Peter Nesteruk has suddenly become a must read for those of us interesting in mimesis and mimetic criticism of texts. He presents three models of mimesis.
The first he labels “Mimesis of the Same.” Simply, hyperbole or “an imaginary community of identification.”
In the Gospel of Mark, we can see this in the use of the Elijah-Elisha narratives, especially in Mark 6–8.
His second model is “Mimesis of the other.” The basis of this mimesis is “an enemy to be either destroyed or incorporated; but to be learnt from first.” It is a “(a) mimesis whose origin may be ourselves. Mirror mimesis.”
I would propose we see this in the use of Vespasian and Simon bar Giora in the Gospel of Mark as the other, the enemy.
And finally, “Mimesis of the Other (unmistakably, unquestionably, the Other). As fear, as terror; as the Sublime relation – the very configuration of the Sublime relation.” And “Mimesis in the context of this shadow play is simultaneously the desire to understand larger matters (matters larger than ourselves) and to justify the existence of current totems, the masks of power. The Mimetic paradox.”
Somehow, I think this last model may help us understand more the Incarnation and Hebrews 1.1–3.
Related articles
- What Girard missed in Plato (woodybelangia.com)
- the true meaning of Mimesis (text-patterns.thenewatlantis.com)
- “Mimesis and the Mediation of Meaning” paper proposal (woodybelangia.com)
- Local scholar writes book on the Gospel of Mark (wvgazette.com)
