卷 34, 编号 5 (2024)

The author of the article analyzes mimesis in terms of behavior that does not aim to express and assert selfhood or identity, but only pretends to do so. “Being mimetic” means: “Stop being yourself and be like yourself!” The article reveals the implications and consequences of such behavior or such mimesis. The author recalls the famous anecdote when Theodor Adorno encounters a dog and urges it to be mimetic, placing it in the context of the relationship between mimesis and slapstick comedy. Through the rupture between “being” and “pretending” that emerges in comedy, mimesis becomes a liberating and pacifying power.

Another crucial characteristic of mimesis is the transformation of an activity or certain mode of being into an event. The mimesis shows something more than the activity itself. The comedians Beckman and Chaplin do not simply walk around the stage, they come walking: they raise walking to the level of an event. The audience experiences not only what is truly visible, but also what is immaterially present in the atmosphere of the landscape, which is embodied in the encompassing eroticization of the action. Walking, stroll appears here for a reason: the author notes their deep affinity with mimesis — simultaneously coming-and-going, absent and present, a walking to and a walking away. The author notes the gap that arises between mimetic behavior, which means to pretend to be what one is, and pretending of the actor and the comic. This gap reveals the place from which the actor or comic calls for “being mimetic” — the place of art and Kierkegaard’s “refusal” of it.

The article undertakes a review of contemporary feminist theory regarding its relationship to the question of the use of the given: whether existing models of femininity can be a resource for subversive imitation in the process of emancipation, or should they be rejected as ideological constructs. These strategies lead up to a broader philosophical opposition between historicism and immanentism (Michel Foucault and the field of cultural studies) on the one hand, and theories that put their stakes on the subject and the event (Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek) on the other. The author analyzes the trajectory of the development of the first strategy in the feminist theory of the third wave in its opposition to the revolutionary-minded radical feminism of the second wave, and comes to the conclusion about the fundamentally melancholic affectation of Foucauldian feminism of Judith Butler and the like.

From the Butlerian parodic repetition, the author moves to a more positive idea of mimesis in the theory of sexual difference by Luce Irigaray and her followers Rosi Braidotti and Elizabeth Grosz, and then criticizes the latter from the point of view of the late Irigaray and her concept of real sexual difference. The article argues that Irigaray is not a post-structuralist philosopher of plurality, and that her early concept of mimesis should be understood in conjunction with her later ideas about creating feminine ideals that could allow real sexual difference to unfold culturally. Ultimately, the question of the emancipatory use of the given is resolved by synthesizing Irigaray’s ideas with Jacques Lacan’s theory of sublimation. Imitation is understood as being able to elevate existing objects, practices and images to the rank of sublime, and thus create a rupture in the given, inventing new signifiers in art, love and politics.

Violence in its genesis is defined by René Girard as a purely human phenomenon, which is conditioned by the ultimate identity of the subjects, the non-recognition of which pushes them to establish a difference, which is impossible due to the illusory nature of the latter. Thus, the mimetic crisis (the crisis of differences), which is almost losing its discontinuity, reveals only a homogeneous form of violence, and it itself is endowed with hypostatic agency by Girard, which means that it’s impossible to overcome the current situation of looping mutual violence from within. The root of violence is what Girard defines as the mimesis of appropriation. The only way to cope with the destructive effects of the human mimetic nature is an individual rejection of violence by imitating a transcendent model unattainable to mimetic rivalry, which violates the principle of reciprocity of mimetism. Consequently, the heterogeneity of the subject necessary to get rid of striving to the extreme appears in Girardian theory only when the metaphysical dimension opens.

The author suggests a radical revision of the principles of mimetic theory. The main method of redefining the foundations of mimetic theory turns out to be its ontologization, which ultimately makes it possible to form a socio-political space for resolving the mimetic crisis and to show the possibility of an alternative to the logic of possession. Thus, during the reconstruction of the ontological basis of violence, it is revealed that it is inherent primarily in being itself as part of the mechanism for the production of being, and, consequently, it is neutral, which allows the author to propose a project of an immanent way out of striving to the extreme, by establishing the heterogeneity of both violence and the subject.

The article deals with the original version of psychoanalysis by Alexander Gorsky (1886–1943), a philosopher of Russian cosmism. His psychoanalytic theory is considered in close connection with the teachings of Nikolai Fedorov. It is discovered that the general principle of Gorsky’s theory lies in resurrection as the main idea of Russian cosmism. Gorsky puts forward three theses about the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud: autoerotic mirroring, intracorporeal space and organ projection by Ernst Kapp. Gorsky’s theory of psychoanalysis is based on the positivistic premise that it is possible to see without eyes, with the help of receptors located in the skin. On this hypothesis, Gorsky builds his theory of the “phallic pupil,” in the center of which is the body, which not only sees by many phalluses, but also produces images that are not inferior to real ones. The most important figure here is the muse, the virgin, the woman.

Gorsky’s psychoanalytic theory is placed in the general context of psychoanalytic discourse and contemporary thought about sexuality. The general mimetic origins of the theories of Gorsky, Sigmund Freud, and René Girard are taken as a theoretical framework. It is disclosed that the mimetic principle is preserved in Gorsky’s theory, but he moves it into the sphere of the non-material. A hypothesis is put forward that with this gesture Gorsky frees up space for the magnetic-cloud eroticism he invented, as earthly and practical, but free from original sin. It is also noted that, being no less original and radical than the ideological legacy of Wilhelm Reich and Georges Bataille, and comparable in degree of originality to the theories of Paul Preciado or Catherine Malabu, Gorsky’s theory remains practically unknown.

The author analyzes the early concept of mimicry of the French philosopher Roger Caillois, drawing attention to the ontological and epistemological significance of the image in this theory, which is justified by the phenomenon of the “lyrical power” of objects and analyzed through the concept of “objective ideogram.” Considering the death drive in mimicry, the author formulates the concept of inorganic magnetism, in which the being is drawn not by death, but by an inorganic form of existence. For an unfolding of magnetism, the author turns to the philosopher Gaston Bachelard. According to Bachelard, the experience of space is the process of generating dreams, which, in his view, are not isolated in the workings of consciousness, but have a material basis. The experience of valued spaces is dialectical, and represents a movement between the concrete-abstract, the intimate-extensive, the personal-impersonal. The author analyzes Bachelard’s concept of archetypes, bringing it closer to the biosemiotic interpretation of this concept as non-linguistic meanings that provide interspecies communication.

The author defines mimicry as a “fragile” experience, which is justified not only by the fleeting nature of feeling itself, but by the contradiction inherent in mimesis. Mimesis combines opposing tendencies — the movement toward immanence and the production of difference. Regarding the former, the author draws attention to the procedural and transformative essence of mimesis, drawing on the study of Vladimir Weidlé and contemporary approaches of Nidesh Lawtoo and Michael Yampolsky. The second tendency is analyzed from the opposition of the subordination of mimesis to identity in the thought of Plato and Plotinus and the emancipation of difference by Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida.

The analytics of the phenomenon of mimicry and mimetic processes, carried out in humanitarian thought in the 20th century — in the works of Roger Caillois and Walter Benjamin, provides a basis for understanding mimicry in an anti-adaptive manner, as a conflicting relationship between internal and external. Psychoanalytic study of neurotic and psychotic structures also points to the significance of mimetic processes for the inner life of a person and connects them with the fundamental processes of introjection and projection that give rise to psychic reality. The analysis of these processes in the works of Sandor Ferenczi shows what forms the mimetic tendency takes in the formation of the psychotic’s and neurotic’s reality.

In mimicry we find a dual tendency to perceive and to avoid perception. On the basis of Wilfred Bion’s work, it is revealed that evasion of perception implies activity to isolate the object, which leads to the conclusion that this evasion is impossible in fact. Based on these studies, this article attempts to reveal the dramatic paradoxicality of mimicry, associated, on the one hand, with the tendency of redundancy and immersion in the context, and on the other hand, with the tendency to penetrate and control external objects.