The Phantom of the Ego ─ Modernism and the Mimetic Unconscious

Nidesh Lawtoo presents a study of subjectivity in the modern era, focusing on the processes of unconscious mimesis that Lawtoo argues Nietzsche saw at work in "the herd mentality." The phantom of the ego is evocative of Max Stirner's "spooks," suggesting alienated passions of the socially constituted individual ego. From Nietzsche's interrogation of bourgeois social psychology, Lawtoo traces Nietzsche's impact on modernist writers like Joseph Conrad, D.H. Lawrence, and George Bataille. Moreover, he considers these writers in terms of how he finds Nietzsche self-consciously attacking the forces that would make him "a product of his time." Lawtoo distinguishes between good and bad mimesis though, and by considering the psychology of laughter and how environmental cues make us more emotionally permeable, he also elucidates how mimetic communication is at the core of dynamic interdependence and not mere conformity. Ultimately Lawtoo's study builds the case for "a Copernican turn away from the egocentric approaches to subjectivity that dominated our past, Freudian century." Annotation c2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)