The Dark Core of Mimesis. Art, Body, and Image in the Thought of Jean-Luc Nancy

Abstract

The thesis we argue in the text through three separate planes of discussion is that mimesis (μίμησις) cannot for Nancy be reduced to mere imitation of an already always existing reality. Instead, what is at issue is a creative principle of the openness of the world as meaning starting from the possibility of imitating something that can only be presented-represented in the equation between the logos, the figure, and the image. Mimesis thus presents-represents an existential event of novelty in the world. We cannot rely on the language of the openness of the meaning of the world without previously elucidating on the mediality of the media in Nancy’s thought. This means that the logos and the image are connected neither via language nor via the representation of something as something (being as the singular plurality). An event occurs authentically precisely in this “elevation of the body” (levée du corps). In Nancy’s narrative, it becomes abundantly clear that the body (corpus) assumes the position of the unthinkable in traditional philosophical thought. The logos of the body is, thus, in its representation as a figureimage in what is open and therefore beyond the opposition between the “self” and the “outside.” In order to think this “crack” between philosophy and art (logos and mimesis) it is necessary to make a decisive break with the “oblivion of the body” symptomatic of the entire history of Western philosophy.

Keywords

• nancy
• mimesis
• art
• body
• image
• event
• ontology