Violence and the Mimetic Unconscious, Volume 2: The Affective Hypothesis

Nidesh Lawtoo's book explores the embodied, relational, and mimetic unconscious that posits mirroring reactions as a via regia to a phantom ego, proposing a genealogy of untimely philosophical physicians from Plato to Nietzsche, Bernheim to FÉrÉ, Freud to Bataille, Arendt to Girard, and affect theory to the neurosciences. It offers a searching diagnosis of why the pathos of (new) media violence continues to cast a material shadow on the present and future.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 318 pages
Publication date: 31 October 2023
Publisher: Michigan State University Press

Violence has a subliminal contagious effect, but what kind of unconscious captures this imperceptible affective dynamic in the digital age? In volume two of a Janus-faced diagnostic of the cathartic and contagious effects of (new) media violence, Nidesh Lawtoo traces a genealogy of a long-neglected, embodied, relational, and highly mimetic unconscious that, well before the discovery of mirror neurons, posited mirroring reactions as a via regia to a phantom ego. Rather than being the product of a solipsistic discovery, the unconscious turns out to have haunted philosophers, psychologists, and artists for a long time. This book proposes a genealogy of untimely philosophical physicians that goes from Plato to Nietzsche, Bernheim to FÉrÉ, Freud to Bataille, Arendt to Girard, affect theory to the neurosciences. In their company, Lawtoo promotes the transdisciplinary field of mimetic studies by reevaluating the unconscious actions and reactions of homo mimeticus. As a new theory of mimesis emerges, Violence and the Mimetic Unconscious offers a searching diagnosis as to why the pathos of (new) media violence—from film to video games, police murders to the storming of the U.S. Capitol—continues to cast a material shadow on the present and future.

Violence has a subliminal contagious effect, but what kind of unconscious captures this imperceptible affective dynamic in the digital age? In volume two of a Janus-faced diagnostic of the cathartic and contagious effects of (new) media violence, Nidesh Lawtoo traces a genealogy of a long-neglected, embodied, relational, and highly mimetic unconscious that, well before the discovery of mirror neurons, posited mirroring reactions as a via regia to a phantom ego. Rather than being the product of a solipsistic discovery, the unconscious turns out to have haunted philosophers, psychologists, and artists for a long time. This book proposes a genealogy of untimely philosophical physicians that goes from Plato to Nietzsche, Bernheim to FÉrÉ, Freud to Bataille, Arendt to Girard, affect theory to the neurosciences. In their company, Lawtoo promotes the transdisciplinary field of mimetic studies by reevaluating the unconscious actions and reactions of homo mimeticus. As a new theory of mimesis emerges, Violence and the Mimetic Unconscious offers a searching diagnosis as to why the pathos of (new) media violence—from film to video games, police murders to the storming of the U.S. Capitol—continues to cast a material shadow on the present and future.

Weight: 440g
Dimension: 152 x 229 x 21 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781611864656