (AUERBACH, 1946), donde desarrolla una historia de la representación de la realidad en la literatura europea occidental, desde Homero hasta Joyce, Proust y Virginia Woolf, en un lento y aglutinador crescendo histórico que tendrá como momento clave el del realismo francés del siglo XIX.

El presente artículo se plantea como un ejercicio comparativo de diferentes perspectivas acerca del concepto de mimesis y sus implicaciones en la historia del cine etnográfico. Se trata de un análisis teó- rico-metodológico donde se discute, en primera instancia, a la mimesis como imitación, luego como acción de la representación, y por último, como poder. Cada una de estas acepciones tiene su correlato en la historia del cine etnográfico, marcando las perspectivas teóricas de cada momento.
De este modo se presentan tres sentidos de la mimesis desde campos académicos diferentes (principalmente el audiovisual, el teatral y el antropológico), los cuales se complementan en diversos puntos. Su estudio se hace relevante para re-pensar tanto la práctica antropológica como artística desde la antropología audiovisual contemporánea.

The concepts of expression, expressiveness and expressionism present the key terms on which contemporary architectural and artistic works are based. Although these are essential esthetic categories, the explanations of these concepts are not clearly defined in scientific and theoretical texts. When the term expressionism is mentioned, it often implies the stylistic direction in architecture and the arts, which was created and lasted until the beginning of the XX century in northern Europe (especially in Germany and the Netherlands), and in which the artists have twisted the reality with exaggerated and energetic strokes to express their inner visions, ideas or emotions. However, contemporary theoretical discussions in the arts and architecture point to the manifestation of expressionism in other periods and contexts as well. The basic aim of the text is a critical discourse of interrelations among esthetic categories of expression, expressiveness and expressionism; reexamination of their positions and roles in the system of visual expression, as well as the examination of the starting hypothesis in research, according to which expressionism in architecture is a radical creative tendency with distinctive choleric-sanguine characteristics.

Oslanjajući se na stavove poznatog umetničkog kritičara Herberta Rida (Herbert Read), po kome realizam, idealizam i ekspresionizam nisu posebni pravci u umetnosti, već predstavljaju stalne osnovne činioce u svim umetnostima, u ovom radu se razmatra mogućnost postojanja elementarnih stvaralačkih opredeljenja i u arhitekturi. Polazeći od osnovnih vidova opažanja i predstavljanja sveta oko nas, putem komparativne analize i primera iz drugih oblasti, izložena je teza da bi adekvatan pandan Ridovim osnovnim činiocima u umetnosti - realizmu, idealizmu i ekspresionizmu, u arhitekturi bili pojmovi mimezisa (mimikrije), asocijativnosti i ekspresije. U zavisnosti od društveno-političkih, kulturno-istorijskih i drugih okolnosti, neki od ovih činilaca s vremena na vreme izlaze na površinu i zaogrnuti miljeom vremena, javljaju se u nekom novom ili starom obliku, koji možemo prepoznati kao umetnički pravac ili stil.

This article proposes a reading of Edgar Allan Poe’s Oval Portrait according to the principle of “transgression”, which contributes to the uncanny effect of the story. The author argues that in The Oval Portrait opposite realities (the past and the present, facts and fiction, the real world and the world of dreams, life and death, art and reality) interrelate in a way that shows it is very difficult to draw a line between them. Using contemporary methodolo- gies (Derrida, Baudrillard), the author interprets the tale as a ‘story about a story’, in which the reality is incomprehensible and thus impossible to be imitated by art. Instead, it can be described by means of interpretation. In order to do so, one needs to “imprison” and “isolate” it, but also “seclude” oneself from it, leave it to its own devices, and even forget about it. Art, therefore, “reconstructs” reality, creating an analogical world, but, paradoxically – the reality this world draws upon is no longer there.

Soltanto con Spitzer e Auerbach le teorie del primo Romanticismo saranno portate alle conseguenze più naturali in ambito di critica letteraria, consolidandosi in un’attenzione alla mimesi intesa come vitalità dell’organismo testuale, come aderenza dello stesso alla vita vissuta. Questi aspetti possono venire alla luce qualora il lettore sia disposto ad interiorizzare il testo, smembrandolo e filtrandolo attraverso il proprio sistema di valori, per evidenziarne gli scarti dalla norma. Lo spazio comunicativo del testo letterario romantico - ovvero di un testo mimeticamente attivo, che porta iscritta nella propria struttura la possibilità di “una classicità che cresce illimitatamente” (F. Schlegel) - necessita della ricezione attiva e partecipe di un lettore sospeso tra immaginazione e ragione. Così vanno recepiti ed interpretati i testi dei nostri maggiori autori romantici, Leopardi e Manzoni (e così in effetti li leggeva un lettore sensibile come Luigi Pirandello), anche perché essi stessi, a loro volta, è proprio in quest’ottica che hanno letto (e usato) i classici, a cominciare dai Fragmenta di Petrarca.

The science of semantics is either concerned with performance, and therefore, not part of the competence model, according to transformational generative grammar, or it is the very heart of linguistics, according to functionalist linguistics, where the question of meaning is considered to be the first function when language takes place. Meaning also appears to be the first question that is asked when language takes place as literature. So semantics cannot stand aloof from literary studies, particularly because meaning is at its most complex in such an organization of language. This paper attempts to construct a model for approaching the literary based on the postulate of axiomatic functionalism.

At the heart of this article is a fairly straightforward assertion: that literature has a trans-verbal level at which it affects us as a work of art. Hence discussing a novel means bringing to the fore not only its overt narrative function but also its covert artistic function: a consideration of the work in light of its aesthetic intention. Following the phenomenological traditions of Roman Ingarden and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, I argue that aesthetic intention does not determine the significance of the art object, which is presumed to be dynamic within a spectrum of meanings. Rather, aesthetic intention takes into account the circumstance of the novel having been actuated into form by an " artistic gesture. " This " gesture " is not physical: it is a metaphorical motion referring to the artist's actuation of an aesthetic intention using one or another medium to give an artwork its perceivable form. In painting, this " gesture " can sometimes be traced through a work's visible brushstrokes or formal composition, but in literature such " gestures " can appear beyond the literal text and remain invisible even while they are experienced in the literary work. The conception of such a " gesture " is meant to incorporate the insights of literary and aesthetic theory, along with poststructuralism, in a critique that allows for structural analysis to also pursue a reconstituted significance. What appears below is more a program of the problem than a full treatment of its implications – a stretching of the canvas, so to speak. But I believe that the articulation of this kernel has a value in itself even if the full unraveling of the subject is yet to come.

En la Poética de Aristóteles la idea fundamental que encontramos es que la imitación es la base del placer de la que se derivan las diferentes formas de representación, diferentes estados éticos y morales como objeto de la creación artística.

Tomando como eje la noción de mímesis aristotélica, en este trabajo me interesa mostrar que es posible distinguir los intereses que animan la reapropiación de dicha noción en la filosofía de Paul Ricoeur y que, cada uno de ellos, le otorga a la mímesis un papel diferente en la construcción de la teoría de la narratividad. Siguiendo un esquema triádico, analizaré la irrupción de la mímesis en La metáfora viva (1975), Tiempo y Narración I (1983) y La memoria, la historia, el olvido (2000), en un intento por señalar la pluralidad de sentidos que confluyen en la recuperación de Ricoeur

PALABRAS CLAVE MÍMESIS, REAPROPIACIÓN, NARRATIVIDAD

Lexis, in accordo ai principi internazionali di trasparenza in sede di pubblicazioni di carattere scientifico, sottopone tutti i testi che giungono in redazione a un processo di doppia lettura anonima (double-blind peer review, ovvero refereeing) affidato a specialisti di Università o altri Enti italiani ed esteri. Circa l'80% dei revisori è esterno alla redazione della rivista. Ogni due anni la lista dei revisori che hanno collaborato con la rivista è pubblicata sia online sia in calce a questa pagina.

The aim of this paper is to investigate how the mimesis principle appears in musical interpretative practice, analyzing its function in musical reproduction, event what we almost intend to call a performance event. Thus, we focus on the Theory of Musical Reproduction from Theodor Adorno (1903-1969), in whose notes the mimetic element arise as a key category (Germany, 2001; UK, 2006). Great part of the notability of Adorno’s theory lies in the fact of having brought the concept of mimesis to modern musical interpretation and theory. According to Adorno, the musical development of the Western world is strictly tied to the development of its notation. Through it, Adorno argues, are two elements in themselves very paradoxical: mimesis and rationality. While mimesis refers to the playful and gestural elements of music, present in the medieval neumas, the concept of rationality refers to the normative, measurable and disciplinary elements that written music brought to us. In short, in musical practice, as well as in performance history itself, mimesis and rationality interact. The closer this relation of dialectic interaction, the better the reproduction in its entirety (performance). In fact, all indicates that the mimesis principle only apparently “went out of style”. In reality, its presence was never lacking in musical reproduction of a written work from a score.
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Neste paper investiguemos como o princípio mimético se evidencia na prática interpretativa da música e qual a sua função nos diversos aspectos da reprodução de uma composição musical, evento também chamado de interpretação ou performance. Nesta tarefa, focalizemos a Teoria da Reprodução Musical, de Theodor Adorno (1903-1969), em cujas anotações o elemento mimético desponta como uma categoria-chave (Alemanha 2001; UK 2006). Boa parte da notabilidade das anotações de Adorno está no fato de ter trazido o conceito de mimesis para a teoria da interpretação musical. De acordo com sua teoria, o desenvolvimento da música do Ocidente está vinculado estreitamente ao desenvolvimento da sua notação, evidenciando-se em dois elementos em si paradoxais: mimesis e racionalidade. Enquanto o conceito de mimesis remete ao aspecto lúdico e gestual da prática musical, presente nos neumas medievais, o conceito de racionalidade se manifesta nos aspectos normativos e mensurais de uma prática musical regida rigorosamente pelo paradigma da reprodução de uma obra. É no processo da reprodução musical que os mais diversos paradoxos emergem e interagem entre si. Quanto mais nítida a relação dialética de seus elementos, melhor a reprodução musical como um todo (performance). Concluímos que a mimesis tinha apenas aparentemente saído "de cartaz”. Ao menos no tocante à prática interpretativa, tudo indica que o princípio mimético nunca deixou de estar presente no processo tanto da reprodução quanto da interpretação ou recriação musical de uma obra.

Ein Panorama verbindet in einem Bildraum mehrere Szenen, die eine Handlung erzählen. Zeitlich nacheinander stattfindende Ereignisse werden in einem Bildraum dargestellt. Die ersten Passionspanoramen entstehen im 15. Jahrhundert, vor allem im Medium der Tafelmalerei, als Tapisserie und in kleineren Formaten. Für dieselbe Zeit werden auch eine Zunahme perspektivischer Darstellungsmodi, das genaue Studium von Naturphänomenen und ein wachsendes Interesse an naturalistischen Darstellungsformen nachgewiesen. Diese Darstellungsmodi scheinen auf eine grösstmögliche Einheit von dargestelltem Raum und dargestellter Zeit zu zielen. Diese Einheit scheint zunächst im Widerspruch zu der im Scherzliger Panorama dargestellten Handlungsabfolge zu stehen. Das Passionspanorama in Scherz- ligen ist jedoch ein Schlüsselwerk, um diesen Widerspruch aufzulösen und die Verbindungen zwischen imaginierten Ereignissen, ihren Bezügen zu den dargestellten Bildräumen, den historischen Orten und der Raumwahrneh- mung in der Gegenwart des Betrachters besser zu verstehen.

Abstract: This paper opens with a re-thinking of the etymology of “educare”, in order to reflect on the existence of a permanent in educational processes.
This exploration continues with a reading of some pages in Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Poetics where these authors recognise a crucial and problematic dynamism for human education: mimesis. In the closing section, with the help of contemporary authors, I reflect on the possible
implications of this recognition.

In crisistijden worden gevoelens van onmacht, angst, onvrede, onzekerheid en onveiligheid sterker en de vraag naar krachtdadig gezag groter. Het sterker worden van deze gevoelens gaat dikwijls hand in hand met toename van geweld. Waar komt geweld vandaan? De Frans-Amerikaanse letterkundige, antropoloog en cultuurfilosoof René Girard (º1923) heeft zich intensief met deze vraag bezig gehouden. Hij kwam op grond van studies van de wereldliteratuur tot de conclusie dat onze cultuur berust op zondebok-geweld en dat religie de saus is waarmee we dat mechanisme proberen te verdoezelen. Om te begrijpen hoe hij tot deze stelling kwam, geef ik kort zijn visie weer.