Mimesis and Alterity

Mimesis: the idea of imitation. Alterity: the idea of difference, the opposition of Self and Other. For anthropologists, social scientists, artists, and everyone else caught up in the enigma of "modernity", the question "What is reality?" is crucial to knowing what it is we know and what we are. In this work, anthropologist Michael Taussig, known for his work on shamanism, undertakes a history of the mimetic faculty. "Mimesis and Alterity" moves from the 19-century invention of machines capable of mimetic acts, such as the camera, backwards to the fables of colonial "first contact" and the alleged mimetic prowess of "primitives". He then moves forward to contemporary time, when the idea of alterity is increasingly unstable. Utilizing anthropological theory, the ideas of Benjamin, Adorno, and Horckheimer, extensive research on the Cuna Indians, and work on colonialism and postcolonialism, Taussig analyzes mimesis across time and cultures. More than a faculty or one more sensory capability, mimesis - differently experienced in so-called primitive and modern societies - has a history, too.