We have been taught the importance of originality, but can there be something original without a model that paves the way? In this talk, Nidesh Lawtoo, concludes the ERC project Homo Mimeticus , not so much by painting, but rather, telling the story of a single, marginalized, mimetic protagonist that has been relegated to the backstage of academic discussions in the past, yet deserves to be brought on the TED-stage to inspire the future.
This is the third volume of a trilogy on Homo Mimeticus, edited by Nidesh Lawtoo and Willow Verkerk. In collaboration with the French philosopher Catherine Malabou, international contributors argue that plasticity—understood in its double capacity to receive form and to give form—plays a transformative role in the many lives of homo mimeticus qua homo plasticus. BLOG available here. FULL TEXT downloadable here.
Dodo Through the Looking-Glass: A Mirror for Modern and Contemporary Culture. Inaugural Lecture by Prof. dr. Nidesh Lawtoo on the acceptance of his position as Professor Modern/Contemporary European Literature and Culture at Leiden University on Friday, 14 November 2025. Video available here. Text available here
In the wake of the ACLA panel on Mimetic Studies we open a CfP for contributions to Trópos: Journal of Hermeneutics and Philosophical Critique, for a special issue titled, “Mimetic Studies: New Theoretical Steps for the Mimetic Turn.” More information is available here.
We look forward to your submissions!
In this last dialogue for HOM Videos, Nidesh Lawtoo meets Judith Butler in Paris to account for the role a different, psychic, performative and troubling conception of mimesis play in their influential work. Taking a genealogical approach to Butler’s latest book to date, Who Is Afraid of Gender, Lawtoo asks Butler to revisit the role mimetic and expressive theories of aesthetic play in their influential book, Gender Trouble (I).
In this 5th biannual Girard lecture, organized by the Dutch Girard Society, Nidesh Lawtoo steps back to the insights that, as of 2016, lead him to use the term “(new) fascism” as a warning against Donald Trump’s anti-democratic tendencies, which culminated in an insurrection on January 6. Despite many critical warnings and fascist actions, the efficacy of the affective and infective powers of mimesis never ceases to surprise. Hence, the urgency of new mimetic studies. More information HERE.
It is indeed tempting to affirm that on and about November 2022 (post)human character changed. The revolution in A.I. simulations calls for an update of the ancient realization that humans are imitative animals, or homo mimeticus. But mimetic posthumanism is not limited to A.I.: from simulation to identification, affective contagion to viral mimesis, robotics to hypermimesis, a plurality of posthuman theorists–from Katherine Hayles to Francesca Ferrando, Ivan Callus to Patricia Pisters, among others—argue that it is because of our all-too-human tendency to imitate that we are caught in a mimetic process of becoming posthuman in the first place. Free download HERE
In this second installment of the Homo Mimeticus series (co-edited with Marina Garcia-Granero), international scholars working in philosophy, literary theory, classics, cultural studies, sociology, political theory, and the neurosciences engage creatively with the theory of homo mimeticus to further the transdisciplinary field of mimetic studies. See FREE download & BLOG.
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