Mimetic Posthumanism: Homo Mimeticus 2.0 in Art, Philosophy and Technics (Critical Posthumanisms, 5)

Book info: Mimetic Posthumanism: Homo Mimeticus 2.0 in Art, Philosophy and Technics (Critical Posthumanisms, 5) (Hardcover, 362 pages) – Brill, 2024. Language: English.

It is tempting to affirm that on and about November 2022 (post)human character changed. The revolution in A.I. simulations certainly calls for an update of the ancient realization that humans are imitative animals, or homo mimeticus. But the mimetic turn in posthuman studies is not limited to A.I.: from simulation to identification, affective contagion to viral mimesis, robotics to hypermimesis, the essays collected in this volume articulate the multiple facets of homo mimeticus 2.0. Challenging rationalist accounts of autonomous originality internal to the history of Homo sapiens, this volume argues from different―artistic, philosophical, technological―perspectives that the all too human tendency to imitate is, paradoxically, central to our ongoing process of becoming posthuman. Editorial Reviews About the Author Nidesh Lawtoo, Professor of European Literature and Culture at Leiden University, is a philosopher and cultural critic. He is the author of numerous books that open up the transdisciplinary field of mimetic studies, including Homo Mimeticus: A New Theory of Imitation (Leuven UP, 2022).