Verbatim quote · from the corpus

“This is the appropriate point at which to recall the Aristotelian notion of mimesis as (theatrical) representation. This notion leaves the potentially conflictive horizontal imitation of others to the subject-matter on stage and retains as its formal definition only the conflict-free vertical representation of reality. In the originary scene, the Aristotelian concept of mimesis applies, not to the original appropriative gesture, which depends on the other as its mimetic model, but to the new designative-representative gesture of the sign. The sign emerges as a turning away from the other as model to the object of desire as model. In the transformation of the mimetic relationship wrought by language, the subject displaces the intention of his gesture from (unconsciously) imitating the other to (thematically) imitating the object. Signing remains a mimetic operation in the older sense; the sign in its otherworldliness, its “arbitrariness,” can be learned only from others. But unlike even the most stylized of animal behaviors, the sign is intended to make-present a referent other than itself. How does this doubling of mimetic models resolve the “paradoxical state” of mimesis, the originary mimetic crisis? Prehuman imitation, whether one-on-one or in a herd, has a two-place structure of actor and model; the only difference in the latter case is that the model has many bodies.”

— Eric Gans, Mimetic Paradox and the Event of Human Origin · Fall 1995 · Anthropoetics