Violence and the Mimetic Unconscious, Volume 2

The Affective Hypothesis

Nidesh Lawtoo (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

316 Seiten

2023
Michigan State University Press (Verlag)
978-1-61186-465-6 (ISBN)

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Representations of violence have subliminal contagious effects, but what kind of unconscious captures this imperceptible affective dynamic in the digital age? In volume two of a Janus-faced diagnostic of the cathartic and contagious effects of (new) media violence, Nidesh Lawtoo traces a genealogy of a long-neglected, embodied, relational, and highly mimetic unconscious that, well before the discovery of mirror neurons, posited mirroring reactions as a via regia to a phantom ego. Rather than being the product of a solipsistic discovery, the unconscious turns out to have haunted philosophers, psychologists, and artists for a long time. This book proposes a genealogy of untimely philosophical physicians that goes from Plato to Nietzsche, Bernheim to FÉrÉ, Freud to Bataille, Arendt to Girard, affect theory to the neurosciences. In their company, Lawtoo promotes the transdisciplinary field of mimetic studies by reevaluating the unconscious actions and reactions of homo mimeticus. As a new theory of mimesis emerges, Violence and the Mimetic Unconscious offers a searching diagnosis as to why the pathos of (new) media violence—from film to video games, police murders to the storming of the U.S Capitol—continues to cast a material shadow on the present and future.

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).

Erscheinungsdatum	03.10.2023
Reihe/Serie	Studies in Violence, Mimesis & Culture
Zusatzinfo	30 illustrations
Verlagsort	East Lansing, MI
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	272 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Kommunikation / Medien ► Medienwissenschaft
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Allgemeines / Lexika
ISBN-10	1-61186-465-8 / 1611864658
ISBN-13	978-1-61186-465-6 / 9781611864656
Zustand	Neuware