introduction 9a “mime.” As early as the era of Plato and Aristotle, whose writings form
the basis of mimesis theory, the term’s primary meaning—the imitation
of animals and humans in speech, song, or dance—had expanded to in-
corporate “the imitation of persons or things in an inanimate medium”
(Gebauer and Wulf 1995: 28). For a study that sets out to explore human
encounters with representations of alterity and the reworking of such
encounters in ritual, media, and works of art, mimesis is a particularly
promising concept. Throughout the chapters of this book, though, we
encounter a fundamental ambiguity that comes along with the practice of
mimesis that is rejected and considered dangerous as often as it is valued
and embraced.
This ambiguity marks Plato’s (2008) treatment of the topic. In The Re-
public, written around 380 bc, Plato dwells at length on the relationship
between mimesis and its audiences. He observes that mimetic poetry as
performed by storytellers can be employed for educational purposes as
it engenders imitation by the audience. This, however, implies that it is
censored lest it impacts the spectator’s virtues negatively. Plato drafts an
enormous catalog of topics, characters, and expressions poets must avoid
(386a–392c). According to Plato, imitation affects both the spectator’s
character and that of the imitator. Therefore, similar precautions need
to be taken with regard to plays performed by young people, who are the
future guardians of the state. They need to be prevented from imitating
such characters as women, slaves, ev il men, or fools lest they take on their
qualities. Young people should instead imitate courageous men and war-
riors only (395c–396b).^1 In book ten of The Republic, Plato talks about the
relationship between works of art and reality. The danger of mimesis, for
Plato, l ies i n t he fac t t hat it t r ick s spec tators easi ly i nto bel iev i ng t hat t hey
are facing reality. Like a mirror that produces only reflections of existing
things, a painter produces mere appearances, not true things. According
to Plato, material objects originate in the realm of ideas created by God.
The artist’s representations are even twice removed from the truth of the
ideas, as they are second-degree imitations. The carpenter who builds a
bed, to quote one of Plato’s famous examples, beholds the true rational
idea as created by God, the “natural author”; the painter merely copies the
object built by the carpenter without any understanding of the original
idea (597b). The same holds true for poets, “beginning with Homer,” they