The Gendered Mimesis Project takes mimesis (or imitation) as a starting point to rethink subject formation. It stems from the results of the ERC Homo Mimeticus project from which it draws the basis for such rethinking. Adopting a comparative and interdisciplinary approach to behavioural imitation, it brings together critics of modernity such as Nietzsche and Adorno with contemporary European feminist philosophers to formulate a new ontology of the mimetic subject. Judith Butler, Catherine Malabou, and Adriana Cavarero in particular, respond to the new identity crises associated with gender, trauma, and sovereignty via concepts like “performativity,” “plasticity,” and “inclination” that urge new generations of feminist theorist to rethink the ancient problematic of mimesis from a gendered perspective. The general hypothesis of this project is that they propose a new theory of the subject which responds to the specifically mimetic paradoxes constitutive of gendered identities today.
