Abstract
The truly inspiring feature of mimetic theory is that it offers an interpretative tool that helps anyone willing to use it to understand the multifarious and ever-changing configurations of internal mediation, from pseudonarcissism and coquetry to masochism. Many other pathologies could be listed: anorexia and bulimia, psychosis, jealousy, envy, and impotent hatred. And still others might be added, such as apathy, indifference, the weakness of passions, the narcissism of small differences, and so forth. And more will come about along with new conditions of internal mediation; every defined pathology is in fact only an arbitrary selection of a form out of a historical continuum produced by this ever-changing matrix.
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Further Reading
Antonelli, Emanuele. La Mimesi e la Traccia. Milano: Mimesis, 2013.
Dupuy, Jean-Pierre. The Mark of the Sacred. Translated by M.B. DeBevoise. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2013.
Lawtoo, Nidesh. The Phantom of the Ego: Modernism and the Mimetic Unconscious. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2013.
O’Shea, Andrew. Selfhood and Sacrifice: René Girard and Charles Taylor on the Crisis of Modernity. London: Bloomsbury, 2010.
Oughourlian, Jean-Michel. The Genesis of Desire. Michigan State University Press, 2009.
Vattimo, Gianni. Belief. Translated by Luca D’Isanto and David Webb. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1999.
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Antonelli, E. (2017). Modern Pathologies and the Displacement of the Sacred. In: Alison, J., Palaver, W. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Mimetic Theory and Religion. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53825-3_42
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53825-3_42
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