Mimesis Syllabus

"The Paradox of the Phasmid" by Georges Didi-Huberman: 1st sentence, "The only things that appear are those which are first able to dissimulate themselves."

"Mimicry and Legendary Psychasthenia" by Roger Caillois: "We are thus dealing with a luxury and even a dangerous luxury, for there are cases in which mimicry causes the creature to go from bad to worse: geometer-moth caterpillars simulate shoots of shrubbery so well that gardeners cut them with their pruning shears."

"A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans" by Jakob von Uexküll: Following mimesis, an exploration of umwelt. Uexkull was a problematic figure to say the least, and the scholarship contains some useful, expansive (arguably close to nondual) ideas that could be used critically to push against the embedded grains of fascism.

The Open: Man and Animal by Giorgio Agamben: Agamben succinctly defines umwelt in The Open, "Where classical science saw a single world that comprised within it all living species hierarchically ordered from the most elementary forms up to the higher organisms, Uexküll instead supposes an infinite variety of perceptual worlds that, though they are uncommunicating and reciprocally exclusive, are all equally perfect and linked together." (My emphasis.)

All old white dudes, sorry that's admittedly not my fav approach yet I do find these useful for thinking with or building out from-- if you know of adjacent texts on mimesis, I welcome your recs, too and always!

Enjoy the floral mimesis of the orchid mantis :)