The HOM Project started a series of video interviews on the contemporary relevance of imitation (mimesis). Join of for the screening of “The Critic as Mime: J. Hillis Miller” Friday 24 May, 4 pm, Justus Lipsius room (08.16), Erasmushuis, Blijde-Inkomstraat 21, Leuven. You can see a trailer here. 
In this interview with EU Research, Nidesh Lawtoo explains the main aspects of the HOM project by outlining, in broad and accessible strokes, the good and bad effects of unconscious mimesis investigated by the HOM team in areas as diverse as philosophy, the arts, and politics. He argues that the power of mimesis to transform subjectivity is “not only a scholarly problem, but a human, all too human problem.” Full interview available here. 
This article reconsiders the power of myth in light of the rise of new fascist leaders who cast a shadow on the contemporary political scene. Part of a special issue on Myth and Modernity (ed. Hannes Opelz), Nidesh Lawtoo looks back to Lacoue-Labarthe’s and Nancy’s, “The Nazi Myth,” to account for the affective power of myth that is currently being reloaded both in Europe and the US–an argument internal to a forthcoming book on (New) Fascism (2019). Article available here.
In this article Nidesh Lawtoo establishes a genealogical connection between the emerging concept of plasticity and the ancient philosophical concept of mimesis in order to further an ongoing dialogue between contemporary continental philosophy and the neurosciences. Article available here.
In this special issue of Modern Language Notes (ed. N. Lawtoo), contemporary figures like Jean-Luc Nancy, Paola Marrati, Jane Bennett and Alain Badiou, among others, rethink the relation between “poetics and politics” by drawing on Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe’s mimetic account of the current becoming fictional of the political. You can read the introduction here.
Why is mimesis a political problem? In this first of a series of interviews for the ERC project Homo Mimeticus, Nidesh Lawtoo meets political theorist William E. Connolly (Johns Hopkins University) in Boston (APSA 2018) to talk about the political dangers of affective contagion, mimetic identification and new fascism central to his latest book, Aspirational Fascism (2017). Check out the full interview & subscribe to our YouTube channel to receive updates:
In this chapter for The Palgrave Handbook of Mimetic Theory and Religion (eds. James Alison, Wolfgang Palaver), titled “The Classical World: Sacrifice, Religion, Philosophy,” Nidesh Lawtoo takes the work of René Girard, read with Friedrich Nietzsche, Jane Harrison and other philologists, as a starting point to offer a genealogy of the role sacrifice plays in the classical period. The patho-logy of sacrificial violence, Lawtoo argues, both confirms and supplements mimetic theory. You can read the chapter here.
In this interview for the Leuven Philosophy Newsletter, HOM team member Niki Hadikoesoemo asks Nidesh Lawtoo to sketch the main outlines of the Homo Mimeticus project and to discuss the relevance of mimesis for contemporary philosophy, politics, education, the unconscious, as well as for forging interdisciplinary connections within and beyond the humanities. You can read the full interview here.
We’re pleased to announce that Nidesh Lawtoo’s book Conrad’s Shadow: Catastrophe, Mimesis, Theory (MSU P, 2016) wins the Adam Gillon Award in Conrad Studies for best book of 2015-2017 (co-winner), a prize delivered by the Joseph Conrad Society of America. You can read the introduction here.
Nidesh Lawtoo publishes new essay on Oscar Wilde’s fascination for theatrical forms of mimesis (lies, identification, impersonation, performance) in Symploke 26.1-2 (2018): 307-328. Read full article here
