Digital Mimesis
Mimic → Imitate → Replicate
Mimesis is an elusive concept. The word comes from the Ancient Greek mīmeisthai (μιμεῖσθαι), meaning “to imitate”. Mimesis in a literary or philosophical sense is often explored in relation to questions regarding mimicry, imitation, similarity, difference, and power.
Aristotle and Plato were both concerned with mimesis as an imitation of nature, in correspondence to their respective theories of aesthetic value. The Platonic critique of mimesis would render it in opposition to truth, as a copy cannot encompass or represent the whole of reality. The Aristotelian approach suggests that humans are mimetic beings, innately predisposed to create art that imitates or represents reality.
Walter Benjamin’s concept of the “mimetic faculty” too posits human beings as naturally inclined to mimic and produce symbolic forms. These forms and representations not only mirror but transform the object. Since mimetic objects and their powers are bound to change and transformation, the power of the original object is preserved and reoccurs in the representation or copy.
René Girard’s theory of mimetic desire derives from the aforementioned mimetic philosophy, suggesting that human beings do not know what to desire, so they subconsciously imitate the desires of others to form and determine their own desires. These shared desires enforce the valuing of the object, which can lead to violent conflict and a phenomenon of resolutive othering, which Girard refers to as “the scapegoat mechanism”.
In the practice of sympathetic magic, the magician produces the desired effect through imitation. What is done to the material object, the fetish, will occur equally in the human to which the object is linked.
In the digital realm, the meme is the effigy or fetish by which the imitation magic occurs. Internet memes are mon ograms of thought – the linguistical fusion of the semiotic and the mimetic, or simply, layers of symbol and language repeated onward. As sentient symbols, memes occupy the space between what is written and what is meant.
The valuing of the object is instrumental in both mimetic theory and imitation magic. Desire is attributed to the object, and the object becomes the vessel for which obsession can occur. The bypassing of the conscious mind, however, is the connective system of power between desire and obsession which can conjure the mimetic aptitude for magic.
