Mimesis
In theatre, the relationship between the audience and the actor is separated by the stage, and both parties are willing to perform their corresponding roles. In life, as Evring Evreinoff argues we do that socially in real life, despite lacking a formal script. We use our posture, facial expressions and tone of voice to put our roles for a specific circumstance or situation into what one feels should be the right position. I always think it is true in a way, it is a stage whenever one interact with other people. I guess the only position that one is not acting would be when one is in their own private space. That might still not be a 100% true, as some people might have like to act however one wants depending on that person's psychological mood.
Interesting perspective -“all the world is not of course, a stage, but the crucial ways in which it isn’t are not easy to specify” (1959:72) He also mentioned ," the space organised between front stage and back stage regions, much as in theatres." Now I understand throughout the course about the terms in the stage position, an actor's stage left is the audience stage right, so it is much like a mirror or a camera obscura. So in reality, am I performing the opposite of a upside down mirror? I am beginning to think the roles we perform is rather subconsciously and never given much thought about it. Mimesis, which is a act of copying behaviour, we just follow our parents or our peers what to do when we are being put on stage...
Goffman mention "although we tend to believe that we are mostly"ourselves" in private life, our inner self is a crop generated by our social performances. The self is a mere "peg"." Are we? I guess there is also the possibility that one performs a different role with oneself when alone.
For the west, Polosky argues that the western art has this fixation on traditional copying the traditional reality, while in the East, art is often abstract. I do recognise looking at Rembrandt or Da Vinci for the first time and admire how closely realistic those paintings and drawings are, and how Chinese painting are always brush strokes that can be done in 5 minutes. Thinking about it philosophy, being ethnically Chinese with a western upbringing in a western country, that is something to think about. I can't say much about other races, but I guess in some ways Chinese approach to life is more about the universe than reality. Times have changed though as China is getting wealthier, there are signs of the more western thinking.
Is human existence a copy of the true original? What or Who is the true original? Who is deciding? Is there something that is unkown to us that we should know about?
The unconscious forces that Karl Marx and Freidrich Neitzche argues tht human actions repeat patterns of behaviours inherited from the past or absorbed from larger context, so choices that we think we are making ourselves is really a form of imitation.
Gabriel Tarde mentioned again in Polosky book that "ancient societies imitate their ancestors and gods while modern societies people imitate each other." If allowed to flourish, imitation will unite individuals and nations into a single peaceful human family." With the technology and internet today, we talked about globalisation. Is that what we are approaching? In certain aspects, yes, but the Eastern thinking is still very significant. As the internet unites us, however, I also see a growing number of young people who wants to preserve our traditions and retain our difference. If we are really able to be "one single peaceful human family" that would be ideal but I suspect it might be probably boring though.
Rousseau argues that humans live to "make an impression on others" I wouldn't want to admit it, but in the Chinese culture that I lived in, it is certainly true in many respects, and I often think that in Asian cultures, that collectiveness , or "memes" which is a term British zoologist Richard Dawkins proposes. In Chinese societies, there is no individual. One is not an individual, one belongs to a clan or a invisible position among the clan that one is in. And one has to react or "perform" accordingly. I always found I am in some sort of stage playing a game as one of the actors in the society. As I was six years old, indeed my grandmother said to me I do have to wear a different mask for each person depending where I am. As a young girl, I thought I loved my grandmother, she is a fake! But as I grow older, I definitely feel that mask that I have to wear in some societies. And the better you perform, the higher status you are in life, maybe be the main character of that particular play.
If the human race is just copying and have a tendency to copy, we are no different than sheeps just following the flock. And there is only one leading. Are those the ones who are actually awake while the rest are dormant in our sleep as we live our lives.
Quotes
-Although theatricality is a natural instinct, its effects are highly conventional. Rather than being opposed or distinct, the natural and the theatrical are part of a continuum. The demands of the unquestioning participation of both parties: the actor earnestly performs familiar conventions, and the audience agrees not to recognise their conventionality. Erving Evreinoff’s study The presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959) lends the authority of careful observation to his claims about the ineluctable theatricality of life. He argues that the impression of reality is “statistical” rather than intrinsic or necessary to the performance, since it arises from the belief of actor and audience in the role. Social interactions typically lack a formal script, but he in the presence of others we lather our posture, facial expressions and a tone of voice, to express our social status or position, just as actors do. “all the world is not of course, a stage, but the crucial ways in which it isn’t are not easy to specify” (1959:72)
-space organised between front stage and back stage regions, much as in theatres.
-Although we tend to believe that we are most “ourselves’ in private life, Goffman argues that the “perceptual dynamics” of theatrical mimesis is at the bottom of the sense of self. Like theatre, selfhood is a product of the relationship between actor and audience, not an autonomous material reality. The public self is not a more or less authentic copy of a prival original. rather, the sense of an inner self is a cop generated by social performances. the self is a mere “peg”, in Goffman’s words, on which roles of “collaborative manufacture” are hung for a time.
-For Turner, theatre borrows and formalises the structure of social dramas, but it can also transform the. There is, an interdependent. relationship between social draws and genres of cultural performance in perhaps all societies.”
-Photography was presented as an advance over painting, motion pictures as an advance over still photography, and virtual reality as a quantum leap over film. Each technique has doubtless improved our ability to reproduce the world we see and experience. Yet this relentless artistic and technological quest of or better ways of depicting reality is strangely fixated on traditional ideas about mimesis. Only the West is devoted to realism, Few cultures outside the west have regarded realism as an important goal. Motivated by the biblical injunction against graven images, for example, many Islamic cultures strictly forbid the depiction of living human and animal forms of art. Traditional landscape painting in China and Japan is highly conventional in its depictions of nature, and often strikes western viewers as abstract and artificial.
-Human existence is but a series of copies without a true original. The remarkable malleability of a child’s mind, its ability to take on whatever “stamp” one wants to give it.
-Karl marx and Freidrich Neitzche explored the unconscious forces and unquestioned assumptions that shape everyday life. Human actions repeat patterns of behavious inherited from the past or absorbed from the larger context. choices are really forms of imitation.
-Gabriel tarde: ‘ancient societies imitate their ancestors or their gods. In modern societies, people imitate each other. What we take to be original and individual choices are really the product of suggestion. If allowed to flourish, imitation will unite individuals and nations into “a single peaceful human family” without consequential differences of race, class, gender or privilege (tarde, 1962; xxxiii)
-Rousseau : human beings lived entirely within themselves. Once they became part of a collective, however, they began to look at others, and to want others to look at them. People would imitate not to learn or to improve themselves, but “to make an impression on others”. the foundation of imitation among us comes from the desire always to be transported out of ourselves. Imitation is at once a primary social bond and a weak link in human nature that undermines individuality and makes us no better than apes.
-British zoologist – the selfish gene- Richard Dawkins proposes than human mental life may operate according to the same principles of evolution that determine physical life. Physical life is governed by units of imitation he calls “memes” A meme is an entity which is capable of being transmitted from one brain to another” Memes can be anything that survives through imitation, from ideas to songs to ritual practices.
-Blackmore argues that the theory of mimesis is very conceptual universe in which later thinkers and artists in the West live and breathe. Religions are good example of memeplexes, since thye involve many different objects of imitation – beliefs, rituals, architectural styles, music, written traditions – in a unified conceptual grouping.
memeplex- a co-adapted group of ideas or practices that tend to be imitated together.
