Violence and the Mimetic Unconscious, Volume 2: The Affective Hypothesis (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781611864656)

Representations of violence have subliminal contagious effects, 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.

Author: Nidesh Lawtoo
ISBN-10: 1611864658
ISBN-13: 9781611864656
Publisher: Michigan State University Press
Language: English
Published: 10/01/2023
Pages: 316
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.92lbs
Size: 8.90h x 5.90w x 0.80d