KU Leuven (Lovaina, Bélgica), 23-24 de febrero 2023
The Gendered Mimesis project is pleased to announce a two-day international conference on the subject of the “Metamorphoses of Mimesis” in the work of contemporary French philosopher Catherine Malabou.
Malabou is one of the most influential voices in contemporary continental philosophy whose work resonates productively with recent re-turns of attention to a mimetic, plastic, and metamorphic conception of homo mimeticus. In her interdisciplinary work, Malabou has explored the concept of plasticity in a variety of fields, from psychoanalysis to contemporary neuroscience and epigenetics, ontology and metaphysics, and political and feminist philosophy. These perspectives are internal to a new theory of imitation that challenges forms of essentialism, including those of sex and gender. Throughout her work, Malabou can be seen to define subjectivity in mimetic terms for plasticity involves individual and collective openness to all kinds of contagious influences, affective impressions, and simulations of intelligence while also allowing for resistance to contemporary mimetic pathologies.
With her concepts of plasticity, epigenetics, and metamorphoses of intelligence, Malabou furthers recent developments in new mimetic studies. She does not restrict mimesis to the traditional realistic model of representation/bad copy. Instead, she accounts for the affective, gendered, political, ontological, performative, and metamorphic powers of homo mimeticus. She also opposes any simple notion of the autonomous anti-mimetic subject and proposes instead to rethink the complex and contradictory forms of mimetic metamorphoses in the twenty-first century. For Malabou, this means thinking subjectivity across biology, philosophy, and aesthetics in view of exploring the ethical, gendered, ontological, and political transformations at play in what we call, the plasticity of mimesis.
The aim of this conference is to think and rethink this new conception of mimesis through a plurality of plastic metamorphoses and to explore the feminist, anarchic, and transformative potential of mimetic studies in dialogue with Malabou, who will participate in this symposium.
Furthering a mimetic turn (or re-turn) of attention to an embodied, intersubjective, and affective conception of mimesis started by the Homo Mimeticus project, and now supplemented from a specifically gendered perspective in the Gendered Mimesis project, we welcome proposals that explore subjects, disciplines, and perspectives as diverse as:
Plasticity, mimesis and Malabou
Gendered mimesis in political and feminist philosophy
Plasticity, performativity, and the body in Malabou and Butler
Mimesis with/contra the history of philosophy (Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Derrida…)
Patho(-)logies of plastic, mimetic, and metamorphic subjects
Plastic metamorphoses in neuroscience and psychoanalysis
Plasticity, homo mimeticus, and deconstruction
Ontology of mimetic accidents
Metamorphoses of mimesis via literary studies, film, and media
Gendered mimesis, erased pleasures, and sexual difference
Mimetic unconscious, mass, explosion
Plasticity of racial mimicry and decolonial perspectives
Queering mimesis and the pleasure of metamorphoses
(New)fascist inclinations / democratic aspirations
Anarchy, plasticity, and relational subjectivity
Vita mimetica, resistance, mass, power
Hypermimesis, simulation, AI, and metamorphoses of intelligence
Prior to submission, please familiarize yourself with the concepts internal to the “mimetic turn” see http://www.homomimeticus.eu/the-project/
Submission guidelines: Send an abstract of around 250 words and a short bio by November 15, 2022, to metamorphoses.mimesis@kuleuven.be
Due to Covid-19 uncertainties, the conference will adopt a hybrid format (both online & in-person). Further queries can be directed to: nidesh.lawtoo@kuleuven.be and isabell.dahms@kuleuven.be