In this HOM piece for a Theory & Event special issue on the Storming of the Capitol on January 6, Nidesh Lawtoo furthers mimetic studies by discussing the role of Dionysian intoxications, conspiracy theories, and dispossession in the company of Nietzsche, Deleuze and Black Mirror. Article available OA here
5 years ago the HOM project promised a new theory of imitation to face some of the main challenges of the present. Here it is, with Leuven UP! In this book launch, HOM/GM team members Niki Hadikoesoemo, Marina García-Granero and Giulia Rignano talk with Nidesh Lawtoo about the main insights and takeaways of Homo Mimeticus: A New Theory of Imitation (Freely available Open Access here). All are welcome, reception to follow, and on hybrid mode More information including Zoom link here.
In this special issue of Europe, edited by Stephane Massonet, prominent Bataille scholars including Denis Hollier, Michel Surya, Jean-Christophe Bailly, Mathilde Girard, and others testify to the timeliness of this untimely thinker. Nidesh Lawtoo adds a chapter on Bataille’s mimetic community.
Special issue of Effects on Mimicries edited by Jeffrey Stuker and Jan Tumlir with an introductory essay on Roger Caillois and mimicry by Nidesh Lawtoo, available here.
The articles in this special issue offer powerful transdisciplinary testimony to the rich potential of the contemporary return to mimesis, and in doing so suggest ways in which the mimetic turn and the post-literary turn may be understood as critically supplementing each other. In this short accompanying video Guest Editor Nidesh Lawtoo offers a foretaste of what readers can expect.
This special issue, guest-edited by Nidesh Lawtoo sets conceptual foundations for the mimetic turn in posthuman studies. Including key figures in posthuman studies as well as a final dialogue with Katherine Hayles, the issue shows, from multiple perspectives that mimesis is central to our process of becoming posthuman. Available OPEN ACCESS HERE.
Based on a HOM conference held at KU Leuven, this special issue of CounterText on The Mimetic Condition (ed. Nidesh Lawtoo) joins forces with Jean-Luc Nancy, Gunter Gebauer, Christoph Wulf, and many others in order to promote a mimetic turn, or re-turn of attention to mimesis across different areas of critical theory. In the process, it proposes steps to a new theory of homo mimeticus to face some of the main–pandemic, political, environmental…– crises that cast a shadow on the present and future. Sample chapters available HERE& an Introductory VIDEO HERE.
In this article, Nidesh Lawtoo argues that the human, all too human vulnerability to mimesis (imitation) is a central and so far underdiagnosed element internal to the Covid-19 pandemic crisis. Supplementing medical accounts of viral contagion, the chapter develops a genealogy of the concept of mimesis – from antiquity to modernity to the present – that is attentive to both its pathological and therapeutic or patho-logical properties. Read full article here.
In this article, Niki Hadikoesoemo discusses the notion of the fluidity of sexual identity in light of Luce Irigaray’s account of sexual difference. Taking mimesis in its reproductive and productive sides as a guiding thread, she examines the historicity of sexual identity fluidity in relation to femininity in Irigaray’s second-wave feminism to show that sexual fluidity has to be configured by the concept of sexual difference if it wants to be productive, creative, and transformative. Full article here.
In this OA article for Film-Philosophy Nidesh Lawtoo revisits the case of Woody Allen’s mockumentary Zelig (1983) via Nietzsche’s diagnostic of mimicry and Arendt’s analysis of the banality of eivl. It argues that the case of the “human chameleon” remains contemporary for both philosophical and political reasons for it reveals the centrality of mirroring reflexes in the rise of old and new fascisms.
