walter benjamin on the mimetic faculty pdf

In contradistinction to Plato’s concern that mimetic endeavors pose a danger of giving rise to a world of appearances or illusory images, 1 which could erode adherence to the strictly conceptual models (or Ideas) that he saw as a preferred basis for social ordering and education, the view which arises in Aristotle appears to give license to the positive and creative potentiality of a human capacity for mimesis. In so doing, mimesis is a “process of re-creation,” which introduces “embellishment, improvement and the generalization of individual qualities” (ibid: 26). For Aristotle, such processes have a tendency to simultaneously produce the possible and the general, to give rise to the literary fable or plot, to render their objects as fiction (as adulterated or creatively-inflected representation) in which only a mediated reference to ‘objective’ reality persists.

Such a view finds echoes in Aristotle, who concerned himself mainly with mimesis’ role in image-production and literary creation. Mimos, or mimesis, may be said to generate impure, adulterated, or creatively inflected representations, or imitations, which exaggerate or project qualities that are nonetheless essentially similar between the object and its representation through mimetic endeavour. Gerald Else, for example, suggests three possible implications associated with the term ‘mimesis’: This view is disputed, however, as others refuse such a narrow definition, even in this early context (Gebauer and Wulf 1995: 6, 25-30). 525-456BC), in the context of music and dance – prompting some scholars to fix an early meaning in reference to acts of representation through dance. The root term makes some of its earliest recorded appearances, for example in the Delian hymn or in a fragment from the philosopher Aeschylus (c. The term, derived from the word ‘ mimos’, meaning mime or mimic, then (as now) revolved around questions of imitation, representation, and expression. Although it is difficult to identify any essential origin or core that is preeminent and enduring in the cultural and intellectual history of the concept, it is possible to reach back to Greek antiquity for a pre-platonic root of the term mimesis.

In essence, the notion may be described as referring to a capacity to produce and to recognize similarity. The ‘ mimetic faculty’ is an elusive concept, foregrounding a human inclination to mimic or to imitate, to produce symbolic forms, representations and artefacts that mirror and also perhaps transform their objects.

Walter benjamin on the mimetic faculty pdf