Book

Violence and the Mimetic Unconscious: Volume 2, The Affective Hypothesis

Representations of violence have subliminal contagious effects, but what kind of unconscious captures this imperceptible affective dynamic in the digital age?

Author

Nidesh Lawtoo

Date

17 January 2023

In volume two of a Janus-faced diagnostic on the relation between violence and the unconscious with Michigan State UP, Nidesh Lawtoo supplements the “catharsis hypothesis” on media violence via its mirroring counterpart: the “affective hypothesis.” Moving from Plato to Nietzsche, Freud to Bataille, Arendt to Girard, affect theory to the neurosciences , he promotes the transdisciplinary field of mimetic studies located at the juncture of art and society. In the process, the book offers a diagnosis as to why the pathos of (new) media violence—from film to video games, police murders to the storming of the U.S Capitol—continues to cast a material shadow on the present and future.