ABSTRACT
Mimesis is central to understanding how reality is conceived of, interpreted, and represented. To Aristotle we owe the identification of mimesis as a fundamental feature of human behavior, as well as the recognition of mimesis as a creative act. Reenactment employs mimesis via what Auerbach, and later White, identified as figural relationships between the past and the present, or the original and its representation, respectively. In Mimesis and Alterity, anthropologist Michael Taussig engages with the concept of mimesis in yet another broad intellectual context and analyzes how mimesis informs the appropriation and performance of identities. Cultural mimesis was going to ensure the metamorphosis of the Ottoman Empire into a new Turkey while creating a figural relationship between the ancient Greek past and the Turkish present. As an analytical lens, however, mimesis helps reveal the ways in which the relationship to the past is established in a reenactment setting.
