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Tag Archives: Nidesh Lawtoo
The Critic and the Mime: J.Hillis Miller in Dialogue with Nidesh Lawtoo
In this interview for the Minnesota Review, J. Hillis Miller and Nidesh Lawtoo take one of the most influential concepts in Western aesthetics, mimēsis, as an Ariadne’s thread to retrace the major turns in Miller’s career and, by extension, to promote a re-turn of mimesis in literary theory and criticism. More here .
Vibrant Mimesis: A Walk With Jane Bennett (Nidesh Lawtoo)
Part of a panel on Jane Bennett’s Influx & Efflux (2020) organized at Johns Hopkins University, ERC grantee Nidesh Lawtoo establishes a bridge between new materialism and mimetic theory. He argues that the influences internal to Bennett’s account of a porous self, tap into the unconscious powers of mimesis to induce sympathy towards (non)human others, along contagious lines central to the mimetic turn as well.
The Mimetic Turn: Reloading Mimesis (Nidesh Lawtoo)
In this opening session of the Homo Mimeticus Seminar (KU Leuven), PI Nidesh Lawtoo introduces some of the main concepts constitutive of the mimetic turn, or re-turn of mimesis in critical theory, including mimetic pathos, pathos of distance, mimetic patho(-)logies, and their relevance for the COVID-19 pandemic crisis.
Toward the Mimetic Posthuman (Carole Guesse)
As part of the Homo Mimeticus Seminar (KU Leuven), Postdoctoral researcher Carole Guesse (@CrlGss) provides a short introduction to the posthuman and its discourses: transhumanism and posthumanism. She then explores the various ways in which the posthuman – in both theory and (science) fiction – can be characterized as mimetic.
Premiere: Jean-Luc Nancy on Philosophy & Mimesis Video
Tune in on Thursday, October 8, at 8pm for the premiere of the latest episode of HOM Videos, Jean-Luc Nancy: Philosophy and Mimesis. Topics discussed include the relation between philosophy and literature, myth, politics and community. Sign up via this link:
HOM Seminar Reloaded: from Poststructuralism to Posthumanism
Join us for the first session of the HOM Seminar on Friday, October 2, 4pm, Room N, Institute of Philosophy, KU Leuven. Presentations by Nidesh Lawtoo on the “mimetic turn”, new HOM-team member Carole Guesse on “posthuman mimesis,” and discussion of an interview with J. Hillis Miller, supplemented by a screening of Jean-Luc Nancy. More details here: https://hiw.kuleuven.be/hua/events/hom-seminar
Please register by sending an email to: niki.hadikoesoemo@kuleuven.be
Reading Conrad in Catastrophic Times: The Mimetic Turn
In this video presentation for the 2020 Joseph Conrad Society (UK) Annual Meeting shot on the Furka Pass (Swiss Alps), ERC grantee Nidesh Lawtoo introduces the relevance of Conrad’s mimetic turn to face contemporary catastrophes like (new) fascist politics, viral pandemics, and climate change in the Anthropocene. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.14321…
The Case of Eichmann Restaged: Arendt, Evil, and the Complexity of Mimesis
In The Case of Eichmann Restaged, Nidesh Lawtoo reframes Hannah Arendt’s evaluation of the “banality of evil” in light of Eichmann’s mimetic psychology, which Arendt intuited but did not fully articulate.
Rather than considering the banality of evil as symptomatic of Eichmann’s “inability to think,” the essay foregrounds the affective, contagious, and, in this sense, mimetic tendencies at play in Eichmann’s personality (from Latin, persona, theatrical mask). This move is instrumental to articulate a middle path between Arendt’s theoretical diagnostic of Eichmann as “terrifyingly normal” and Bettina Stangneth’s recent historical account of Eichmann as a “fanatical National Socialist.” My wager is that the ancient problematic of mimēsis (from Greek, mimos, mime) casts a new and original light on the psychic foundations of a type of evil that is as relevant to understand the psychology of fascism in the past century as its rising shadow in the present century. Article also available here
Inaugural Lecture: Nidesh Lawtoo: ‘Homo Mimeticus. Sameness and Difference Replayed.’
In this Inaugural Lecture, PI of ERC-funded HOM Project Nidesh Lawtoo revisits the legendary 1966 Johns Hopkins Conference, “The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man,” an event which was meant to introduce structuralism in the US, yet ended up inaugurating what became known as poststructuralism instead. At one remove, replaying mimesis in the company of Derrida and Girard half a century later still provides a genealogical starting point to rethink the all too human tendency to imitate characteristic of Homo Mimeticus.
November 7, 2019, Institute of Philosophy, Kardinaal Mercierzaal, 5-7pm (followed by reception).
