ABSTRACT
Imitation provides the scaffolding upon which the whole edifice of consciousness, society, and politics are built – domains shot through with power, conflict, as well as cooperation and peace. ‘The positive feelings resulting from the first identification – imitation, admiration, veneration – are fated to change into negative sentiments: despair, guilt, resentment’. Imitation shows its rivalrous and conflictual side when it manifests itself in its acquisitive, appropriative incarnation – when it structurally sets individuals on a collision course over the same object over which desires mimetically converge. The most evident manifestation of imitation and especially suggestion, however, revolved around the slogan-turned-hashtag #jesuischarlie. After all, the solidarity motto functioned linguistically as the affirmation of a borrowed subjectivity – something deeply reminiscent of suggestion. This chapter deals with an assessment of the future of democracy and political order in our hyper-mimetic age, characterized by the contagious spread of affect and the ever-increasing dominance of mimetic forms of communication.
