More generally, human imitative skills may be regarded as part of a widespread
human capacity for mimesis.
Mimetic capacities evolved as primarily motoric adaptation in hominids
about two million years ago and remain just out of reach for most primates.
Mimesis involved not just imitation but also the rehearsal and refinement of
skills, the public motoric display of perceived or remembered episodes, social
coordination and ritual, non-linguistic gesture and pantomime, and reciprocal
emotional display or mirroring.
(Hurley and Chater 2005: 4 2)However, in contrast to many interpretations, for example those of Benjamin
or Horkheimer and Adorno, I do not accept that the mimetic capacity has to be
interpreted as somehow a primordial cognitive faculty which modernity has caused
to decay. Many authors still want to argue that the main outpouring of mimesis
now is in the play of children and is given up as the adult world approaches,^27 or
they consign mimesis to supposedly archaic categories like magic. In contrast,
I would argue that mimesis is in fact a perennial human imitative capacity, closer
to a biological drive, and that it is an additive capacity for desire created out of a
third term which René Girard calls the model or mediator. It is therefore neither
autonomous nor innate.^28 There is no exact copy so that our desires can never
properly be ours (Fleming 200 4 ). Rather, our desires are second hand and socially
oriented; we always desire what others desire, in imitation of them, and not under
our own impetus. Take the case of modern advertising:
advertisers rely on external mediation when they pay celebrities to use a
product, and make use of internal mediation when they depict common
people using common products. In the first case, they want our admiration
for the celebrity to spark a desire for the product, and in the second case, they
want us to ‘catch’ the nearby desire of someone like ourselves.
(Potolsky 2006: 1 47 )But, at this point, it is important to make three points about this imitative notion
of affective corporeality which are important for the arguments in this chapter.
To begin with, it is important to note that, though much of the flow of affect can
be described as a form of thinking, understood as part of a ceaseless flow of mind-
readings, it is not necessarily instrumental or knowledgeable, that is oriented
towards determinate goals like comprehension, purpose or intention. Rather, it is
oriented to the achievement itself. This point is well illustrated by the fact that a
large part of corporeal life is simply oriented towards concern over the body’s
extreme vulnerability. And not surprisingly: bodies make mistakes, trip or fall, get
toothache or migraine, can see only partially or not at all, get chronic diseases like
arthritis – or simply drop dead. One of the remarkable facts about the recent
interest in the social sciences in embodiment, practice and performance, and the
body-in-action generally, is the lack of thought that has been given to the fact of
238 Part III