Mimesis--imitation--unites a number of disparate notions about human
evolution, development and behavior. For example, Bourdieu's notion of
habitus, the physical embodiment of social relations, finds an interesting
echo in the evolutionary anthropology of Maxine Sheets-Johnston (1990). In a
nutshell she demonstrates that if minds must have bodies then bodies must
have minds--we fundamentally represent the world by reference to our own
physical structure--meaning is mimetic (was it Piaget who reported seeing a
child opening its mouth as it opened a match box?). For another to
experience a communicative act there must also be mimesis; that is, our
ability to understand each other is not merely a product of cultural
"internalization" but an "externalization" of tactile-kinesthetic
invariance. Agreement on meaning in part must involve a sense of analogical
apperception--the sense that another body is experientially "filled in" the
same way ours is. This idea of embodiment is strongly echoed in the
cognitive semantics of George Lakoff (1987) who argues against the strong
form of objectivism by stating that categories can not be characterized
independently of the bodily nature of the beings doing the categorizing
(metaphor, metonymy and imagery depend upon this).
George Steiner (1992) maps these notions onto a different kind of
evolutionary canvass from the perspective of linguistic translation (this
work was apparently largely rejected when first issued but now appears to be
increasingly considered seminal). The central thesis is that the prodigality
of diverse languages is indispensable to humanity. The outwardly
communicative functions of language are, he contends, secondary. The primary
functions are inventive (and by extension not oriented to veracity) and for
group identification; that is, the dominant features are creative and
hermetic, not informational. In the case of group identification, the
function must also be seen as mimetic--to belong means to give the
appropriate signals. It must then be seen that there is a "crucial
correlation between the 'un-truthful' and fictive genius of human speech on
the one hand and the great multiplicity of languages on the other." (p.243).
Humans have, through speech, simultaneously freed themselves from the
totality of organic restraint and given themselves a particular place in the
world. Language must therefore also be seen as very conservative for it can
only give us our particular place if we accept its stability. An extension
of this is the need to accept the fact that all social understanding, and
therefore all social science, involves translation--an act which, by the
previous arguments, is also mimetic.
Returning to the issue. There are a number of kinds of biological mimesis,
where an organism either mimics its surroundings or another species, but I
was thinking of it in two particular senses. The first, in reference to the
CMU article, was the way(s) the authors narrowly "filled in" the opposing
positions and in the actual process of translation itself thereby
accentuated the distinction(s) between their group and the Other(s). I take
Phil's comments to heart in this and do not thereby intend any insinuation
of evil intent--only to point out that this aspect of their critique of
constructivism and situated cognition can not be ignored and that given the
translation, there was/is no possibility of rapprochement. The second, in
reference to Sokal's mimicry of post-modern discourse, is the mimicry of
certain predators who may appear and even behave (or smell) like the prey
species--the spider shaped like a particular ant species who waves its palps
like their antennae, the con- man who engages his victims in friendly
conversation before robbing them. Sokal's motives may have been pure (or
not), the editors of _Social Text_ may have been deserving of ridicule (or
not), but Sokal's act itself was predatory.
Which leads to the final point. If the mimetic thesis has validity, then
trust becomes more than a moral issue, it becomes central to any idea of
authentic communication. I guess I've been thinking of Gary Shank's "O-
Rings" and El'konin (1993) lately. To lose trust is a terrible thing, and
not just because it makes us feel bad either.
Rolfe
PS: I think it was Ben Johnson who kicked the stone (when Boswell mentions
that George Berkeley's skepticism is difficult to refute, Dr. Johnson
violently kicks a stone saying, "I refute it thus!").
El'konin, B. D. (1993). "The Crisis of Childhood and Foundations for
Designing Forms of Child Development". _Journal of Russian and East European
Psychology_, 31(3), 56-71.
Lakoff, G. (1987). _Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories
Reveal About the Mind_. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Sheets-Johnstone, M. (1990). _The Roots of Thinking_. Philadelphia:
Temple University Press.
Steiner, G. (1992). _After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation_.
(2nd. ed.). Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Rolfe Windward (UCLA GSE&IS, Curriculum & Teaching)
rwindwar who-is-at ucla.edu (text/BinHex/MIME/Uuencode)
CompuServe: 70014,0646 (text/binary/GIF/JPEG)
"The real is the realization of one of many possibilities."
-Elya Prigogine