Mimetic Masks: Reiterating Identification from Classical Aesthetics to Contemporary Media Open Access

Abstract

This project reinterprets the foundational aesthetic concept of mimesis through 19^th and 20^th century hermeneutics, critical social theory, and psychoanalysis, producing an interpretation of the concept which rejects the traditional translation of imitation equated with copying in favor of a performative theory of mimetic action. Paul Ricoeur’s reinscription of Aristotelian mimesis within a phenomenology of time-consciousness leads to a poetic and rhetorical reading of the figure of the mask. Moving from the literal mask of Attic tragedy through its figurative role in the social history of Marx’s The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and the development of Freud’s metapsychology, the final chapter explores literal and figurative masks in the mimetics of 20^th century comic book media, focusing on Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s Watchmen, and its transmedia adaptations.

Table of Contents

Preface                                                                                                                        i

 

Chapter 1                  Mimetic Acts                                                                         1

 

Chapter 2                  Einmal, Zweimal                                                                  40

 

Chapter 3                  Printing Pressure                                                                 83

           

Chapter 4                  Masks on Masks                                                                   130

 

Postscript                                                                                                                  236

 

Bibliography                                                                                                             238

About this Dissertation

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School	Laney Graduate School
Department	Comparative Literature
Degree	Ph.D.
Submission	Dissertation
Language	English
Research Field	Aesthetics Philosophy Literature, Comparative
Keyword	Masks Hermeneutics Mimesis
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Elissa Marder, Emory University
Committee Members	Jill Robbins, Emory University Geoffrey Bennington, Emory University

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