Posthuman Mimesis II - Connections: A Dialogue between Nidesh Lawtoo and Katherine Hayles

Hayles, Katherine; Lawtoo, Nidesh

doi:10.33182/joph.v2i2.1939

Cited by 3 publications

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“…It is thus no accident that Lawtoo 105 journals.tplondon.com/jp Hayels frames her genealogy of the posthuman rooted in different waves of cybernetics' forgetting of the body against ancient idealist dreams of a disembodied consciousness she traces all the way back to a type of "abstraction" ultimately originating in a "Platonic Form" (Hayles, 1999, 12, 13). I shall return to this Platonic genealogy in the dialogue with Hayles that concludes this special issue (Hayles & Lawtoo, 2022). For the moment suffices to say that Hayles' genealogy is Janus-faced for it looks back to the origins of western metaphysics in order to better see what lies ahead in our processes of becoming posthuman.…”

Section: Mimetic Pathos: or The Body Reloadedmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…I suggest that it is because the subject, in its evolutionary prehistory, emerges from a network of communal mimetic processes that render it "relational," "porous," and "plastic" (Lawtoo, 2013(Lawtoo, , 2017(Lawtoo, , 2022, that she is prone to becoming posthuman in the first place. This, at least, is what a genealogy of differential anti-Platonic theories of mimesis that directly informs homo mimeticus and go from Friedrich Nietzsche to Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida to Luce Irigaray, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe to Jean-Baudrillard, and is currently in dialogue with key figures in literary theory (Miller & Lawtoo 2021), continental philosophy (Nancy & Lawtoo, 2021), new materialism (Bennett 2017;Connolly & Lawtoo 2019), feminist philosophy (Cavarero & Lawtoo 2021), and last but not least, posthuman studies (Hayles & Lawtoo 2022), among other emerging voices that are currently contributing to the mimetic turn or re-turn to a differential conception of mimesis in various areas of critical theory. 3 What follows, then, takes as a starting point this recent re-turn to an immanent conception of mimesis attentive to the embodied, affective, relational, and metamorphic properties of imitation-or minor mimesis-that is now emerging in posthuman studies as well.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As the pre-Freudian tradition of the mimetic unconscious is physiological rather than psychological in nature the similarities with the cognitive nonconscious are so numerous as to not enforce a distinction. Hayles and I shall return to this conjunction in the concluding dialogue(Hayles and Lawtoo 2022).…”

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confidence: 96%

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Posthuman Mimesis I: Concepts for the Mimetic Turn

Lawtoo

2022

JoPH

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A mimetic turn is emerging in posthuman studies. Taking as a starting point a recent re-turn to an immanent, embodied, and relational conception of mimesis constitutive of the ERC-funded project, Homo Mimeticus, this paper proposes three related conceptual foundations to further a “mimetic turn” already at play in sf simulations and now operative in embodied imitations as well. Building on pioneering work on the centrality of an “embodied” and “cognitive nonconscious” (Hayles 1999, 2017) on the one hand, and a “relational” conception of “posthuman subjectivity” (Braidotti 2019) on the other, I argue that mimesis, understood as an unconscious tendency to mimic others (be they human or nonhuman) provides a decisive and still missing link to account for the capacity of (post)humans to become other in the first place. The concepts of “mimetic pathos,” the “mimetic unconscious,” and “hypermimesis” provide three related conceptual steps toward a mimetic turn in posthuman studies, which as this special issue shows, is already underway.

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Section: Mimetic Pathos: or The Body Reloadedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Posthuman Mimesis I: Concepts for the Mimetic Turn

Lawtoo

2022

JoPH

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“…In addition to J. Hillis Miller for literary theory, it involves contributions of key figures in areas as diverse as continental philosophy,, political theory, , feminist philosophy, posthuman studies, among other perspectives constitutive of the "mimetic condition," see. For a representative sample, seeNancy and Lawtoo (2022),Cavarero and Lawtoo (2021),Hayles and Lawtoo (2022), as well as the special issues ofMLN 132.5 (2017), CounterText 8.1 (2022, and Journal of Posthumanism 2.2 (2022) . See also https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/716181/results and http://www.homomimeticus.eu/publications/…”

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confidence: 99%

The Angel as Host: J. Hillis Miller's Last Flight

Lawtoo¹

2022

symploke

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The Angel as Host J. Hillis Miller's Last FlightA critical and theoretical agon staged during an MLA panel on "The Limits of Pluralism" in 1976 shook the foundations of literary study, generating a spiraling vortex that, after numerous turns-from the linguistic turn to the ethical turn, the affective turn to the cognitive turn, the new materialist turn to the environmental turn-continues to cast a shadow on the present and future of criticism and theory. While theory has long been proclaimed dead since then, it has not ceased to resurrect, albeit under different masks that are still genealogically indebted to what had, perhaps, the force of an event at the time and deserves to be revisited today. This agon, or contest, involved the confrontation of two exemplary literary critics who represented antagonistic methodological principles in theory, but also shared a number of assumptions about the importance of pluralism in their critical practices. On one side of the agon, the eminent critic, M. H. Abrams, still known today for his landmark study on Romanticism, The Mirror and the Lamp (1953), offered a strong critique of a then rising and already notorious school of criticism known as "deconstruction." The talk, titled "The Deconstructive Angel," (1977) offered a critique that was itself a mirroring reply to a prior deconstructive reading of Abrams' work. The "angel" who had "deconstructed" Abrams's humanistic "metaphysical presuppositions" (Miller 1972, 6) in an incisive review of Naturalism Supernaturalism (Abrams, 1971) was a younger but increasingly influential critic: a Professor at Yale who had already to this day, remain perhaps the distinctive feature of the humanities more generally. This also mean that the theoretical stakes had practical consequences. In question were, in fact, venerable institutions like the Western canon, for instance, but also the stability of disciplinary boundaries, nationalist approaches to literary history, and by extension the status of cultural otherness, multilingualism, comparative perspectives etc. all of which had the potential to overturn hiring practices, teaching curricula, and methods of interpretations for decades to come. As Abrams foresaw at the opening of his talk: "who can predict how many others will be drawn into the vortex before it comes to an end?" (1977, 425).Published in the then recently founded journal, Critical Inquiry, the vortex quickly picked up speed. If it spiraled into the "theory wars" that dominated the 1980s, the effect of the vortex was to fuel the rapidly expanding field of "theory" that, under different masks-from deconstruction to new historicism, feminism to queer theory, critical race theory to postcolonial studies, among other schools-dominated the twilight of the last century. Despite the multiple proclamations of the "death of theory" at the dawn of the twenty-first century, the question of what "reading" entails in its relation to "knowledge" is still at the center of debates fifty years later, periodically resurfacing in the same journa...

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Theorizing mimesis across social studies contexts of mimicry, imitation, and simulation

Varga,

Adams

2023

Theory & Research in Social Education

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Posthuman Mimesis II - Connections: A Dialogue between Nidesh Lawtoo and Katherine Hayles

Cited by 3 publications

References 2 publications

Posthuman Mimesis I: Concepts for the Mimetic Turn

Posthuman Mimesis I: Concepts for the Mimetic Turn

The Angel as Host: J. Hillis Miller's Last Flight

Theorizing mimesis across social studies contexts of mimicry, imitation, and simulation

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