For Tarde, the germs follow “rays of imitation” that hits us and infect us. It can be
a new fashion or a new concept that describes the actualized world better than
before. It travels as both a concept and as a word. They travel together on the rays
of imitation, like sound waves “echoed from one neighbour to another, til it soon
trembles on every lip in the group in question, and later spreads even to neighbor-
ing groups.” (Tarde 2000: 32) Their main function is reproduction, and this usu-
ally happens within the same strata of communities and interacting groups. But
the rays also offer facilitation between the members of the group and between
groups.
It is only another way of saying, in the one case, that the motor forces inherent in the
molecules of air have found, in this vibratory repetition, a channel into which they
drain; and, in the other case, that a special need felt by the human beings of the group
in question has found satisfaction in this imitative repetition, which enables them, as
a concession to their indolence (the analogue of physical inertia), to escape the trouble
of inventing for themselves. (Tarde 2000: 32)These rays of imitation can also collide with other rays, intersecting and causing
“pure vibration, pure potential”. This intersection could be similar to gene recom-
bination or plasmid transfer if we were comparing it to genes. According to Tarde
this collision between rays is where innovation happens. New potentials are re-
leased. It is the immediate firing of neurons as fashion hits. We feel it is just “right”.
This is pure passion, pure intensity.
Still, the germs cannot travel only through buzz, but also need material forms of
transference. Fashion especially does, which to Barthes’ dismay is not a language in
a strict sense, as he proposed in The Fashion System (1983), but something much
more complex and better represented through depiction. This means that even
though fashion is a form of infectious agent, it is still supported by rays of repre-
Rays of Imitation - or Memes are
concepts used to describe the flow of ideas
and norms through society, and they are often
compared to genes, epidemics or viruses. The
recombination process of genes can be similar
to that of the innovation process exemplified by
Tarde, where two “rays of imitation” clash and
new ideas arise. This violent clash could be the
birth of a Deleuzoguattarian “line of flight”.“Viral marketing” or “Epidemics
of ideas” seems to work in similar ways as
viruses. According to Gladwell, “Ideas and
products and messages and behaviours spread
like viruses do.” (2000: 7)