Poetics of History: Rousseau and the Theater of Originary Mimesis
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, "Poetics of History: Rousseau and the Theater of Originary Mimesis"
English | ISBN: 0823282341 | 2019 | 176 pages | PDF | 1281 KB
English | ISBN: 0823282341 | 2019 | 176 pages | PDF | 1281 KB
Rousseau’s opposition to the theater is well known: Far from purging the passions, it serves only to exacerbate them, and to render them hypocritical. But is it possible that Rousseau’s texts reveal a different conception of theatrical imitation, a more originary form of mimesis? Over and against Heidegger’s dismissal of Rousseau in the 1930s, and in the wake of classic readings by Jacques Derrida and Jean Starobinski, Lacoue-Labarthe asserts the deeply philosophical importance of Rousseau as a thinker who, without formalizing it as such, established a dialectical logic that would determine the future of philosophy: an originary theatricality arising from a dialectic between “nature” and its supplements.
Beginning with a reading of Rousseau’s
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