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Term

Representation

used in 184 texts across the archive

The originary hypothesis extends and revises Rene Girard’s analysis of mimetic rivalry: according to the originary hypothesis, the first sign emerged in a single event, a mimetic crisis in which the (proto) human group arrested their common and self-destructive convergence upon a common object by putting forward what Gans calls an “aborted gesture of appropriation.” Representation, then, is the deferral of violence, as is, therefore, all of culture.

In use

The deferral of violence through representation is what we are “meant” to do.

But more importantly, no symbolic representation is involved with the alpha male’s position in the group.

Every representation does need to posit some scene upon which all “receiving” the representation are virtually present.

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