Post-Mimetic Relationality
Relational configurations that arise once mimetic desire is infrastructurally mediated.
Theory
Post-mimetic relationality names the relational configurations that arise when mimetic desire is no longer exchanged directly between persons but is routed through infrastructures that measure, aggregate, and re-serve it.
Ordinary mimetic dynamics presuppose co-presence and reciprocity; their infrastructural mediation produces relations that resemble mimetic ones but have lost their bidirectional character.
The concept opens a space between classical mimetic theory and platform studies, and gives a name to relations that are neither reducible to individual psychology nor exhaustively described as network effects.
Key publications
- The Platforming of Desire (working paper).
A continually updated record is available through the publications page.
Current work
- A book-length treatment of post-mimetic relationality as a general social configuration.