Mimesis und Simulation (review)

Abstract

Mimesis und Simulation combines a multitude of perspectives and methodologies, ranging from new interpretations of Aristotelian poetics to elaborations on postmodern art, from studies of Medieval and Renaissance literature to inquiries of Romanticism and Modernism, and from historical to linguistic analyses. Consequently, this volume presents the reader with neither a coherent history nor an exhaustive semantic study of the terms "mimesis" and "simulation," but rather establishes a variety of profiles which center on one guiding question: how "reality" is related to, i.e. is postulated as anterior to or regarded as a product of "representation." Mimesis, as the article by David Wellbery suggests, is concerned with the representation of real or ideal realities, whereas simulation questions the reality of such representation, that is, pertains to representational realities. Given, however, that many disciplines today accept a more or less constructivist understanding of "reality," the distinction between mimesis and simulation is not as dramatic as we (following Jean Baudriallard) might have anticipated. By reevaluating the status of "reality" as upheld by the traditional concept of mimesis, the book capitalizes on the current discussions about simulation in order to reconstruct the many historical facets of the term mimesis and to demonstrate aspects of the historical contiguity between mimesis and simulation. Within different aesthetic disciplines, mimesis assumes increasing autonomy with regard to the "reality" it proclaims to imitate. Today this development culminates where mimesis is understood as a subcategory of simulation, not as its opposite, but instead itself involved in the construction of representational realities.