Mimetic Inclinations: An Introduction

Abstract

At first glance, it may appear perplexing to join the ancient concept of “mimesis” with the contemporary concept of “inclinations” via the title of “mimetic inclinations” – and for more than one reason. After all, Plato staged a philosophical critique of mimetic arts in the Republic via the trope of a metaphysical mirror that turns the real world into an appearance, a shadow, or a phantom far removed from reality. As such, the scene was staged for an agonistic confrontation that pits the philosopher against the artist, placing the abstract Forms in the vertical sky of eternal ideas in tension with the horizontally inclined world of aesthetic simulations. From the vertical,meta-physical perspective, the dominant definition of mimesis understood as a mirroring copy or representation of reality that in-forms (gives form to) Western metaphysics is thus at odds with the pluralism internal to an embodied, dramatic, and relationally inclined ontology that, contra Plato, is now reappearing on the contemporary philosophical scene. This relational ontology is constitutive of what the Italian feminist philosopher, classicist, and political theorist Adriana Cavarero has recently grouped under the rubric of “inclinations” (inclinazioni). She provides a different position, or disposition, towards others that troubles the ideal of a self-possessed, autonomous, and solipsistic subject in favour of a magnetic and affective “force”. This force inclines subjectivity towards alterity – thereby proposing a different ontological posture to rethink ethical and political relations constitutive of being in common with others in this world. Adriana Cavarero is one of the most influential contemporary Italian philosophers writing today. A feminist thinker with a pluralist training in classics, political theory, and literary theory, Cavarero is a protean theorist whose work spans the history of Western philosophy – from Plato to Kant, Hannah Arendt to Judith Butler, and beyond. Furthermore, she develops a pluralist thought that goes beyond ancient quarrels between philosophy and literature to rethink the human condition for present and future generations. Cavarero’s influential and now classic works like In Spite of Plato (1995), Relating Narratives (2000), Stately Bodies (2002), For More than one Voice (2005), Horrorism (2008), and, more recently, Inclinations (2014) and Surging Democracy (2021) have rethought the foundations of the subject through a relational ontology attentive to vulnerability, precarity, and care, which she posits at the foundations of an ethics of non-violence. These concepts have been important for influential anglophone theorists like Judith Butler and Bonnie Honig, for instance.