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This interdisciplinary study explores the relationship between play and mimesis in the constitution and dissolution of the individual and social self. The volume is divided into three sections, the first of which focuses on the mimetic-ludic foundations of mind, memory, and desire; the second on the social and psychological self as agent of playful performance and product of cultural codes; and the third on the interplay of psyche, image, and power in literary and artistic representations of the self. The subjects of the individual studies vary widely, from the interrelation of power and play in Orlando Furioso to the ludic foundations of cognition to the concept of the self in Foucault and Deleuze.
"The book covers extraordinary ground in literature, the arts, philosophy, and even the social sciences. The concern about the issue of self and the representations of self brings far-reaching ideas together in the most surprising and mutually illuminating ways. Poststructuralist and postmodernist critiques of self-identity have made the topic controversial and broadly relevant to all the fields represented. Extreme statements abound on both sides of the argument, and this book succeeds in marshaling subtle and nuanced thought on the topic. Each essay is neatly self-contained, remarkably relevant to other essays in the collection, and a model of illuminating argument, careful scholarship, and attractive writing." — William J. Kennedy, Cornell University
Editors' Foreword
Part One: The Thoughtful Self: Mind, Memory, and Desire
1. Foucault, Deleuze, and the Playful Fold of the Self
Ronald Bogue
2. Mimesis and Anamnesis: Deconstruction of Metaphysics and Reconstruction of Psyche
Cristian Moraru
3. Mind's Mirrors: Some Early Versions of Contemporary Specular Discourse
Kent Kraft
4. Concepts of Mimesis in French and German Philosophical and Anthropological Theory
Karl Eckhardt
Part Two: The Performative Self: Role, Ritual, and Cognition
5. No Escaping Obligation: Erving Goffman on the Demands and Constraints of Play
Lori J. Ducharme and Gary Alan Fine
6. Play and Linking Trajectories for Social Origins of Cognition
James Deegan and Anthony Pellegrini
7. Redefining the Ludic: Mimesis, Expression, and the Festival Mode
Michael J.C. Echeruo
8. Nonsense and Metacommunication: Reflections on Lewis Carroll
Gabriele Schwab
Part Three: The Expressive Self: Psyche, Image, and Power
9. Power and Play in the Orlando Furioso
Giuseppe Mazzotta
10. Dissimulation on Display: The Feint of Power in Campanella's Scelta
Thomas Cerbu
11. Orpheus: Nature and Psyche. From Allegory to Symbol in Titian, Rubens, and Poussin
Angel Medina and Joyce Medina
12. Body-Bildung in German Classicism
Susan Derwin