Mimesis

Definition

Mimesis (Greek: "imitation") is the aesthetic concept of art's relationship to reality. In the classic tradition (Plato, Aristotle), art imitates nature or human action. In the critical-theory inheritance of this wiki, mimesis is radicalized: for Adorno, authentic art does not passively copy reality but mimetically registers its contradictions — modernism's shards and dissonances are truthful because they mimetically absorb social suffering. For Benjamin, mimesis is linked to the decay of aura: mechanical reproduction severs the mimetic bond between the artwork and its singular place, opening art to political use. Russell reads Debord's spectacle as the "rationalisation of mimesis" — capital's reduction of mimesis to the standardized reproduction of images, making mimesis the opposite of Adornian critical art: passive conformity rather than critical registration.

Key Thinkers

• Theodor W. Adorno — mimesis as critical registration of social contradiction.
• Walter Benjamin — the decay of aura and the transformation of mimesis in the age of mechanical reproduction.
• Eric-John Russell — the spectacle as the rationalisation of mimesis.

Related Concepts

• Spectacle — mimesis reduced to the standardized reproduction of images.
• Phantasmagoria — the deceptive mimetic image of commodity culture.
• Dialectical Image — Benjamin's alternative to mimetic representation: the image as constellation.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Why the Customer Is Always Right — mimesis and the spectacle.