ABSTRACT
I have suggested throughout this book that mimesis has always been at once a theory of art and an explicit or implicit theory of human nature. Accounts of mimesis in art rely on ostensible truths of human nature, and art is commonly regarded as an exemplary instance of an inherent human tendency towards imitation. This association of art and human nature informs both critiques and defences of mimesis. Plato’s attack on mimesis begins with the problem of childhood education, and persistently links mimesis with extremes of human emotion. Aristotle defends mimesis according to many of the same psychological and anthropological criteria that Plato uses to discredit it. The instinct for imitation is ‘implanted in man from childhood’ and underlies the pleasure even adults gain from representations (Aristotle, 1951: 15). The final two chapters of this book explore how these ancient ideas about the interrelation of mimesis and human nature informed psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists and theorists of race and gender in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In this chapter, I will focus on psychoanalytic theories of identification, a term that describes the unconscious imitations of others that shape human identity. The
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concept of identification is central to the work of Sigmund Freud, the Viennese psychologist whose theories had a profound impact on Western thought in the early twentieth century and continue to inform current discussions of race and gender identity. In the final chapter, I will turn to theorists who study mimesis as an anthropological and cultural concept.
