Imitation, contagion, suggestion : on mimesis and society 9781138490642, 1138490644

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Imitation, Contagion, Suggestion

Terrorist attacks seem to mimic other terrorist attacks. Mass shootings appear to mimic previous mass shootings. Financial traders seem to mimic other traders. It is not a novel observation that people often imitate others. Some might even suggest that mimesis is at the core of human interaction. However, understanding such mimesis and its broader implications is no trivial task. Imitation, Contagion, Suggestion sheds important light on the ways in which society is intimately linked to and characterized by mimetic patterns. Taking its starting point in late nineteenth-century discussions about imitation, contagion, and suggestion, the volume examines a theoretical framework in which mimesis is at the center. The volume investigates some of the key sociological, psychological, and philosophical debates on sociality and individuality that emerged in the wake of the late nineteenth-century imitation, contagion, and suggestion theorization, and which involved notable thinkers such as Gabriel Tarde, Emile Durkheim, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Furthermore, the volume demonstrates the ways in which important aspects of this theorization have been mobilized throughout the twentieth century and how they may advance present-day analyses of topical issues relating to, for example, neuroscience, social media, social networks, agent-based modelling, terrorism, virology, financial markets, and affect theory. One of the significant ideas advanced in theories of imitation, contagion, and suggestion is that the individual should be seen not as a sovereign entity, but rather as profoundly externally shaped. In other words, the decisions people make may be unwitting imitations of other people’s decisions. Against this backdrop, the volume presents new avenues for social theory and sociological research that take seriously the suggestion that individuality and the social may be mimetically constituted. Christian Borch is professor of economic sociology and social theory at the Department of Management, Politics, and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark.

Culture, Economy and the Social

A new series from the Centre for Research on Socio-cultural Change (CRESC) – the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Centre for Research on Socio-cultural Change

The Culture, Economy and the Social series is committed to innovative contemporary, comparative, and historical work on the relations between social, cultural, and economic change. It publishes empirically based research that is theoretically informed, that critically examines the ways in which social, cultural, and economic change is framed and made visible, and that is attentive to perspectives that tend to be ignored or sidelined by grand theorizing or epochal accounts of social change. The series addresses the diverse manifestations of contemporary capitalism and considers the various ways in which the `social’, `the cultural’, and `the economic’ are apprehended as tangible sites of value and practice. It is explicitly comparative, publishing books that work across disciplinary perspectives, cross-culturally, or across different historical periods. The series is actively engaged in the analysis of the different theoretical traditions that have contributed to the development of the ‘cultural turn’ with a view to clarifying where these approaches converge and where they diverge on a particular issue. It is equally concerned to explore the new critical agendas emerging from current critiques of the cultural turn: those associated with the descriptive turn for example. Our commitment to interdisciplinarity thus aims at enriching theoretical and methodological discussion, building awareness of the common ground that has emerged in the past decade, and thinking through what is at stake in those approaches that resist integration to a common analytical model. Editors Professor Tony Bennett, Social and Cultural Theory, University of Western Sydney; Professor Penny Harvey, Anthropology, Manchester University; Professor Kevin Hetherington, Geography, Open University Editorial Advisory Board Andrew Barry, University of Oxford; Michel Callon, Ecole des Mines de Paris; Dipesh Chakrabarty, The University of Chicago; Mike Crang, University of Durham; Tim Dant, Lancaster University; Jean-Louis Fabiani, Ecoles de Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales; Antoine Hennion, Paris Institute of Technology; Eric Hirsch, Brunel University; John Law, The Open University; Randy Martin,

New York University; Timothy Mitchell, Columbia University; Rolland Munro, Keele University; Andrew Pickering, University of Exeter; Mary Poovey, New York University; Hugh Willmott, University of Cardiff ; Sharon Zukin, Brooklyn College City University New York/ Graduate School, City University of New York Unpacking IKEA Swedish Design for the Purchasing Masses Pauline Garvey Film Criticism as a Cultural Institution Crisis and Continuity from the 20th to the 21st Century Huw Walmsley-Evans A World Laid Waste? Responding to the Social, Cultural and Political Consequences of Globalisation Edited by Francis Dodsworth and Antonia Walford The Persistence of Taste Art, Museums and Everyday Life After Bourdieu Edited by Malcolm Quinn, David Beech, Michael Lehnert, Carol Tulloch and Stephen Wilson Enter Culture, Exit Arts? The Transformation of Cultural Hierarchies in European Newspaper Culture Sections, 1960–2010 Semi Purhonen, Riie Heikkilä, Irmak Karademir Hazir, Tina Lauronen, Carlos J. Fernández Rodríguez and Jukka Gronow Imitation, Contagion, Suggestion On Mimesis and Society Edited by Christian Borch

For a full list of titles in this series, please visit http://www.routledge.com/ CRESC/book-series/CRESC

Imitation, Contagion, Suggestion On Mimesis and Society

Edited by Christian Borch

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 selection and editorial matter, Christian Borch; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Christian Borch to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-1-138-49064-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-03494-4 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by codeMantra

Contents

List of figures List of contributors Acknowledgments

ix xi xv

Part I

Introduction

1

1 The imitative, contagious, and suggestible roots of modern society: toward a mimetic foundation of social theory

3

C hristian B orch

Part II

Historical roots: the rise of ICS Theory

35

2 The mimetic unconscious: a mirror for genealogical reflections

37

N idesh L aw too

3 Durkheim on imitation

54

B j ø rn S chiermer

4 Mimesis as a social practice of self-education

73

K atja Rothe

Part III

Adaptations: the proliferation of mimetic thought

89

5 Market mimesis: imitation, contagion, and suggestion in financial markets

91

K ristian B ondo H ansen and C hristian B orch

viii Contents 6 #Contagion

107

Peta M itchell and F elix V ictor M ü nch

7 Charlie Hebdo and the two sides of imitation

126

E lisabetta Brighi

8 Viral chatter and the afterlife of contagion

141

Robert Peckham

9 Contagious agents: epidemics, networks, computer simulations

157

Sebastian V ehlken

Part IV

Looking back to look ahead: rethinking individuality and the social

177

10 Unpacking i-c-s: Montaigne and the project of the self

179

David T oe ws

11 The reactive: social experiences of surface and depth

194

A ndrea M u bi Brighenti

12 Suggestion, affect, and speculative science

211

L isa Blackman

Index

229

List of figures

6.1 Running sum of #sydneysiege 6.2 Running sum of #illridewithyou 6.3 Force directed visualization of the diffusion tree network of the hashtag #sydneysiege for the first 10,000 accounts using it, colored by weakly connected components 6.4 Force directed visualization of the diffusion tree network of the hashtag #illridewithyou for the first 10,000 accounts using it, colored by weakly connected components 11.1 Elaboration from Janet on reflex, reflex complex, and perception 11.2 The space of reaction in interaction

117 118 119 120 201 207

List of contributors

Lisa Blackman is a professor of media and cultural studies in the Department of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of ­London. She works at the intersection of body studies, affect studies, and media and cultural theory and is particularly interested in subjectivity, affect, the body and embodiment. She has published five books, most recently Haunted Data: Affect, Transmedia, Weird Science (Bloomsbury Press, 2019). Her other books include Immaterial Bodies: Affect, Embodiment, Mediation (Sage, 2012); Hearing Voices: Embodiment and Experience (Free Association Books, 2001); Mass Hysteria: Critical Psychology and Media Studies (with Valerie Walkerdine; Palgrave, 2001); and The Body: The Key Concepts (Berg, 2008). She is the coeditor of the journal, Subjectivity (with Valerie Walkerdine, Palgrave) and the editor of the journal Body & Society (Sage). She is particularly interested in phenomena which have puzzled scientists, artists, literary writers, and the popular imagination for centuries, including automatic writing, voice hearing, suggestion, and automatism. Christian Borch  is a professor of economic sociology and social theory at the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. His research particularly focuses on crowd theory, urban sociology, and finance. Publications include Foucault, Crime and Power: Problematisations of Crime in the Twentieth Century (Routledge 2015); Urban Commons: Rethinking the City (ed. with ­Martin Kornberger, Routledge 2015); Architectural Atmospheres: On the Experience and P ­ olitics of Architecture (Birkhäuser 2014); The Politics of Crowds: An Alternative History of Sociology (Cambridge University Press, 2012); Niklas Luhmann (Routledge 2011); and Soziologie der Nachahmung und des Begehrens: Materialien zu Gabriel Tarde (ed. with Urs Stäheli, Suhrkamp 2009). His next book is entitled Social Avalanche: Crowds, Cities and Financial Markets (Cambridge University Press, 2019). He is currently the principal investigator of an European Research Council-funded project that examines the deployment of fully automated computer algorithms in financial markets.

xii  List of contributors Andrea Mubi Brighenti  is a professor of social theory at the Department of Sociology, University of Trento, Italy. His research focuses on space, power, and society. Among his publications are Urban Walls: Political and Cultural Meanings of Vertical Structures and Surfaces (with ­Mattias Kärrholm, Routledge, 2018), The Ambiguous Multiplicities: ­Materials, episteme and politics of some cluttered social formations (­Palgrave ­Macmillan, 2014) and Visibility in Social Theory and Social Research (­Palgrave ­Macmillan, 2010). Elisabetta Brighi is a senior lecturer in international relations in the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Westminster. Her current research interests lie at the intersection of international political theory and violence. They include terrorism, urban security, affect, and mimesis. She has coedited, most recently, the volume The Sacred and the Political (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016). Kristian Bondo Hansen  is an assistant professor at the Department of Management, Politics, and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School, ­Denmark. His research focuses on the history of speculation and perceptions of collective action in different genres of finance literature, as well as the proliferation of new technologies in the modern-day financial services industry. Kristian has published in journals such as Economy and Society and Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. Nidesh Lawtoo  is an assistant professor of philosophy at KU Leuven and principal investigator of an ERC project titled Homo Mimeticus. His work is located at the juncture of philosophy and literary theory with special focus on theories of imitation, contagion, and the unconscious. He is the author of The Phantom of the Ego: Modernism and the Mimetic Unconscious (Michigan State University Press, 2013) and of Conrad’s Shadow: Catastrophe, Mimesis, Theory (Michigan State University Press, 2016). His articles on the social implications of mimesis have appeared in journals such as Angelaki, Contagion, L’Esprit Createur, TCS, MLN among others. Peta Mitchell is an associate professor in the Digital Media Research Centre at Queensland University of Technology. Her current research focuses on digital geographies, location awareness and mobile media, algorithmic culture, and network contagion. Peta is author of Cartographic strategies of postmodernity (Routledge, 2008) and Contagious metaphor (Bloomsbury Academic, 2012) and coauthor of Imagined landscapes: Geovisualizing Australian spatial narratives (Indiana University Press, 2016). Felix Victor Münch is a PhD Candidate in the Digital Media Research Centre at Queensland University of Technology and Visiting Research Fellow at the Hans-Bredow-Institut for Media Research at the University of Hamburg. With a B.Sc. in physics (LMU, Munich, Germany), a M.A. in

List of contributors  xiii journalism (LMU and German Journalist School, Munich, Germany), and work experience in online media brand communication as a UX designer and strategist, his main fields of interest are network science methods and online media. For his PhD project he develops a methodological framework and explores methods to make network science more useful for large-scale media and communication studies. Robert Peckham is a professor of history and director of the Centre for the Humanities and Medicine at the University of Hong Kong. He has published widely on colonial and postcolonial histories of science, medicine, and health. His research has explored the shifting conceptual frameworks within which infectious diseases have been understood. He is also interested in the migration of biomedical and epidemiological models across domains, and he has written on the biologization of finance, ecological approaches to intra-financial systems, contagious panic, and biomedical constructions of criminality. He is the author, among other recent work, of Epidemics in Modern Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2016) and editor of Disease and Crime: A History of Social Pathologies and the New Politics of Health (Routledge, 2014). Katja Rothe studied German literature, cultural studies, history, and psychology. Since 2011, she has been a junior professor (assistant professor) of performing arts at the Berlin University of the Arts. Her research interests include the history of performing arts, history of science (especially psychology, pedagogy, ergonomics, economic, and management theory), media history (radio and TV), and gender studies. She is currently working on a research project entitled ‘Soul-Staging’, which examines the relationship between the performing arts and behavioral research in the twentieth century. Bjørn Schiermer  is an associate professor at the Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo. He has published extensively on Durkheim and the classical sociologists. He is currently working on a book, seeking, controversially, to unite Durkheimian ‘ritual’ perspectives with more recent ‘relationalist’ (Latourian) inspirations. Recent publications include ‘Nostalgia, Irony and Collectivity in Late-Modern Culture: Ritual around the Disney Christmas Show in Scandinavia’ (Acta Sociologica, 2017); ‘Fetishes and Factishes: Durkheim and Latour’ (­British Journal of Sociology, 2016); and ‘On the Aging of Objects: Ornament and Crime’ (Theory, Culture and Society, 2016). David Toews  received his PhD in philosophy from the University of ­Warwick, England. An award-winning teacher and major grant recipient in the area of sociology, he has been a faculty member in several universities. Involved in the revival of Gabriel Tarde’s thought since the 1990s, his Social Life and Political Life in the Era of Digital Media: Higher Diversities (Routledge, 2018) presents a first effort at a Tardian sociology

xiv  List of contributors of contemporary society, examining how digitality extends the sociality of imitation through the logic of digital copying and the production and distribution of digital artifacts in social networks. Sebastian Vehlken  is a media theorist and cultural historian at Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany, and senior researcher at its Institute for Advanced Study on Media Cultures of Computer Simulation (MECS). In 2015–16, he was a visiting professor at Humboldt University Berlin, University of Vienna, and Leuphana University. His areas of interest include the theory and history of computer simulation and digital media, the media history of swarm intelligence, media cultures of futurology, and oceans as media environments. His current research project ‘Plutonium Worlds’ explores the application of computer simulations in West-German Fast Breeder Reactor programs. Recent and forthcoming publications include: ‘Visions of Process: Swarm Intelligence and Swarm Robotics in Architecture’, in H. Bier (ed.), Robotic Building (Springer, 2018); ‘Pervasive Intelligence: The Tempo-Spatiality of Drone Swarms’, Digital Culture and Society 6 (2018); Neighborhood Technologies: Media and Mathematics of Dynamic Networks (ed. with Tobias Harks; Diaphanes/Chicago University Press, 2015); and Zootechnologies: A Media History of Swarm Intelligence (Amsterdam University Press, 2019).

Acknowledgments

The majority of the chapters in this volume are based on presentations given at the conference ‘Imitation, Contagion, Suggestion: Rethinking the Social’, which was held at the Copenhagen Business School in May 2015. The conference was generously funded via a ‘Crowd Dynamics in Financial Markets’ Sapere Aude grant from the Danish Council for Independent Research. I am grateful to the conference participants for their stimulating discussions, and to all of the authors for accepting the invitation to think further about imitation, contagion, and suggestion dynamics in the present volume. Thanks also to Helen Rana for preparing the index.

Part I

Introduction

1 The imitative, contagious, and suggestible roots of modern society Toward a mimetic foundation of social theory Christian Borch The early twenty-first century has been characterized by a tragic surge in terrorist events. Examples include cars or trucks plunging into random groups of pedestrians, as well as fatal attacks targeting members of the Jewish community or people whom the perpetrators believe are blasphemers who besmirch the name of the Prophet Muhammad. One of the truly disturbing facets of such attacks is that, rather than being isolated cases, they often mimic previous ones, which makes it difficult not to notice the connections between them. The imitation of one terrorist attack by others is far from new. Examples of contagious terrorism, in which one type of assault provides a template to be copied subsequently, are legion in modern political history (e.g. Barrows, 1981: 40–1). This imitative aspect is something that terror attacks share with criminal activity more broadly. This applies in particular to a type of crime that has attracted a lot of media attention in the US and elsewhere in the past decades – namely, mass shootings. These often take place at schools, but with the June 2016 mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, they began to occur in otherwise festive contexts, too. ‘As mass shootings have become ever more familiar,’ a 2015 International New York Times cover article stated, ‘experts have come to understand them less as isolated expressions of rage and more as acts that build on the blueprints of previous rampages’ (2015). In fact, the imitative character of terrorist and criminal activity was already clear to observers in the late nineteenth century. Most notably, throughout the 1880s and 1890s, the French criminologist and sociologist Gabriel Tarde argued that it is common for criminal activity to be imitative. In his 1890 book Penal Philosophy, Tarde criticized the thenwidely sanctioned scholarly view that crime is intimately tied to particular types of criminal individuals, that is, persons allegedly biologically predisposed to criminal activity. Tarde challenged that view by demonstrating that crime is better explained by recourse to how one criminal act may inspire subsequent ones (e.g. Tarde, 1968: 322). Further, against the backdrop of his criminological reflections, he went on to develop an entire sociology

4  Christian Borch based on the idea that social life is inherently imitative. By imitating others, we establish a social bond of recognition and respect, Tarde (1962) argued, and society is nothing but such imitative bonds writ large. Tarde’s claims are interesting for two reasons. First, they approach crime as something deeply social, a sociality that shows in its mimetic nature. ­Recognizing this social dimension of crime does not amount to endorsing criminal activity. Indeed, there is no positive valorization underpinning Tarde’s social conception of crime. In his dramatic phrasing, ‘Crime is a social phenomenon like any other, but a phenomenon which is at the same time ­anti-social, just as a cancer participates in the life of an organism, but working to bring about its death’ (1968: 418). Second, and of key ­h istorical importance, Tarde’s social and criminological thought was not free-­ floating, but itself embedded in broader theoretical currents. This showed internally in how his conceptual apparatus tied the notion of imitation to concepts such as hypnotic suggestion, somnambulism, and contagion, all of which were to a great extent adopted from contemporaneous advances, particularly within psychology and psychotherapy. This conceptual inspiration itself testified to a broader intellectual tide at the end of the nineteenth century, in which serious attempts were made to theorize notions of imitation, contagion, and suggestion (ICS). Indeed, this vocabulary and the theoretical horizons it opened up had tremendous momentum that transcended psychology, sociology, philosophy, criminology, medicine, etc.  – disciplines that were more intertwined and less differentiated from one another than they are today (Blackman, 2012). Why was this so? How can it be that notions of ICS gained such traction at the end of the nineteenth century, that is, in the formative years of the social sciences? One answer is that this vocabulary captured a widespread modern experience – namely, that in the modern, industrialized, urbanized society, seemingly relentlessly on the verge of political revolution, and with constant challenges to the boundaries of class and individuality, the nature of sociality seemed highly malleable. For example, in the modern city, the individual was bombarded by sensory impressions in ways that could produce a loss of self that could lead to individuals being easily carried away in collective frenzy (Borch, 2019). Many scholars found the vocabulary of ICS fitting when accounting for such experiences. This is not to suggest that the scholars who deployed this vocabulary necessarily endorsed it normatively. As Nidesh Lawtoo has convincingly demonstrated in his examination of a series of modernist writers (Nietzsche, Conrad, Lawrence, and Bataille) who employed a broad mimetic register, these writers were often ambivalent toward it. While they attributed great diagnostic powers to ICS c­ oncepts, which were seen as valuable means with which to describe affective ­dimensions of modern society, the phenomenon they essentially ­diagnosed – namely, the loss of self and the experience of being carried away  – was something these writers tried, personally, to avoid (Lawtoo, 2013; see also 2016). In other words, diagnosing society in terms of ICS was one thing.

The imitative, contagious, suggestible roots  5 To be personally carried away by such forces was, for many scholars, a completely different matter – and something to be shunned, if at all possible. This is one of several tensions that characterizes this conceptual horizon and a tension that follows from the fact that it is deemed better to be in control of oneself than to be pulled into a contagious, suggestive whirlpool. The heyday of ICS thinking was no doubt the late nineteenth century, when it spread from France to Germany, America, and elsewhere. Increasingly, however, ICS ideas were subjected to critiques that eventually pushed this framework toward the margins of ‘proper’ thought. One of the most prominent attacks was articulated by Sigmund Freud, whose psychoanalytical project was founded as an alternative to notions of suggestion and hypnosis within psychology and psychotherapy (Borch-Jacobsen, 1988). Parallel criticisms emerged from sociological quarters. Most notably, sociologists such as Emile Durkheim and Max Weber defined the discipline of sociology in ways in which imitative, contagious, and suggestible phenomena were dismissed as effectively sociologically irrelevant (more on this later). This is not to suggest that the imagery of ICS entirely disappeared in the twentieth century. Clear traces, both implicit or explicit, can be identified in works as different as Richard Dawkins’ meme theory, René Girard’s theorization on violence and its relation to mimetic desires that turn contagious, as well as in debates about the communication of rumor or swarms, to name but a few instantiations (Dawkins, 1976; Girard, 1977; Vehlken, 2013; Weingart, 2008; see also Brighi and Cerella, 2016). Interestingly, however, the discursive repertoire of ICS has gained ­renewed traction since the 1990s and early 2000s. The scholarly manifestations of this are visible in numerous ways, but what many of them have in common is that they display ‘clear echoes’ of the late nineteenth-century discourse, as Peta Mitchell has rightly observed (Mitchell, 2012: 60). One prominent example is the work conducted in social and cultural theory under the heading of a ‘turn to affect’, which stresses the plasticity of selves through an emphasis on affective contagion. For example, in her book The Transmission of Affect (2004), the late Teresa Brennan argues against a conception of self-contained bodies, that is, the idea that human bodies are separated by their skin and that this enclosure provides the backdrop against which people interact. Contra that notion, Brennan mobilizes research into entrainment and pheromones, and presents a theory of bodies entangled by shared affects. The central claim is that affective contagion takes place especially via ‘olfactory and auditory entrainment’ (2004: 68). In other words, when people are physically co-present, one person may ­assume the affective state of another person by smelling the pheromones secreted by that person’s body. As indicated, one of the central corollaries of this theoretical framework is that even something as apparently personal as one’s affective state is in fact socially induced and shared, meaning that bodies and affect should be seen as social rather than individual (or private). In making this argument, Brennan not only cites work on entrainment, but

6  Christian Borch also situates her argument explicitly in the late nineteenth-century tradition of ICS theory, referencing several scholars associated with that strand of research, including Tarde, Gustave Le Bon, and Hippolyte Bernheim. Other contemporary scholars, such as Nigel Thrift (2008a, 2008b), similarly argue for theorizing affect by linking it to notions of ICS. For example, in his analysis of affective contagion, Thrift likens affect to ‘a series of highways of imitation-suggestion’ and describes society in affective-somnambulistic terms as ‘en-tranced, as only half-awake’ (2008a: 240, original emphasis; see also Sampson, 2012, 2017). Moreover, he substantiates his emphasis on the links between affect and ICS through references to recent work on ‘mirror neurons’, which, according to some advocates, provides a neuroscientific understanding of humans’ apparently inbuilt propensity to imitate (see also Lawtoo’s and Blackman’s contributions to this volume).1

The aims of this volume In this brief circular account, from the present to the late nineteenth century and back again, I have tried to describe how ideas about ICS, which once occupied a central status in conceptions of modern sociality, appear to be gaining a renewed foothold in the present. However, this is not to suggest a direct re-emergence of this conceptual horizon. Today, it is often aligned with theoretical building blocks that were not part of its late nineteenth-­ century framework – as is visible, for example, in the ways in which theories associated with the affective turn combine the language of ICS with insights into entrainment, pheromones, or mirror neurons. Still, the resurgence of this conceptual register begs several questions. For example, what makes this conceptual register so attractive today? How can it be that notions of ICS have gained such traction in the academic and wider public and media discourse, after having been kept relatively silent for so long? The answer to such questions is likely to depend on the particular context and domain under study. However, it does not seem an exaggeration to claim that, in general terms, this framework presents itself as an adequate means with which to diagnose the present, in a manner not dissimilar to how it served a crucial diagnostic purpose in the late nineteenth century. Nor does it seem far-fetched to speculate that part of the reason for this may lie in changing social conditions, for example, in particular the globalized, hyper-mediated reality of the present, which seems to propel novel forms of affective ICS. More specifically, what this (counter-individualist) framework seems to offer is a way of understanding how, in spite of apparently increasingly widespread individualism, people are behaving more and more alike – and that a range of technologies and social developments seem to further induce such mimesis. While the present volume is committed to exploring how notions of ICS might inform present-day social theory, it is based on the conviction that such exploration requires that attention is paid to a range of historical

The imitative, contagious, suggestible roots  7 aspects regarding the rise and aims, but also critiques, of this tradition at the end of the nineteenth century. In other words, the volume is driven by the belief that notions of ICS do indeed have something to offer to contemporary social theory, not least with respect to rethinking sociality and individuality, but also that before this potential can be fully realized, greater historical care must be taken with the origins of this theoretical horizon. Against this backdrop, the aims of this volume are: first, to provide a sense of the historical settings in which the vocabulary of ICS gained prominence, with a particular focus on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; second, to offer some understanding of the uptake of this vocabulary of mimesis in various disciplines and fields, from the late nineteenth century to the present; and third, to discuss how this conceptual horizon is being, and could be, revived in a present-day theoretical and analytical context, and what the implications of this might be. In other words, what is the analytical purchase – and what are the challenge(s) – of resuscitating this particular tradition?2 In line with these three aims, the volume deploys a cross-­disciplinary approach, encompassing fields such as financial economics, sociology, epidemiology, psychology, computer science, and social media studies. The volume revolves around the particular late nineteenth-century debates on ICS as conducted through key players such as Bernheim and Tarde. These debates were especially intense in France, but by no means limited to French circles. The volume’s starting point in the late nineteenth-century French orbit does not imply that these debates were entirely new or original. Discussions about mimesis and contagion have much longer histories that to some extent inform the kinds of debates that proliferated at the turn of the nineteenth century. For example, historical studies have demonstrated how contagion thinking dates back to Ancient Greek reflections on miasma, and how it later informed late nineteenth-century crowd theory, urban theory, and social theory, as well as twentieth-century meme and network theory, among many other things (Mitchell, 2012; Wald, 2008). Similarly, genealogies of mimesis begin with Ancient Greece and end at the present. However, whereas contagion theory is often located at the intersection of epidemiology and the social, discussions of mimesis often pivot around aesthetics and literary criticism (e.g. Auerbach, 2003; Gebrauer and Wulf, 1995; Halliwell, 2002; Melberg, 1995), although there is also a substantial body of literature examining the broader cultural role and manifestations of mimesis (e.g. Fuchs, 2001; Girard, 1977; Lacoue-Labarthe, 1998; Potolsky, 2006; Taussig, 1993). It is beyond the scope of this volume to systematically examine connections between wider (existing) discussions of mimesis, on the one hand, and late nineteenth-century debates on ICS on the other. Nevertheless, it will offer some analysis of how, for example, the ICS framework was prefigured by particular renaissance ideas (see David Toews’ chapter). Following on from this, a central argument of this volume is that, while the late nineteenth-century ICS framework did not arise out of thin air, but was influenced by previous strands of thinking, this framework was nevertheless

8  Christian Borch significant in its own right. This is partly because the specific configuration of ICS theory was in fact unique, and partly because one of the central achievements of this framework was how it evolved into a set of sociological ideas that, as mentioned earlier, seemed apt at accounting for particular modern experiences. In other words, the ICS framework was not merely a new instantiation of age-old reflections on mimesis; rather, it addressed the apparently intimate connection between mimesis and modern society. It is this connection between mimesis and contemporary society that seems to have gained new appreciation in the present post- or late-­modern era, especially in social and cultural theory discussions of affect. Furthermore, it should be noted that there is a rich existing literature tracing the genealogies of psychology, and which has attended carefully to the ICS problematiques that were so central to late nineteenth-century French thought. The seminal studies in this tradition include Mikkel Borch-­ Jacobsen’s (1988) penetrating work on Sigmund Freud and how, as mentioned earlier, the Freudian psychoanalytical project was founded on a critique of late nineteenth-century notions of hypnotic suggestion – a point that also reverberates in León Chertok and Isabelle Stengers’ historical examination of hypnosis as a scientific problem (Chertok and Stengers, 1992). Similarly, scholars such as Ian Hacking and Ruth Leys have demonstrated the ways in which present-day discussions of, for example, trauma and multiple personalities are profoundly indebted to the kind of thinking about ICS that developed in the late nineteenth century (Hacking, 1995; Leys, 2000). I shall return to some of these studies below. For now, the important point is that since such genealogical work has excavated crucial portions of the tradition that will form the central focus of the present volume, the latter will in many instances be able to stand on the shoulders of these existing studies and use their rich insights to investigate new terrain, including terrain that goes beyond psychology. However, the volume will also address aspects of the ICS tradition that have been somewhat underexplored in previous studies. For example, in his contribution to this volume, Nidesh Lawtoo argues for attending to the work of the relatively unexplored ‘physio-psychology’ of Charles Féré, mediated via Friedrich Nietzsche, since it constitutes a key bridge between late nineteenth-century debates and more recent neurological work on ‘mirror neurons’. In the remainder of this introduction, I wish to expand on some of the above observations and the lines of inquiry they open up. The introduction’s objectives are threefold: (1) to introduce the volume and its chapters; (2) to provide a common template for the chapters to come – in the form of an understanding of some of the central aspects and implications of the late nineteenth-century debates on ICS; and (3) to offer a substantial backdrop from which to engage anew with these debates from a sociological and social theory perspective. Given this latter objective, I will devote considerable attention to the more sociological dimensions of the late nineteenth-century ICS debates, with a particular focus on Tarde’s work. While Tarde is no

The imitative, contagious, suggestible roots  9 doubt a prominent figure within these debates, paying primary attention to his adaptation of the ICS framework obviously runs the risk of either over-singularizing it or at least downplaying its predominance in the work of a wide range of late nineteenth-century thinkers. The following chapters will compensate for this narrow focus on Tarde by analyzing several other representatives of the ICS framework.

A modern predicament: the rise of the ICS framework I have referred to notions of ICS as if they belong to a conceptual whole and constitute a more or less fixed ‘framework’ or some kind of coherent analytical ‘horizon’. This is not coincidental, but consistent with a range of works that emerged in the late nineteenth century and which displayed a series of both significant and surprising cross-fertilizations between (and beyond) psychology and sociology. It is worthwhile dwelling on these developments and aspects of their prehistory, as they provide a common backdrop to the chapters in this volume. As argued earlier, the interest in ICS did not emerge out of the blue – rather, certain influences from previous debates helped shape this interest. In the following, I shall look at one particular strand of influence by attending to the resurgence of mesmeric ideas and problematiques in France in the 1880s. What was the nature of this mesmerism? Back in the 1770s, the Viennese physician Franz Anton Mesmer claimed to have discovered a particular fluid – so-called ‘animal magnetism’ – that allegedly connected individuals to one another and the universe. According to Mesmer, diseases were attributable to an uneven bodily distribution of this fluid. Consequently, to effect a cure, the fluid would have to be rechanneled and equilibrium restored, which could be achieved by provoking a crisis in patients (for fuller discussions of Mesmer’s system and the mesmerist movement, see Darnton, 1968; Ellenberger, 1970: 57–69). Two forms of contagion characterized M ­ esmer’s work. First, his techniques spread like an epidemic to several countries, including France and the US. Second, his collective treatment séances – organized around the baquet, a device invented to ‘concentrate the fluid’ (Ellenberger, 1970: 63) – reportedly: transformed an organized group [of patients] into a chaotic collectivity. The effects of the fluid on each individual reinforced its power in others: the first giggle unleashed cascades of laughter; the first spasm acted as an irresistible catalyst for a chain reaction of convulsive crises [in the patients]. (Chertok and Stengers, 1992: 2) While widely acclaimed, Mesmer’s spectacular invention and discovery also attracted critical attention. One influential critique arose from two commissions appointed by Louis XVI in 1784 to examine the scientific value

10  Christian Borch of animal magnetism.3 The commissions concluded that no fluid could be identified in a rational-scientific manner. They further stated that, while certain therapeutic effects could not be denied, these were attributable not to animal magnetism, but rather to imagination, that is, an ‘anticipated persuasion’ on the part of the patients (Chertok and Stengers, 1992: 15). Interestingly, and somewhat paradoxically in light of this critique, the only one of the two commission reports that was made public ‘appealed to the king to confront the threat to morals posed by animal magnetism: the sexual feelings provoked by the magnetist who might abuse this attachment’ (Chertok and Stengers, 1992: 3). In other words, while mesmerism might not have any scientific value, it should be taken seriously as a phenomenon that posed a danger to the moral order: even people of high esteem could apparently fall prey to the imagination that allegedly permeated the mesmerist séances – something that threatened to destabilize well-established social hierarchies. Despite being thus discredited, mesmerist ideas continued to thrive and be refined. One advance came in the 1780s with Armand de Puységur, whose work further demonstrated that Mesmer was wrong to propose the existence of a fluid. However, contra the commission reports, Puységur ‘understood that the real agent in the cure was the magnetizer’s will’ (Ellenberger, 1970: 72). His intervention accordingly shifted the emphasis from animal magnetism to magnetic somnambulism. Another advance came in the UK in the 1840s, with James Braid’s reconceptualization of magnetism and somnambulism as hypnotism (Chertok and Stengers, 1992: 25–6; Ellenberger, 1970: 82). It is not the aim here to follow the ebbs, flows, and transformations of mesmeric thought from the late eighteenth century onward. More important is that mesmeric ideas served as an inspirational background to those late nineteenth-century developments on ICS that are central to the present volume. More specifically, the fundamental controversy regarding ­mesmerism – that clearly something was going on, but that references to a fluid and animal magnetism were misleading – seemed to play out once again at the end of the century, though no longer led by royally appointed commissions. One of the most significant manifestations of this appeared with the work of the French physician Hippolyte Bernheim, who would become the leader and key representative of the so-called Nancy School. In his 1886 book Suggestive Therapeutics, Bernheim explicitly invoked Braid rather than Mesmer when arguing that ‘the phenomena of so-called animal-magnetism are simply the phenomena of suggestion’ (1889: 28). Echoing Puységur’s emphasis on the magnetizer’s will rather than a fluid, Bernheim provided numerous examples of how the suggestionneur could effect a genuine ‘automatism’ through suggestion: The human organism [of the suggestionné] has become almost a machine, obedient to the operator’s will. I say “Rise,” and [the patient] rises. One subject gets up very quickly, another obeys slowly, the machine

The imitative, contagious, suggestible roots  11 is lazy, the command must be repeated in an authoritative voice. […] General sensibility and the special senses may be modified, increased, diminished, or perverted at will. (Bernheim, 1889: 29) Bernheim’s view on hypnotic suggestion developed in critical response to the other main advocate of hypnosis at the time, Jean-Martin Charcot, the leading figure of the rivaling Salpêtrière School (named after the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, where Charcot practiced). Charcot was instrumental in placing hypnosis high on the clinical agenda in France at the end of the nineteenth century, and – at least initially – was a more dominant and ­respected figure than Bernheim. Throughout the 1870s, Charcot took an increasing interest in hysteria and eventually turned to hypnosis as a means to shed light on this affliction. Importantly, however, he deviated from Bernheim when it came to the issue that lay at the center of the so-called Nancy–Salpêtrière debate: the extension of hypnosis. Charcot maintained that the application of hypnosis was limited to hysterics, typically women. Bernheim, by contrast, did not agree that hypnosis was restricted to ‘weaknerved, weak-brained, hysterical, or women’ (1889: 5). Hypnotic suggestion, he argued, had a much broader field of application, precisely because it was not, in his view, intimately linked to hysteria. Rather than tying hypnosis to some pathological state, Bernheim proposed that it should be seen ‘as a state akin to sleep’ (Andriopoulos, 2008: 23), but with the important addendum that ‘suggestions may be realized with or without sleep’ (Bernheim, 1889: 15). Charcot’s and Bernheim’s work attracted many followers, both in France and abroad, and stimulated a widespread interest in hypnosis, suggestion, and somnambulism. In particular, Bernheim’s perspective, which gradually became the more dominant one, was decisive for taking these notions beyond a purely clinical or therapeutic domain. If, as his work indicated, human beings are all suggestible, though not all in equal measure, then the notion of suggestion could potentially be applied to a host of phenomena. This was precisely what happened. As ­Ellenberger notes, ‘We can hardly realize today to what extent hypnotism and ­suggestion were invoked in the 1880s to explain countless historical, anthological, and ­sociological facts, such as the genesis of religions, miracles, and wars’ (1970: 164–5). As the chapters in this volume demonstrate, ­Ellenberger’s observation might in fact be an understatement – at least, it underplays the degree to which hypnotism and suggestion continued to exert an influence many years later, and that this vocabulary was applied to increasing numbers of phenomena. For example, as Ellenberger also recognizes, this vocabulary would go on to inspire discussions about crowds and masses, whether these were studied from a more sociological perspective (more on this below), or were interlaced with what William Mazzarella has called the ‘mana moment’ in anthropology, that is, the era from around 1870–1920

12  Christian Borch when leading anthropologists focused primarily on collective energies and their mobilization (Mazzarella, 2017: 41–4; see also ­Brighenti, 2014). In fact, a range of the most celebrated and serious minds form the fields of criminology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, etc. – in and outside of France – would subscribe to this vocabulary and adopt it for their own analytical purposes (e.g. Friedrich Nietzsche, Robert E. Park, Edward A. Ross, Boris Sidis, Scipio Sighele, Georg Simmel, etc.). What they all shared was the sense that key modern experiences could indeed be understood through these categories. Bernheim was among the first to realize this extra-psychological potential and to offer some reflections on how his conception of suggestion – defined as ‘an idea conceived by the operator, seized by the subject, and accepted by his [sic] mind’ (Bernheim quoted in Chertok and Stengers, 1992: 27) – might be utilized in fields such as, especially, law.4 Here Bernheim’s interest centered on debates about hypnotic crimes, that is, those committed under hypnosis, including so-called post-hypnotic crimes, where the criminal act took place after the end of the hypnotic séance. As Stefan Andriopoulos (2008) has compellingly demonstrated, discussions about hypnotic crimes proliferated at the end of the nineteenth century in France, Germany, and beyond. Of central importance to these debates were the questions of whether people could be hypnotized to commit criminal acts without their conscious knowledge, and the potential implications for liability of such hypnotic crimes. Many argued that (1) hypnotic crimes do in fact exist, and (2) they exempt the hypnotized subject from liability, which is conferred instead on the hypnotizer.5 Two aspects are particularly interesting in relation to hypnotic crimes. One is that debates about this phenomenon restaged the battle between the Nancy and Salpêtrière schools, with Charcot and his colleagues asserting that the Nancy position relied too heavily on literary accounts of hypnotic crimes and failed to demonstrate, via sound experiments, that such crimes could in fact take place (Andriopoulos, 2008: 34). In other words, the Salpêtrière people found that the Nancy rivals did not maintain a proper distance from the popular manifestation of a hypnotism and suggestion framework – namely, its diffusion into literary works at the end of the nineteenth century, and subsequent reabsorption into scholarly domains. The other interesting aspect of the discussion about hypnotic crimes was that it invoked concerns previously associated with mesmerism, such as the danger the latter allegedly posed to the moral order. Further, if hypnotism and suggestion could in fact be deployed for criminal and antisocial purposes, then not only might hypnosis and suggestion render otherwise ­autonomous individuals highly plastic, but such operations may equally lead to a destabilization of the social order. One particular dimension of this – albeit more of an implicit undercurrent than an explicit problematization – concerned the destabilization of class and other social hierarchies that was implied by Bernheim’s emphasis on the ubiquitous nature of suggestion.

The imitative, contagious, suggestible roots  13 Since hypnosis was not confined to hysterics – on the contrary, everyone was deemed suggestible – then the higher classes could claim no exceptional or special status. Contrary to Charcot’s position, therefore, Bernheim effected a profound democratization of the notion of suggestion. These were indeed some of the central concerns that were flagged when suggestible crowds, seemingly ready to run amok in violent frenzy, attracted public and scholarly attention in the 1890s (Borch, 2012). Most notably, in his immensely popular 1895 treatise The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, the crowd psychologist Gustave Le Bon argued, with explicit reference to the Nancy School, that modern society was best described as ‘the ERA OF CROWDS’ – an epoch in which even respected people could easily fall prey to the suggestive influence of crowds (1960: 14, original emphasis). While Le Bon (and many other crowd psychologists) subscribed to ­Bernheim’s understanding of suggestion, he gave it a twist that only added to the allegedly devastating antisocial potential of suggestion. He stated that not only are crowds defined by suggestibility, but the suggestions that turn normally sensible individuals into barbarian automatons assume a contagious form in crowds (1960: 30). Le Bon’s fear might be reinterpreted thus: while B ­ ernheim’s therapeutic use of suggestion may serve a valuable purpose when deployed in a controlled setting vis-à-vis the individual patient, suggestion – once unleashed on a broader social scale – threatened to reinstate one of the features of Mesmer’s collective treatment at the baquet that had attracted an equal dose of fascination and repulsion: namely, that the collective milieu was prone to set in motion a contagious reinforcement of suggestive forces. For Le Bon and like-minded observers, this alleged domino logic of crowds made evident that society badly needed an in-depth understanding of the role of contagious suggestion, and this was indeed what crowd psychology claimed to offer. This interlacing of contagion and suggestion was far more prominent in crowd psychology than in Bernheim’s work. However, as Bernheim’s writings implied that everyone is suggestible to outside commands, it was understandable that Le Bon, among others, might then infer a society potentially all-enmeshed in the power exercised over suggestible automata (the crowd). While Bernheim did not seem to recognize this implication, and also did not theorize who might occupy the role of suggestionneurs in such a suggestive society, Freud centered much of his critique of Bernheim and the notion of suggestion on the issue of power. He visited Bernheim in 1889, having previously visited Charcot in 1885–6. He became increasingly critical of the former and what he considered ‘the tyranny of suggestion’ as a therapeutic means, going as far as to characterize the suggestionneur’s work as ‘a ­ ernheim’s clear case of injustice and an act of violence’ (Freud, 2004: 40). B renderings of his own practice admittedly lent some credence to that impression: he certainly phrased his therapeutic work in rather authoritarian tones. Freud’s alternative, the psychoanalytical project, was therefore developed in critical opposition to Bernheim. In Borch-Jacobsen’s words, it was

14  Christian Borch ‘by rejecting suggestion that psychoanalysis […] constituted itself as psychoanalysis’ (1988: 147, original emphasis). This is not the place to discuss Freud’s alternative at any length, ­especially because existing volumes have already conducted thorough investigations of his turn away from Bernheim’s perspective. What is important, however, is that some of these studies show that, in spite of the critical distance Freud established vis-à-vis the suggestion framework, his psychoanalysis remained obliged to – or trapped in – the problematiques that went hand-in-hand with suggestion. This has been compellingly demonstrated by both Borch-­ Jacobsen (1988) and Leys (2000). Focusing on Freud’s work on trauma, Leys observes that: What Freud found disturbing about hypnosis-suggestion, and what he therefore struggled to suppress, was the idea that in suggestion my thoughts do not come from my own mind or self but are produced by the imitation or suggestion of another – the hypnotist or, in psychoanalytic practice, the analyst. Freud’s theory of the unconscious may thus be seen as an attempt to solve the problem of the hypnotic rapport by transforming suggestion into desire. (2000: 36) And yet, Leys argues, this ambition crumbled when, ultimately, Freud’s alternative arrived at ‘emotional identification – or mimesis’ (2000: 31). Leys even goes on to demonstrate that this tension between essentially mimetic and anti-mimetic tendencies that can be identified at the heart of Freud’s psychoanalytical efforts has continued to haunt much post-Freudian work on trauma, right up to the present (see also Leys, 2007). Suggestionneur – suggestionné Thus far in this introduction, I have tried to sketch some of the attention devoted to questions about suggestion at the end of the nineteenth century. While the emphasis has been on psychological or psychotherapeutic discourse, I have also provided evidence of the suggestibility of the suggestion discourse, so to speak – namely, its adoption far beyond clinical and therapeutic objectives. Specifically, when viewed sociologically, the notion of suggestion – and its twin concept in crowd psychology: contagion – seems to point to a particular modern predicament. Namely, these concepts call into question central assumptions regarding, for example, liberal political theory – notably the notion of the liberal autonomous self, which was replaced with a highly plastic self, moldable in the hands of the suggestionneur. The realization of this plasticity was for many observers, Le Bon and Freud included, profoundly disturbing. However, as I shall return to later, this plasticity may also constitute an important analytical possibility. In other words, the emphasis on suggestion and suggestibility should

The imitative, contagious, suggestible roots  15 perhaps not simply be rejected for political reasons (because such notions and their implications sound uncomfortable to liberal ears). Rather, it might be that a return to questions of suggestion could pave the way for a novel – and more adequate – understanding of subjectivity as enmeshed in affective-suggestible dynamics. This point is further developed in the third part of the volume. Before elaborating on such possibilities, I wish to add a layer of complexity to the above, more standard interpretation of Bernheim – something that will also challenge the apparent predicament posed by suggestion. In a penetrating analysis of Bernheim’s work, Borch-Jacobsen has demonstrated that the Frenchman oftentimes conceived of suggestion in a fashion that did not simply pit an active suggestioneur against a passive suggestionné automaton.6 Rather than seeing the former as capable of molding the latter as he or she pleases, Bernheim attributed to the apparently malleable subject a certain willpower – namely, the volitional ability to decide whether or not to give in to the hypnotic suggestion. Effectively nullifying the critique later advanced by Freud (2004: 40) – that suggestion in the French tradition was but a ‘magic word’ that best described a tyrannical practice – Bernheim’s colleague, Joseph Delbœuf, made clear that, in hypnosis, ‘There is no power either mysterious or dangerous, and hence no one is endowed with it. All hypnotic manifestations are due to the subject [i.e. the suggestionné] and to no one but the subject’ (Delbœuf, cited in Borch-Jacobsen, 2009: 112). Consequently, Borch-Jacobsen summarizes, Bernheim’s surprising idea was that: it is not le suggestionneur who provokes the receptivity to suggestions; it is the suggestionné himself [sic] who disinhibits himself, who lets himself go, who makes himself passive. […] The mystery of hypnotic induction disappears as soon as one understands that suggestibility is not an automatism and that submission to suggestion is in fact a very voluntary servitude, revocable at any moment. In the end, there is no hypnosis, only a self-hypnosis, or a consent to hypnosis. (2009: 112, original emphasis) This anticipates a sociological point that Niklas Luhmann would later i­ nsist on – namely, that if systems are conceived of as self-referential, autopoietic, and operationally closed, it is not possible to ‘steer’ their operations from the outside. The success of any external steering is contingent upon the system steering itself (Luhmann, 1997). Furthermore, the emphasis on the consent to hypnosis anticipates what would later become known as the ‘experimenter expectancy effect’, according to which experimental ‘subjects tend to conform to the expectations unintentionally communicated by the experimenter’ (Borch-Jacobsen, 2009: 119). This type of link was already acknowledged in the late nineteenth century. Thus, ­Harrington notes, much of Bernheim’s early critique of Charcot was founded on the

16  Christian Borch suspicion that the Salpêtrière School was guilty of ‘having unwittingly trained their subjects to transfer symptoms and to expect that such and such an effect was supposed to occur’ as a result of their intervention (­Harrington, 1987: 179). From the point of view of the history of psychology and theories of ­suggestion, what is central here is that Borch-Jacobsen argues for a rewriting of the records: ‘It was not Freud but Bernheim and Delbœuf who first abandoned hypnosis in their psychotherapeutic practice’ (2009: 122). In fact, he claims, Freud misunderstood the relation between suggestion and hypnosis. ‘Freud, in rejecting hypnosis, thought that he could get rid of suggestion’ (2009: 122, original emphasis). This rested on the assumption that hypnosis holds the key to suggestion, but it was precisely this assumption that was undermined by Bernheim and Delbœuf. Rather than seeing suggestion as an effect or particular subcategory of hypnosis, they argued for reversing the relationship – more precisely, they sought to avoid any talk and practice of hypnosis, and instead focused on suggestion. Indeed, they argued, there is no such thing as hypnosis, only states of suggestion. ­Consequently, abandoning hypnosis did not eliminate the role of suggestion, a point that was forcefully made in the work of the Nancy School: ‘from the beginning of the 1890s, Bernheim and Delbœuf abandoned hypnosis, deliberately restricting themselves to suggestion in the awakened state’ (Borch-Jacobsen, 2009: 121). What their work demonstrates in more general terms, Borch-Jacobsen concludes, is that, contra Freud’s assessment, ‘The abandonment of hypnosis, therefore, was no escape from suggestion: it only made it more subtle, more insidious, more interminable because of its denial’ (2009: 123). Let me tease out some implications of this interpretation, implications that go beyond Borch-Jacobsen’s concerns. To begin with, the suggestionné is, as previously stated, seen here not as a passive dupe or automaton, but rather as an active partner in the suggestion – namely, one who acts in an actively passive manner by letting himself or herself go and by responding in a complaisant fashion to the suggestionneur. While this does away with a conception of power according to which the suggestionneur can force his or her ideas upon the suggestionné in a frictionless manner, it does make manifest a powerful relation, as the suggestionné indeed complies with the cues given by the suggestionneur. However, this is a power relation that the suggestionné willingly accepts. This prompts the question of why the suggestionné would agree to be part of this game. Why enter a power relation in which, although no power is exercised over you without your consent, power is, ultimately, exercised over you? Bernheim’s answer would probably be straightforward: the suggestionné accepts the game because he or she is ill and in need of treatment. However, this answer is inadequate if the notion of suggestion is to gain traction more broadly in social theory, that is, beyond psychological debates. Tarde’s work, I will argue in the following, offers some important clues here.

The imitative, contagious, suggestible roots  17

Sociological implications: Tarde on contagious suggestive imitation As mentioned at the beginning of this introduction, Tarde’s work was indebted to late nineteenth-century advances within psychology, especially as they related to debates about suggestion. Indeed, Tarde’s texts often reverberate with ideas expressed by figures such as Bernheim, Binet, ­Delbœuf, and Féré. For example, Bernheim’s and others’ interest in hypnotic crimes was echoed in some of Tarde’s criminological writings, such as an 1892 article on criminal masses, in which he distinguished between the hypnotizing leader of a crowd and its hypnotized members, arguing that, in terms of liability, the latter could not be held legally accountable for their criminal behavior (as they were under the sway of hypnosis), whereas the hypnotizing leader could (Tarde, 1892: 380–3).7 However, Bernheim’s influence on Tarde went deeper, to the heart of his sociological project. To illuminate this, it is helpful to outline the contours of some of Tarde’s central sociological ideas, which demonstrate how notions of ICS found a sociological anchor. An obvious starting point here is Tarde’s book The Laws of Imitation (first published in 1890, second edition 1895), in particular Chapter 3: ‘What is a Society?’ (the first version of which had previously been published as a separate article in 1884). In it, Tarde first presented a basically economic conception of society as based on exchange, as well as a legal conception, according to which laws and customs bind society together. However, he found both conceptions wanting, and argued instead for an understanding of society as founded on imitation. Society, he stated, simply consists of ‘the organisation of imitativeness’, that is, the organization of ideas, behaviors, and desires in ways that transform heterogeneity into increasing homogeneity (Tarde, 1962: 70). Through imitation, people become increasingly alike. Although novelties and inventions are constantly produced, imitation ensures that they transmit beyond their source of origin, thereby dissolving the heterogeneity they initially introduce. Tarde associated this organization of imitativeness with contagion, speaking about ‘the contagion of imitation’ (1962: 62, original emphasis) – a connection that would become central to crowd psychology. I shall return to this relation between contagion and imitation below. For now, however, I will look more closely at the link Tarde established between his broad, imitation-based definition of society and its psychological backing. In Tarde’s own words, ‘to the question which I began by asking: What is society? I have answered: Society is imitation. We have still to ask: What is imitation? Here the sociologist should yield to the psychologist’ (1962: 74). It is in this move toward a psychologically inspired conception of the ­social that Bernheim and others came to play a crucial role in Tarde’s sociology, since he tied imitation to notions of suggestion, somnambulism, and hypnotism (a set of terms he used interchangeably). A few examples will

18  Christian Borch suffice to show this explicit influence, especially from Bernheim, but also how Tarde’s conceptual mix-up entailed a disregard for the distinction between suggestion and hypnosis that was so central to the work of Bernheim and Delbœuf. For example, when invoking the notion of somnambulism as a means to understand social suggestion, Tarde noted that, ‘If you re-read contemporaneous works on this subject, especially those of Richet, Binet and Féré, Beaunis, Bernheim, Delbœuf, I shall not seem fanciful in thinking of the social man as a veritable somnambulist’ (1962: 76). In the same context, Tarde took a retrospective look at the 1884 version of the chapter and observed that, at that time: hypnotic suggestion was but barely spoken of and the idea of universal social suggestion, an idea which has since been so strongly emphasised by Bernheim and others, was cast up against me as an untenable paradox. Nothing could be commoner than this view at present. (1962: 76, n. 1) Similarly, Tarde acknowledged that the notion of somnambulism might sound antiquated, but apologized for this by stating that, in the year of the earlier publication, ‘hypnotism had not yet been altogether substituted for somnambulism’ (1962: 76, n. 2, original emphasis). Beyond pointing to the increasing traction of this vocabulary in the decade from the mid-1880s to the mid-1890s, these quotes provide a sense of Tarde’s creative move to develop an entire theory of society and sociality on the basis of an array of ideas that originated in psychotherapy, and hence originally had a much more restricted field of application.8 More specifically, his central notion was that individuals are veritable somnambulists. He phrased this in mainly hypnotic terms, arguing, for example, that: The social like the hypnotic state is only a form of dream, a dream of command and a dream of action. Both the somnambulist and the social man [sic] are possessed by the illusion that their ideas, all of which have been suggested to them, are spontaneous. (1962: 77) As this makes clear, Tarde’s image of society and the social is one that pivots around sleepwalking rather than a state of ‘awakenedness’, and in which, therefore, the somnambulistic individuals are bereft of any ‘power of resistance’ against that which is being suggested to them (1962: 79). This sleepwalking state does not merely characterize social individuals on an interactionist level, but also applies to entire societies. In a biting critique of the belief in civilizational progress, Tarde thus argued that, while ‘­Civilised peoples flatter themselves with thinking that they have escaped this dogmatic slumber’ characteristic of somnambulism, this is deeply mistaken: ‘As [societies] become civilised and, consequently, more and more imitative,

The imitative, contagious, suggestible roots  19 they also become less and less aware that they are imitating’ (1962: 82, original emphasis). Interestingly, Tarde’s social theory appears to contain some of the same complexity that was identified in Bernheim above. On the one hand, Tarde referred to the alleged ‘one-sided passive imitation of the somnambulist’ (1962: 79). On the other hand, he was careful to emphasize a number of limits to this passivity, thereby affording imitation a more volitional facet. For example, he argued that, especially in modern society: the suggestions of example become more numerous and diversified around an individual, each of them loses in intensity, and the individual becomes freer to determine his [sic] choice according to the preference of his own character, on the one hand, and on the other, according to certain logical laws [discussed later in The Laws of Imitation]. (1962: 83) This increase in the number of suggestions not only diminishes the force of each one, but also ‘renders subjection to imitation at once more personal and more rational’, Tarde argued (1962: 83, original emphasis). In other words, he seemed to suggest that the somnambulist is not just a passive dupe, but someone who can actively choose from the suggestions presented. ­Furthermore – and this is an important addition to the Bernheim and Delbœuf framework – Tarde led the way toward an explanation of why ­people might actively and willingly assent to become somnambulists, that is, why they would agree to and choose from whatever the suggestionneur proposes. The keyword here is prestige. In Tarde’s elucidation: The magnetiser does not need to lie or terrorise to secure the blind belief and the passive obedience of his [sic] magnetised subject. He has prestige – that tells the story. That means, I think, that there is in the magnetised subject a certain potential force of belief and desire which is anchored in all kinds of sleeping but unforgotten memories, and that this force seeks expression just as the water of a lake seeks an outlet. The magnetiser alone is able through a chain of singular circumstances to open the necessary outlet to this force. (1962: 78) Several things are important here. One is how Tarde punctuates the type of critique Freud would later voice against Bernheim’s work: that it amounted to a kind of violence. For Tarde, associating hypnotic suggestion with repressive power misses the mark – instead, suggestion is affirmatively based. Further, Tarde’s account is agnostic when it comes to what precisely constitutes the prestige of the magnetizer. Prestige is functionally conceived as a channel of beliefs and desires: ‘We have prestige in the eyes of anyone in so far as we answer his [sic] need of affirming or of willing some given

20  Christian Borch thing’ (1962: 78). Once again, this casts the suggestionné as anything but a passive victim. Indeed, it introduces a rather more dynamic and balanced relationship between the suggestionneur and the suggestionné than we find in Bernheim. Whereas for the Nancy School, the suggestionné adapts to the suggestionneur according to his or her anticipation of the latter’s wishes, Tarde’s model suggests that the status of suggestionneur is only valid to the extent that he or she is seen by the suggestionné as a proper conduit of the latter’s desires and beliefs. In other words, if the relation between suggestionneur and suggestionné is one of power, the apparent asymmetry between the two is in fact based on a much more symmetrical foundation. However, symmetry is not reciprocity, and Tarde was careful to stress that, in the relation between suggestionneur and suggestionné, it is the latter who imitates the former, not the other way around – which is the reason why he maintained that the somnambulist’s imitation is ‘one-sided’ (1962: 79).9 While much of this suggests important differences to Bernheim’s conception of suggestion, Tarde’s discussion of prestige also seems to subscribe to ideas that are closely aligned with those of the Nancy School. This applies in particular to the notion that the suggestionné partakes in suggestion in a manner in which he or she ‘conform[s] to the expectations unintentionally communicated by’ the suggestionneur (Borch-Jacobsen, 2009: 119). Tarde was on a similar track when referring approvingly to Henry Maudsley’s (1899: 69) observation, on so-called muscle reading, that the somnambulist may be able ‘to read unconsciously what is in the mind [of the suggestionneur] through “an unconscious imitation of the attitude and expression of the person whose exact muscular contradictions are instinctively copied”’ (Tarde, 1962: 78–9, emphasis added to Maudsley’s text by Tarde). This was consonant with Bernheim’s attempt to loosen and rethink the hierarchical structure of suggestion. A final comment about Tarde’s conception of the connection between imitation and prestige is warranted. As previously indicated, Tarde’s notion of the suggestionné is richer than Bernheim’s in the sense that, in the Tardean account, the subject is endowed with desires and beliefs that he or she seeks to realize. Of course, such beliefs and desires do not arise out of the blue but have themselves ‘been impressed upon’ the subjects; that is, they circulate through imitative, contagious, and suggestive patterns (Tarde, 1962:  79). This might demand an explanation of how a certain set of beliefs and desires emerged in the first place, independently of prior external suggestions, and thus set in motion a quest for some foundational myth. However, from a Tardean point of view, there are two ways of evading such a quest. The first is to pragmatically accept that people are thrown into the social, and therefore they are, from an early age, exposed to and impressed by the beliefs and desires that are currently in vogue. For this very reason, Tarde emphasized the parents’ – in Tarde’s paternalistic idiom, the father’s – role as the model copied by the child. What emerges from Tarde’s link between imitation and prestige is therefore the capacity to answer the question of why people

The imitative, contagious, suggestible roots  21 willingly submit to suggestion. They do so because, from an early age, they have adopted beliefs and desires that they continually seek to realize, and the pursuit of that realization drives them toward magnetization, which itself generates new beliefs and desires, etc. The second way of bypassing the problem of what institutes imitative patterns in the first place is to argue, as per Bruno Karsenti, that in fact: imitation does not enquire into beginnings, but rather into the vector of sociality. The question [Tarde’s imitation theory] raises is not the origin of the relation, but simply what it consists in, what it is made of, what it is, precisely, that makes it a relation. (2010: 46–7, original emphasis) As already mentioned, the sociological adaptation of suggestion theory was Tarde’s central achievement, and something that Bernheim never really ­accomplished. While the latter was preoccupied with suggestion from a psychotherapeutic point of view, Tarde sought to understand modern society. This explains why, for Tarde and his sociological contemporaries, it made sense to link the notions of imitation and suggestion directly to contagion, as when speaking about ‘the contagion of imitation’ (1962: 62, original emphasis). One central backdrop to establishing this link was Tarde’s interest in the modern city. A key feature of the city is that it seemed to constitute a hotbed of ‘social contagion’ or the ‘contagion of example’ (for a discussion of these terms in late nineteenth-century French social theory, see Mitchell, 2012: Ch. 3). In modernity, the city is simply the place in and from which imitations spread contagiously (Borch, 2005). Tarde’s characterization of Paris nicely captures this point: Paris unquestionably rules more royally and more orientally over the provinces than the court ever ruled over the city. Every day the telegraph or the railroad distributes its readymade ideas, wishes, conversations, revolutions, its readymade dresses and furniture, throughout the whole of France. The suggestive and imperious fascination which it instantaneously exerts over this vast territory is so profound, so complete, and so sustained, that it no longer surprises anyone. This kind of magnetisation has become chronic. (1962: 226) It is not coincidental that the city was pivotal for Tarde when linking t­ ogether imitation-suggestion and contagion. First, he and many other contemporaries saw the city not merely as the hotbed of imitation, but as the breeding ground for precisely the crowds and masses that attracted so much popular and scholarly attention at the end of the nineteenth century. As a particularly modern and urban phenomenon, crowds simply seemed to encapsulate the forces of contagious imitation that Tarde sought to analyze.

22  Christian Borch Second, and more fundamentally, the city is the natural habitat, as it were, of the contagious spread of diseases and epidemics. Indeed, there is a long history of associating cities with disease and contagion – according to the Oxford English Dictionary, contagion originally refers ‘the communication of disease from body to body by contact direct or mediate’ (quoted from Mitchell, 2012: 1). Such contact between bodies obviously thrives in cities. What happened in the late nineteenth century was that this biological notion of contagion, which previously referred solely to disease, was adopted sociologically, which enabled Tarde and others to investigate social contagion, that is, the notion that ideas, wishes, etc. may also assume contagious forms (for an interesting discussion of how such notions entered American sociology in the early twentieth century, see Wald, 2008: Ch. 3).

Tarde and Weber As should be clear by now, Tarde’s sociological program is one that places imitation at the center of society and the social. While it is certainly possible to identify ambivalent moments in his social thought, and while such ambivalences should not be glossed over, I would like in the following to primarily focus on the more positive-constructive aspects of his thinking, in order to summarize some of the ways in which Tarde’s work might help to rethink the social on the basis of the ICS framework. To begin with, it is useful to contrast the Tardean model with better-known and more widely accepted sociological conceptions. It is beyond the scope of this introduction to compare the Tardean model to the entire canon of sociology, so I will instead restrict myself to outlining the contours of how Tarde’s sociological program differs from that of Max Weber.10 Weber’s programmatic reflections on what constitutes social action, as outlined in Economy and Society, are particularly instructive. ‘Sociology’, Weber famously argued, ‘is a science concerning itself with the interpretative understanding of social action […] Action is “social” insofar as its subjective meaning takes account of the behavior of others and is thereby oriented in its course’ (1978: 4). Of importance here is how, for Weber, subjective meaning is a matter of understanding the ‘intended meaning’ of action (1978: 9), and how, consequently, types of action are ruled out as sociologically irrelevant (at least according to the Weberian definition) if their intended meaning cannot be established. According to Weber, imitation constitutes one such type of action of which the intended meaning may be hard to discern. While Weber was therefore inclined to disregard imitation as social action, his writings on the topic weaved back and forth: mere “imitation” of the action of others, such as that on which Tarde has rightly laid emphasis, will not be considered a case of specifically social action if it is purely reactive so that there is no meaningful orientation to the actor imitated. […] On the other hand, if the action of

The imitative, contagious, suggestible roots  23 others is imitated because it is fashionable or traditional or exemplary, or lends social distinction, or on similar grounds, it is meaningfully oriented either to the behavior of the source of imitation or of third persons or of both. (1978: 23–4) Weber’s account is interesting because it might be seen – in spite of its ­indeterminateness – as hammering one (of several) nails into the coffin of imitation-based sociology of a Tardean bent. In effect, Weber argued that imitation is a borderline case that only deserves sociological analysis in some instances, for which reason sociologists are better off looking at other phenomena that are more consistently in synch with the Weberian notion of social action. What Freud did to suggestion in psychology was therefore mirrored by what Weber did to imitation in sociology.11 However, Weber’s rejection of imitation as a core sociological category is based on a sloppy reading of Tarde. On the one hand, it may be argued that, contrary to what Weber suggests, Tarde’s notion of imitation does not disqualify it from Weber’s understanding of what sociology is and should be. Tarde’s notion of imitation is not purely reactive, devoid of ‘intended meaning’ (see also Andrea Mubi Brighenti’s chapter for a discussion of the relation between imitation and reaction). In fact, since imitation is intimately tied to suggestion, it is intrinsically concerned with ‘intended meaning’ – not in a hermeneutic sense, but in the sense of making the suggestionné adapt to the suggestionneur. In addition, Tarde’s notion that imitation realizes the suggestionné’s beliefs and desires – as well as produces new ones – equally resists the idea that imitation consists of pure reaction. What this suggests is that imitation as understood by Tarde might in fact be seen as social action, even along Weberian lines. On the other hand – and this is where the Tardean model nevertheless shakes Weber’s conceptual scaffold – the former shows that neither motives nor intended meaning need be essential to a sociology that grants imitation a key role. Tarde wrote that ‘imitation may be conscious or unconscious, deliberate or spontaneous, voluntary or involuntary. But I do not attach great importance to this classification’ (1962: 192). The analytical point of this is to stress that motives might not drive social action, including imitation. Searching for and seeking to identify ‘intended meaning’ may add little to sociological explanation – especially because motives and meaning may be ex post reconstructions, rather than ex ante drivers and modes of reasoning. With this in mind, Tarde’s theory in effect suggests separating the level of imitation from the level of possible motives or intended meanings behind it. Since imitation can take place regardless of a prefixed layer of motives and intended meanings (e.g. Weber’s delineation of different types of social action), and since motives and intended meanings, to the extent that they matter, might be created in the imitative process, Tarde’s theory could be interpreted as recommending that, in the first instance, analytical attention

24  Christian Borch be paid to the level of imitation itself. This does not rule out an interest in possible motives, but these are then to be analyzed on a different level.12 On this basis, it is possible to draw some wider implications from Tarde’s sociological model. First, as I have argued, it identifies the social as a plane that is independent of individuals’ motives and intended meanings. As such, it foregoes any kind of methodological individualism (a further key difference to Weber’s project). Moreover, it makes no presuppositions regarding the particular forms or circulations of knowledge necessary for the social to exist. Indeed, according to Luhmann, one of the central achievements of Tarde’s theory of imitation is that it enables an analysis of ‘[h]ow order can exist without knowledge’ (Luhmann, 1998: 98). This has two dimensions. One relates to the previous point – namely, that the social can be analyzed independently of any knowledge about actors’ intended meanings. The other dimension explains why this is so: imitation can unfold on the basis of a minimum degree of knowledge on the part of the one imitating. No preexisting knowledge of broader social and normative structures is required for imitation to take place. The minimal knowledge that Tarde identifies in imitation can assume a non-conscious form, as the beliefs and desires impressed upon the imitating person need not be transparent to him or her (this is how fashion operates, see e.g. Schiermer, 2011). Similarly, insofar as we are dealing with a bipolar relationship between a suggestionné and a suggestionneur, the former can relate to the latter’s beliefs and desires in a non-conscious manner. All of this separates the Tardean theoretical model from Weber’s model. Weber acknowledges that, typically: actual action goes on in a state of inarticulate half-consciousness or actual unconsciousness of its subjective meaning. The actor is more likely to “be aware” of it in a vague sense than he [sic] is to “know” what he is doing or be explicitly self-conscious about it. (1978: 21) And yet, Weber maintains, the sociologist should ‘reason as if action actually proceeded on the basis of clearly self-conscious meaning’ (1978: 22). Tarde’s theory of imitation evades this fissure between actual behavior and ideal-typical social action by sidestepping, and theoretically undermining, the analytical presupposition of self-conscious meaning – something that follows from Tarde’s likening of imitation to suggestion.

Rethinking sociality and individuality: bringing back ICS I wish to go a few steps further and outline some of the implications that a resuscitation of the ICS framework might have in a present-day theoretical context. As the discussion so far has hopefully made plain, ICS theorization primarily addresses issues about individuality and society: it calls into question central assumptions of, for example, liberal political theory – notably,

The imitative, contagious, suggestible roots  25 the notion of the liberal autonomous self – and argues that individuality is best analyzed as something highly plastic, something constantly (re)formed by outside suggestions. Consequently, contra any form of methodological individualism, and contra any attempt to base social theory on the singular individual, the ICS framework proposes that the more theoretically stimulating and empirically adequate account of the individual is one that emphasizes how they are profoundly implied in others, even to the point that the distinction between self and other vanishes. Similarly, sociality is portrayed in ways that ascribe to it a contagious logic of its own, irreducible to individuals and their actions. In other words, in an ICS perspective, the social is not seen as arising from individuals – rather, individuality is configured by the social and by contagious flows of imitation. If some of this sounds familiar, it is likely because both poststructuralist thought from the 1970s on (e.g. Deleuze and Guattari, 1987; Foucault, 1977) and more recent affect theory in social and cultural theory (e.g. Brennan, 2004; Clough and Halley, 2007; Gibbs, 2008; Massumi, 2002; Thrift, 2008a, 2008b) have put forward arguments that bear some resemblance to this emphasis on how subjectivity is malleable rather than constitutive. Not surprisingly, therefore, Deleuze referred affirmatively to Tarde, and a range of Tardean ideas can be identified in his work (Alliez, 2004; Sampson, 2012; Toews, 2003). Similarly, Judith Butler has combined Foucauldian insights into the production of subjectivity, as it were, with notions of imitation partly derived from Borch-Jacobsen and Leys, arguing that ‘the self is from the start radically implicated in the “Other”’ (Butler, 1991: 26). However, in contrast to the Foucauldian idea that subjectivity and power are intimately related and that the production of subjectivity is an effect of power (a point that seems to echo Bernheim), the ICS framework is tied, at least in Tarde’s case, to a genuine theory of society and the social – something that Foucault’s non-sociological project deliberately shuns. Somewhat relatedly, much of the poststructuralist tradition is characterized by a counter-­ experiential, counter-phenomenological gesture, which does not aim to render experiences intelligible, but seeks to shake our taken-for-granted notions and demonstrate their contingent nature. The ICS framework, by contrast, responds to a modern experience – namely, the sense of loss of self and the (at least retrospective) realization of being captured by contagious, imitative dynamics. Much of this volume will follow this lead and investigate how the ICS framework can be productively deployed to analyze plastic selves and entangled forms of affective-contagious imitative sociality. However, beyond that, the chapters will embed these analytical points in four broader, overall analytical modalities, each of which presents a particular way of resuscitating this framework. One analytical modality holds that the social is constituted by ICS and that (an adequate) social ontology should reflect this. Rather than rendering ICS a matter of social ontology, an alternative and less radical approach holds that these are aspects of the social that are

26  Christian Borch important, but often overlooked and hence in need of more systematic attention. Rather than arguing for a social ontology of ICS, this second analytical modality seeks to draw attention to disregarded aspects of the social via recourse to the social analytics of ICS. Each of these analytical modalities can be derived from the late nineteenth-century framework, which offers some analytical leeway. In other words, Tarde’s sociological program might be seen as providing an ontology of the social, in which imitation takes centerstage and sociality as such is conceived of as imitatively founded, with all the questions this might raise about, for example, the origin of imitation; or it may be seen, as per Karsenti’s interpretation, as pointing to an analytics that allows for an examination of imitation as a key, but oft-neglected vector of the social, without ascribing any socio-ontological status to it. A third way in which the ICS framework may be reinvigorated is to take as the point of departure Bernheim’s model and the way in which it in effect reshuffles the top-down relationship between the suggestionneur and the suggestionné, by granting the latter a far more critical volitional role in suggestion. Following this template, the analytical focus could be on what Leys refers to as a general tension between mimetic and anti-mimetic tendencies. While Leys has identified this tension in debates about trauma and guilt/ shame, that is, within a psychological context, this volume will demonstrate that a similar tension can be identified in other and rather different domains (see especially the chapter by Hansen and Borch). What this line of inquiry suggests is that it would be too hasty to argue, as many poststructuralist and affect theorists have done, that selves are wholly imitatively, contagiously founded, and therefore plastic through and through. This mimetic notion might at least be operating in a tensional relation to an anti-mimetic conception of the self (see also Blackman, 2012; Borch, 2017, 2019). Finally, a fourth way of reviving the ICS framework consists of exploring its present-day relevance through an examination of how late twentieth and early twenty-first-century developments might have created new and fertile conditions for ICS phenomena. In this volume, this will be investigated through reference to the present globalized, mediatized reality, as well as via discussions of terrorism and preemptive responses to terror. There are, of course, overlaps between these areas: as research into terror attacks has demonstrated, the imitation of one attack by others is facilitated by the fact that attacks receive intensive and extensive media attention (e.g. Brighi, 2015). Targets, objectives, technologies, etc. are now widely disseminated both by the terrorists themselves and by the coverage they receive in the news media. Indeed, even back in the late nineteenth century, notions and fears of contagion were embedded in and linked to particular media conceptions (Andriopoulos, 2002; Borch, 2016). However, the ubiquitous mediatization of the present, whether via ‘standard’ media or new social media, may well render particular forms of ICS increasingly significant. This means that ICS may become even more important social vectors than they were at the time of their initial formulation in the late nineteenth century (see also

The imitative, contagious, suggestible roots  27 Latour et al., 2012). Several chapters in the volume pursue this intuition and systematically examine the link between mediatization and ICS. Similarly, several chapters discuss terrorism and responses to it, and thereby reflect on how current scholarly and political discourse and technologies of government interlace notions of ICS with debates about how to ensure a stable social order. What these different analytical modalities suggest is a broader point that runs through the volume – namely, that the ICS framework might inspire a rethinking of social theory. More specifically, it may lead to a reconsideration of the nature and potential of sociology and social theory. While the volume does not pretend to fully outline what form such an alternative social theory might take, it does offer some key pointers. For example, it suggests rethinking the relation between individuality on the one hand, and sociality or collectivity on the other, along the lines of what Stefan Jonsson has aptly termed a ‘post-individualistic conception’, in which ‘the opposition of subject and object dissolves into a heterogeneous social continuum where the boundary between individual and mass [or collective] is shifting, constantly reasserted only to be contested and undone’ (2013: 143). Moreover, akin to how Hansen and Borch demonstrate that parts of modern financial economics are based on a tension between mimetic and anti-mimetic tendencies, the volume invites a reconstruction of the discipline of sociology along similar axes. It might be speculated, for example, that the history of sociology – including the various clashes between rival sociological ­theories – might be better understood if reconstructed as conflict between mimetic and anti-­m imetic positions (see also Leys, 1993).

The chapters The rest of the volume consists of 11 chapters, divided into three slightly overlapping parts (Parts II, III, and IV). Part II expands on and supplements the historical background provided in this introduction by digging deeper into early theories of ICS. Nidesh Lawtoo’s chapter focuses primarily on Nietzsche’s contribution to and adaptation of the ICS framework. In addition to demonstrating the ways in which Nietzsche was committed to ICS theorization, Lawtoo shows that the work of Nietzsche and one of his sources of inspiration, Charles Féré, a colleague of Charcot, provide a surprising genealogical backdrop to present-day discussions about mirror neurons. What neuroscientists report as central findings today echo ideas articulated by Nietzsche and Féré more than a century ago. Moving to a more sociological context, Bjørn Schiermer critically examines Durkheim’s reflections on imitation through a reinterpretation of his comments on Tarde. While Durkheim’s relationship to ICS theorization is often portrayed in antagonistic terms, Schiermer demonstrates that things are more complex. In his early work, Durkheim was certainly highly critical of Tarde’s notion of imitation but accorded imitation a much more fundamental sociological

28  Christian Borch role in his later writings. Schiermer traces this development and argues that Durkheim’s positive reorientation toward imitation contains important analytical insights into imitation-through-objects – a dimension of imitation that fails to be properly recognized in Tarde’s work. Katja Rothe takes the discussion of ICS out of the intramural debates. Attending to particular practical, non-clinical embeddings of ICS dynamics, she demonstrates the ways in which ICS notions were deeply ingrained in socio-pathological concerns with neurasthenia at the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Specifically, Rothe shows that, in response to neurasthenia, a comprehensive self-help literature emerged that advocated practical techniques of imitation (e.g. through autosuggestion and group mimesis) as a means of overcoming the nervousness allegedly overwhelming the modern citizen. What emerges from this practical discourse, argues Rothe, is the notion that imitation does not undermine personality – on the contrary, imitative practices may contribute positively to the formation of personality. Part III of the volume offers a number of examinations of the ways in which the ICS vocabulary was adopted and adapted beyond its original psycho-sociological framings throughout the twentieth century. Kristian Bondo Hansen and Christian Borch focus on how sociologists and economists have deployed ICS ideas in order to better understand financial markets. In addition to demonstrating that early twentieth-century scholars saw imitation as a core feature of financial markets, their chapter shows that a similar observation can be found in some branches of financial economics from the 1990s on. In spite of the persistence of the centrality thus ascribed to imitation dynamics in financial markets, Hansen and Borch point out that such dynamics have been differently valorized through time. Peta Mitchell and Felix Victor Münch take their starting point in a critical discussion of a recent resurgence of the notion of contagion within media theory and sociological network theory. While the latter tends to ignore the long sociological legacy of ICS thinking, the former is surprisingly silent on social media, despite the ubiquitous presence of such media today. ­Mitchell and Münch’s chapter addresses these gaps by means of a novel, Tarde-­informed digital social media approach, which they apply to the study of a 2014 terrorist siege in Sidney. Focusing on the network effects of Twitter comments on the siege, Mitchell and Münch trace empirically the ways in which imitative behavior can be identified on social media. Terrorism is also the topic of Elisabetta Brighi’s chapter. Drawing on ­Girard’s work, Brighi argues that mimetic rivalry may be a key driver in terrorist attacks. She demonstrates this point empirically through an examination of the 2015 Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris. The important theoretical implication of her analysis is to caution against the tendency in some ICS literature to focus mainly on the affirmative dimensions of mimesis, that is, the ways in which imitation creates social bonds – as per Tarde’s explorations. Brighi argues for taking seriously the ‘two sides of imitation’: that it can lead to positive forms of sociality but may also cause social breakdown.

The imitative, contagious, suggestible roots  29 Terrorism is addressed in Robert Peckham’s chapter, too. However, like Mitchell and Münch, his analysis mainly centers on the notion of contagion – more specifically, on the relationship between contagion as a biological concept and as a model for communication or social networks. Peckham makes the important point that, while the biological conception has often been used to shed light on social phenomena, it has generally escaped analytical attention that social networks may also have reshaped models of biological contagion. Against this backdrop, Peckham shows that in present-day virology, viruses and the digital technologies deployed to monitor and contain them are profoundly entangled – the one mirrors the other. The interconnection between virology and digital technologies is also at the heart of Sebastian Vehlken’s chapter. Vehlken approaches this link through a discussion of agent-based models (ABMs) and the ways in which such simulation frameworks are deployed in order to better understand – and combat – disease epidemics. ABMs seek to simulate how various agents (e.g. individuals in a city) interact with one another, and the effects that might emerge from this. As Vehlken notes, there is a striking parallel between ICS-related conceptions of crowd behavior and the crowd dynamics depicted in ABMs. However, the latter carry none of the psychological baggage that informs the former. In that sense, present-day ABM simulations of contagious phenomena have effectively rid themselves of one of their genealogical sources. Finally, Part IV seeks to rethink notions of individuality and sociality in the light of ICS theorization. In spite of their prominence at the end of the nineteenth century, ICS ideas have antecedents, as mentioned earlier. Taking up this point, the chapter by David Toews demonstrates that particular ICS ideas can be identified in the renaissance work of Michel de Montaigne. However, whereas, for example, crowd psychologists such as Le Bon would later frame ICS negatively as a suspension of individuality, Montaigne put forth a much more affirmative interpretation. Thus, argues Toews, in Montaigne’s writings ICS dynamics are described as a means by which the individual may flourish. In other words, Montaigne showed that the mimetic catalog of ICS need not be antagonistic to individuality – rather, it may be its very foundation. Andrea Mubi Brighenti moves closer to the present in that he focuses attention on the French psychologist and neurologist Pierre Janet, whose writings in the 1920s continued in the footsteps of the ICS theorists of the late nineteenth century (in his early career, Janet had worked at the Salpêtrière). Returning to Janet allows Brighenti to reconsider Weber’s claim that imitation should be dismissed analytically due to its allegedly mainly reactive nature. Brighenti demonstrates that Janet’s theory of personality offers a much more complex understanding of reaction, one that recasts the notion of individuality and opens up the possibility of rethinking ICS dynamics. Finally, Lisa Blackman, in her discussion of suggestion, zeroes in further on questions of individuality and sociality/collectivity. Explicitly linking affect theory and suggestion theory, Blackman asks what

30  Christian Borch suggestion can do, as well as how it is tied to particular technical practices. Against this backdrop, she outlines the contours of a ‘future psychology’ that, based on a novel mobilization of past insights, includes as part of its remit an obligation to study the ways in which objects might have suggestive abilities. While Schiermer approaches a similar idea in his discussion of Durkheim, Blackman develops her point through a reading of Tarde. As this brief overview illustrates, the contributions to the volume demonstrate multiple overlaps and an abundance of examples of how ICS vocabulary has evolved over time and been deployed in various contexts. It is our shared hope that the chapters, individually and collectively, will invite new and stimulating research into ICS, its background, uses, and analytical potential.

Notes 1 In a rather different field, notions of ICS have been revisited to make sense of financial markets. One striking example is how the 2007–8 financial crisis was framed within broader public discourse in contagion terms. As Robert Peckham (2013a,b) has compellingly demonstrated, both policy papers and the broader media discourse often linked the financial crisis discursively to biological pandemics, with notions being deployed rather directly from epidemiology to explain the alleged contagious nature of financial markets. 2 It should be stressed that the volume is not preoccupied with finding hard science support for the ICS framework. In other words, it is not of critical importance to the volume whether carefully designed experiments might substantiate the more sociologically based claims and analyses advanced in the various chapter; for such endeavors, see Garrels (2011) and Hatfield, Cacioppo, and Rapson (1994). 3 For a lucid discussion of the work of these commissions and the particular scientific conceptions they deployed in their assessement, see Chertok and Stengers (1992: Ch. 1). 4 In Suggestive Therapeutics, Bernheim stated that he would also outline some implications of his work for sociology (1889: xiv, 178). However, the sociological remarks remained scant, so the sociological application of Bernheimean suggestion theory would only really be fully elaborated with Tarde’s work (see below). 5 While Bernheim’s participation in these debates was confined to the late nineteenth century, the question of liability under hypnotic influence continued to haunt legal thinking up until the mid-twentieth century (Borch, 2015). 6 I present a more extensive discussion of Borch-Jacobsen’s argument and its implications in Borch (2019). See also Harrington (1987: 179–82) for an illuminating historical analysis. 7 I discuss further aspects of Tarde’s work on criminal crowds in Borch (2012: 49–53). 8 It is quite striking that one of the most hailed attempts to revive Tarde in a ­twenty-first-century social theory context – namely, Bruno Latour’s positioning of him as a forefather of actor-network theory – is almost completely silent on this link to psychotherapy (e.g. Latour, 2002; Latour et al., 2012). This omission, which extends to virtually neglecting Tarde’s strong commitment to the notions of imitation, suggestion, contagion, and hypnosis, is likely to be an effect of Latour’s wish to provide actor-network theory with a non-psychological foundation (for a further discussion of this, see Borch, 2014).

The imitative, contagious, suggestible roots  31 9 Tarde explicitly related to Adam Smith’s notion of sympathy here but argued that such ‘mutual prestige’ or ‘mutual imitation’, as he called it, ‘is produced only in our so-called waking life and among people who seem to exercise no magnetic influence over one another’ (1962: 79). However, he did not go on to describe precisely what that would entail or how one might conceive of such a situation. Hansen and Borch’s chapter in this volume addresses connections between Smith and ICS theorization. 10 Tarde’s work is most often contrasted with that of Durkheim (e.g. Latour, 2002, 2005). This makes sense, because Durkheim’s early writings often rebutted Tardean ideas about imitation and suggestion. What has often escaped attention in the attempt to pit Tarde against Durkheim is how the latter’s work, especially after Tarde’s death in 1904, became increasingly Tardean – and how, in fact, many Tardean facets can also be identified in Durkheim’s earlier work. For discussions of the relation between Durkheim and Tarde, see for example, Borch (2012: 70–7), Karsenti (2010), and Schiermer (2016). See also Schiermer’s chapter in this present volume, which analyzes Durkheim’s different takes on imitation. 11 Of course, there are also other contenders to that role in sociology, with ­Durkheim being a no less central figure in the disqualification of the ideas of ICS from sociology proper. 12 The composition of Tarde’s Laws of Imitation reflects this: the ontological claim about imitation constituting the social bond is analyzed separately from the subsequent examination of potential so-called logical and extra-logical laws that might be guiding specific types of imitation.

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34  Christian Borch Mazzarella, W. (2017) The Mana of Mass Society. Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press. Melberg, A. (1995) Theories of Mimesis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mitchell, P. (2012) Contagious Metaphor. London: Bloomsbury. Peckham, R. (2013a) ‘Contagion: Epidemiological Models and Financial Crises’, Journal of Public Health 36(1): 13–17. Peckham, R. (2013b) ‘Economies of Contagion: Financial Crisis and Pandemic’, Economy and Society 42(2): 226–48. Potolsky, M. (2006) Mimesis. New York and London: Routledge. Sampson, T. D. (2012) Virality: Contagion Theory in the Age of Networks. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Sampson, T. D. (2017) The Assemblage Brain: Sense Making in Neuroculture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Schiermer, B. (2011) ‘Quasi-objects, Cult Objects and Fashion Objects: On Two Kinds of Fetishism on Display in Modern Culture’, Theory, Culture & Society 28(1): 81–102. Schiermer, B. (2016) ‘Fetishes and Factishes: Durkheim and Latour’, The British Journal of Sociology 67(3): 497–515. Tarde, G. (1892) ‘Les crimes des foules’, Archives de l’Anthropologie Criminelle 7: 353–86. Tarde, G. (1962) The Laws of Imitation, trans. E. C. Parsons. Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith. Tarde, G. (1968) Penal Philosophy, trans. R. Howell. Montclair, NJ: Patterson Smith. Taussig, M. (1993) Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses. New York and London: Routledge. Thrift, N. (2008a) Non-Representational Theory: Space, Politics, Affect. London and New York: Routledge. Thrift, N. (2008b) ‘Pass It On: Towards a Political Economy of Propensity’, Emotion, Space and Society 1(2): 83–96. Toews, D. (2003) ‘The New Tarde Sociology after the End of the Social’, Theory, Culture & Society 20(5): 81–98. Vehlken, S. (2013) ‘Zootechnologies: Swarming as a Cultural Technique’, Theory, Culture & Society 30(6): 110–31. Wald, P. (2008) Contagious: Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative. ­Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press. Weber, M. (1978) Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. ­Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press. Weingart, B. (2008) ‘“Rumoritis”: Zur Modellierung von Massenkommunikation als Epidemie’, in J. Brokoff, J. Fohrmann, H. Pompe, and B. Weingart (eds.), Die Kommunikation der Gerüchte (pp. 278–99). Göttingen: Wallstein.

Part II

Historical roots The rise of ICS Theory

2 The mimetic unconscious A mirror for genealogical reflections Nidesh Lawtoo

Only now does the truth dawn on us that by far the greatest part of our spirit’s activity remains unconscious … Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

What do imitation, suggestion, and contagion have in common? A historical oblivion, one might initially say. Unfashionable topics traditionally associated with hypnotic swoons, hysterical pathologies, and crowd behavior, the laws of imitation suffered in the twentieth century a fate similar to that which animal magnetism suffered in the nineteenth century. Unsupported by an objective paradigm, these subjective phenomena were quickly dismissed as magical, sometimes primitive, and often literary phantoms eventually relegated to the margins of more ‘scientific’ approaches to the psyche and the social. The story of how Sigmund Freud, for instance, opened up a via regia to the unconscious by rejecting what he called the ‘riddle’ or the ‘magic’ of suggestion, is well known. Less known is that in the wake of Henry ­ Ellenberger’s The Discovery of the Unconscious (1970), revisionist histories have emerged that are, in turn, relegating psychoanalysis to a ‘scientific fairytale’ (Borch-Jacobsen and Shamdasani, 2012: 107). Without engaging in these ‘Freud Wars’, I think it is safe to say that as the scientific validity of the Oedipal unconscious is increasingly questioned in the twenty-first century, old mimetic riddles are currently returning to the forefront of the theoretical scene, informing the humanities, the social sciences, and casting a spell, once again, on the hard sciences. This return is especially visible when it comes to topics like imitation and contagion. There is now talk of ‘mimesis’ in affect theory, ‘simulation’ in analytic philosophy, ‘mimetic theory’ in literary studies, ‘virtual contagion’ in digital studies, ‘emotional contagion’ in psychology, sociology, and political theory. And if developmental psychologists have shown that newborns imitate from the first hours of their life, neuroscientists claim that even our brains are thoroughly mimetic, for ‘mirror neurons’ generate automatic and unconscious reflexes that lead us to unconsciously mirror other people.

38  Nidesh Lawtoo At least two of the topics of this volume, then, urge us to look ahead to new theories of imitation and contagion to rethink the foundations of psychic and social life on the basis of intersubjective, relational, and affective modes of mimetic communication that trouble the distinction between self and others. And yet, the final term, ‘suggestion’, also reminds us to simultaneously look back to a conception of the unconscious that was once dominant in the second half of the nineteenth century, had hypnosis as its via regia, and was based on a mimetic, rather than a repressive, hypothesis. This, at least, is what I suggested in a book devoted to what I called, for lack of a more original term, the ‘mimetic unconscious’ (­Lawtoo, 2013). Encouraged by the threefold topic of this volume and the Janus-faced orientation it implicitly proposes, I would like to follow-up on this line of inquiry by looking back to some of the late nineteenth-century advocates of the mimetic unconscious in order to look ahead to involuntary forms of behavioral imitation that are currently being rediscovered. I argue that a genealogy of the unconscious that has Friedrich Nietzsche as its golden thread in the labyrinth of pre-Freudian theories of hypnosis shows how the so-called ‘riddle’ of suggestion already points to some possible solutions concerning the unconscious reflex of imitation that is currently returning to the forefront of the theoretical scene, urging interdisciplinary theorists to develop what Christian Borch calls ‘a mimetic foundation of social theory’. My wager is that the mimetic unconscious sets up a mirror to contemporary discoveries in the neurosciences and, by doing so, triggers some genealogical reflections that supplement, and sometimes even inverse, ‘scientific’ conclusions about the reflex of imitation central to both individual and social formation.

The reflex of imitation: past and present revolutions Nietzsche did not write a book on the unconscious or proclaim its revolutionary discovery; as a reader of Schopenhauer, he was aware that this concept had a long history. Still, his preoccupations with unconscious forms of mimesis run through his entire corpus and bring us quickly to the root of the mimetic unconscious. If he is still often read as a ‘precursor’ of psychoanalysis or, more recently, of the death of a linguistic subject, it is important to remember that consistently in his work, Nietzsche thinks of himself as a ‘philosophical physician’ (1974: 35, original emphasis) who is extremely attentive to what he calls ‘genuine physio-psychology’ (2003: 53). It is thus on this immanent, psychosomatic basis that he proposes a backdoor to access the unconscious. Nietzsche’s concerns with ‘physio-psychology’ were untimely but not original. He was writing in the 1880s, during what Léon Chertok calls the ‘“golden age” of hypnosis’ (1993: 23), a period that, especially but not only in France, had revived Anton Mesmer’s concerns with magnetic fluids in light

The mimetic unconscious  39 of what James Braid called a ‘psycho-neuro-physiological’ theory of hypnotism (in de Saussure and Chertok, 1979: 39). Nietzsche was not only fully aware of theories of hypnosis; as Marcel Gauchet puts it, he was also the ‘most acute witness’ of the ‘physiological’ or ‘cerebral unconscious’ (1992: 19) that dominated the second half of the nineteenth century.1 Nietzsche was, in fact, a reader of Théodule Ribot’s La revue philosophique de France et de l’etranger, an international journal that published pioneering work by prominent figures in philosophy, psychology, physio-psychology and emerging social sciences, such as crowd psychology and sociology. There Nietzsche familiarized himself with the work of Jean-Martin Charcot on ‘hysteria’, Hippolyte Bernheim on ‘suggestion’, Charles Féré on ‘psycho-motor induction’, and there are reasons to believe he had read articles by Charles Richet on ‘somnambulism’, Pierre Janet on ‘automatism’, and Gabriel Tarde on ‘imitation’, among others (see Haaz, 2002; Stingelin, 2000). This explains why the language of ‘hypnosis’, ‘suggestion’, and ‘imitation’ that punctuates his corpus, is at the heart of his analysis of mimetic phenomena such as mastery and slavery, the Apollonian and the Dionysian, will to power and crowd behavior, and is the fulcrum upon which his critique of a unitary, rational, and volitional ‘ego’ pivots (Lawtoo, 2013: 27–83). Nietzsche’s general diagnostic of this all too human tendency to imitate is that we are entering what he calls a ‘phase of modesty of consciousness’ (1968: 676). As he puts it in Gay Science (from 1882): ‘Only now does the truth dawn on us that by far the greatest part of our spirit’s activity remains unconscious [unbewusst]’ (1974: 262).2 In Beyond Good and Evil (from 1886), he specifies that ‘a thought comes when “it” wants, not when “I” want’ (2003: 47). And in Will to Power, he adds: ‘we as conscious, purposive creatures, are only the smallest part of us […] By far the greater number of motions have nothing whatever to do with consciousness’ (1968: 676). These are radical claims if we consider that they precede a much-discussed decentering of consciousness in terms of a narcissistic blow which, after Copernicus and Darwin, introduces a ‘revolution’ in our understanding of man who is not even master in his own house. But if Nietzsche’s claims are innovative, they are not fully original. He is echoing a conception of the unconscious that, while forgotten in the twentieth century, was dominant at the twilight of the nineteenth century, and is currently returning to inform how a ‘contagion of affect flows across bodies’ (Connolly, 2002: 74, original emphasis) along immanent lines which, as William Connolly and Jane ­Bennett convincingly show, ‘contest’ the nature/culture binary (2002: 159) at the dawn of the ­twenty-first century. Let us thus take a step back and recall that contributors to Ribot’s Revue generally agreed in defining the unconscious as what lies outside the field of awareness, is involuntary, automatic, not fully conscious, and is in this specific sense, unconscious. For instance, Hippolyte Bernheim, from the School of Nancy, writes: ‘In every-day life many acts occur automatically, involuntarily and unconsciously, on our part’ (2001: 126). Shifting the

40  Nidesh Lawtoo ground from personal to crowd psychology, Gustave Le Bon confirms: ‘The conscious life of the spirit represents only a very feeble part compared to its unconscious life’ (2003: 12). Generalizing this view to account for social life in general, Gabriel Tarde diagnoses: ‘every act of perception implies a form of habit, that is an unconscious imitation’ (2001: 135). And here is how Théodule Ribot himself, sums up the general view described in the Revue: ‘If we count, in every human life, what is due to automatism, habit passion, and especially imitation, we shall see that the number of acts that are purely voluntary, in the strict sense of the term, is quite small’ (1888: 177). Nietzsche was indeed in good company when it came to promoting a view of the unconscious based on physio-psychological reflexes that are automatic, mimetic, and, as he says, inaugurate a ‘phase of modesty of consciousness’ (1968: 676). And yet, this modesty did not prevent philosophical physicians to diagnose the physio-psychological principles that trigger motions, as well as emotions, that operate under the soil of consciousness but can be brought to consciousness nonetheless. How? By developing ‘a psychology of movements, or better, a psychophysiology’, as Ribot says in an article in Revue (1879: 372); or, as Charles Richet specifies, by considering ‘the muscular sense as the road [la voie] through which a great number of unconscious phenomena become conscious’ (1879: 614; Richet’s italics). Nietzsche was fully aware of that muscular road to the unconscious. As early as in 1878 he writes in Human, All Too Human: Imitation of a gesture is older than language, and goes on i­ nvoluntarily even now, when the language of gesture is universally suppressed, and the educated are taught to control their muscles. The imitation of gesture is so strong that we cannot watch a face in movement without innervation of our own face (one can observe that feigned yawning will evoke natural yawning in the man who observes it). (1997: 216, 129) Nietzsche does not use the concept of the unconscious here, but his account of ‘imitation’ (Nachmachen) describes gestures and facial expressions that are ‘involuntary’ (unwillkürlich), are not under the control of awareness, and provide a clear manifestation of the mimetic unconscious. For Nietzsche, in fact, the unconscious and imitation are two sides of the same coin. And this Janus-faced coin flips our common understanding of what is both mimetic and unconscious upside down. On one side, imitation, in its most basic, physio-psychological manifestations, is not based on a conscious, volitional action that stems from the ego but on an unconscious reflex reaction triggered by the other, especially exemplary others – what Pierre Janet will later call a socius. On the other side, this unconscious is not based on a repressive or linguistic hypothesis to be discovered within a singular subject but on a mimetic hypothesis that is attentive to affects that flow in-between subjects

The mimetic unconscious  41 engaged in a relation of inter-cerebral communication – what Gabriel Tarde will call the ‘fundamental problem’ (2001: 263) of the social. Nietzsche’s mimetic hypothesis has not received the attention it deserves in the past century but is currently being confirmed in our own century. Writing in the late 1870s, Nietzsche is in fact describing what has been hailed as a revolutionary discovery in the mid-1990s. Thanks to the accidental discovery of a new class of neurons called ‘mirror neurons’ by G ­ iacomo Rizzolatti and his team doing experiments with macaque monkeys and later with humans as well, neuroscientists now claim they can offer an empirical grounding to explain why such an unconscious facial ‘innervation’ is so strong that mimetic reflexes cannot be suppressed (Gallese, 2011; ­Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia, 2008). Mirror neurons are, in fact, motor neurons, that is, neurons responsible for movements that are activated not only as we perform gestures, but also as we observe others performing gestures, especially goal-directed motor acts sequences and facial mimicry, though not only that. The simple fact of watching someone grab something or facially express an emotion, Rizzolatti and his team argue, causes mirror neurons to discharge or ‘fire’ as if we ourselves were performing that gesture or expression, generating an unconscious tendency to mimic it. The parallels with Nietzsche’s observation are striking. Marco Iacoboni, for instance, one of the neuroscientists who relied on brain imaging techniques like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) that confirm a ‘mirror-neuron system’ (MNS) in humans as well, writes that ‘mirror neurons fire when we see others expressing their emotions, as if we were making those facial expression ourselves’ (2008: 119). Along similar lines, Vittorio Gallese, one of the original discoverers in Parma writes: ‘When perceiving others expressing emotions by means of their facial mimicry, the observer’s facial muscles activate in a congruent manner’ (2011: 95). And Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia confirm this point: ‘there is no doubt that our motor system mirrors the facial movement of others’ (2008: 188). These mimetic reflexes, neuroscientists explain time and again, happen involuntarily, are below conscious awareness and take place at what they call an ‘unconscious’ level. Thus, when Iacoboni says that mirror neurons generate ‘an effortless, automatic, and unconscious inner mirroring’ (2008: 120, original emphasis) or, as Gallese writes that mirror neurons are ‘automatic, unconscious and pre-­ reflexive’ (2005: 41) and generate an ‘unconscious mimesis’ endowed with a ‘pre-social character’ (2012: 94) neuroscientists are reopening the untimely ­ nconscious – voie that leads from muscular movements back to the mimetic u reframed as an empirically based, immanent, and timely discovery. If the presence of mirror neurons in humans has now been confirmed by single-neuron studies (Mukamel et al., 2010), its broader implications concerning the specific role the MNS plays in empathy, understanding, language acquisition, and social evolution have not failed to generate controversies and are still being debated.3 Still, despite the diverging interpretations mirror neurons will continue to generate, the presence of a MNS in humans

42  Nidesh Lawtoo is a neurological fact that encourages renewed collaborations between the humanities, the social sciences, and the hard sciences. These collaborations are underway and are fostering a renewed interest in imitation as a phenomenon having ‘important implications for our understanding of ourselves, both individually and socially’ (Hurley and Chater, 2005: 1; see also Garrels, 2011). There are thus good reasons to look ahead to new scientific research on imitation and contagion that is currently challenging the myth of an autonomous, original, and volitional subject. And yet, since humans have been known to imitate for a long time, there are also good reasons to look back to a longer tradition concerned with Homo mimeticus to bring a longer genealogical perspective to bear on the psychic, social, and philosophical implications of this discovery.4 It would in fact be more historically correct to say that these discoveries are important and ground-breaking empirical confirmations of a mimetic hypothesis that has been relegated to the backstage of research in the twentieth century, and is now center stage again in the twenty-first century. Let us look at it more closely. Since the study of mental pathology was considered the bedrock for the development of a scientific psychology in the late nineteenth century, patients suffering from hysteria provided initial case studies for a diagnostic of unconscious or, as Pierre Janet preferred to call them, ‘subconscious’ mimetic tendencies. For instance, in Automatisme psychologique (1903), Janet called this tendency, also known as echopraxia, ‘specular or mirroring imitation [imitation spéculaire ou en miroir],’ for ‘the subject usually imitates with his left arm the movement we make with our right arm, resembling our image in a mirror’ (1903: 18).5 Hippolyte Bernheim in Suggestive Therapeutics (from 1889) argued that not only hysterics, but all healthy subjects are vulnerable to hypnotic forms of mimicry, which he grounded in what he called a ‘spontaneous unconscious imitation of the brain’ (2001: 127). And Gabriel Tarde, in the Laws of Imitation (from 1890) puts it even more explicitly as he bases his account of social life as a whole on the mimetic realization that ‘in the nervous system there is an innate tendency to imitate’ (il y a dans le système nerveux une tendance innée à l’imitation) (2001: 148). And quoting the ­British physiologist Henry Maudsley, Tarde speaks of ‘an unconscious imitation (imitation inconsciente) of the attitude or expression of the person whose muscular contraction he copies instinctively and with precision’ (138, original emphasis). Mirroring imitation, involuntary innervation, unconscious imitation: the terminology changes but the mimetic phenomenon remains essentially the same, and confirms the idea that theorists of the mimetic unconscious were, indeed, ‘untimely’, in the Nietzschean sense that their observations were ahead of their times, as they rooted the mimetic faculty in physio-psychological reflexes that originate in a mirroring brain. And yet, being untimely comes at a price. As Bruno Latour points out in his genealogical efforts to reclaim Gabriel Tarde as the ‘grandfather’ of ­actor-network theory, the latter ‘could not transform his intuitions into data, because the material world he was interested in was not there yet to

The mimetic unconscious  43 provide him with any empirical grasp’ (2002: 118). This is certainly true at the level of his macro-analysis of social and ‘technological networks’ based on instantaneous mimetic communications characteristic of a global, interconnected, and ‘virtual’ world Tarde so perceptively foresaw. But is it really true of that ‘cerebral,’ ‘inter-cerebral,’ or ‘hypnotic suggestion’ in which ‘nerve imitates nerve; brain imitates brain’ (Tarde, 2001: 264) on which Tarde based the laws of imitation? Interesting the so-called magical tradition that relied on hypnotic suggestion as a via regia to the unconscious comes close to providing, if not a solid, at least an empirically grounded grasp of the mimetic principles that are currently been rediscovered by the neurosciences and the social sciences. Could it be, then, that suggestion, which was for such a long time considered a riddle to be left behind, already looked ahead to theoretical solutions to the problem of what Tarde called unconscious, inter-cerebral imitation? This is what Borch implies as he writes that ‘suggestion might prove more analytically fruitful than its bad reputation suggests’ (2012: 301). Nietzsche, as we turn to see, offers a confirmation of this mimetic hypothesis as he urges genealogists to revisit the psychomotor power of suggestion.

The power of suggestion: psychomotor induction In his physio-psychological observations, Nietzsche is quite explicit about inscribing the physiological reflex of imitation in psychological theories of hypnotic suggestions, opening up a genealogy of the mimetic unconscious that is as past-oriented as it is future-oriented. In late texts like The Case of Wagner and The Will to Power, for instance, Nietzsche reframes his early concerns with the unconscious imitation of gestures in the context of the theories of hypnosis and suggestions we have begun to unearth. Speaking of theatrical spectacles, he says for instance that art ‘exercises the power of suggestion over the muscles and senses’ (1968: 809). Switching to one of the theater’s typical mimetic affects, he adds: ‘Empathy with the souls of others is originally nothing moral, but a physiological susceptibility to suggestion’ (809). And thinking of the case of Wagner as a ‘master of hypnotic tricks’, Nietzsche states his suggestive power is ‘merely a product of [a] psychomotor rapport’ (809). Hypnosis, suggestion, rapport. Here we find a confirmation that Nietzsche had been reading Ribot’s Revue carefully. But if he is a faithful advocate of the hypnotic tradition, Nietzsche is also providing his own distinctive rearticulation of competing schools of hypnosis. As the references to ‘suggestion’ indicate, Nietzsche relies on Bernheim, of the School of Nancy, to give psychological substance to his psycho-­ physiological diagnostic of the mimetic unconscious. A medical internist by training, Bernheim claimed, contra the Salpêtrière School, that hypnosis was not a pathological nervous condition reserved to hysterical patients, but that all subjects, even educated and, he specifies ‘very intelligent’ ­p eople, are characterized by what he calls ‘susceptibility to suggestion’ or, more

44  Nidesh Lawtoo simply, ‘suggestion’ (2001: 5, 15), by which he means ‘a peculiar aptitude for transforming the idea received into an act’ (2001: 137, original emphasis). Suggestion, for Bernheim, is thus a psychological notion akin to influence. For instance, suggestion accounts for patients in a hypnotic sleep who have an automatic tendency to imitate the doctor’s movements and turn their orders into an act: ‘Lift your arm!’ orders the doctor, and, voilà, the arm goes up involuntarily, as the caricature of Bernheim’s theory often goes. But if one takes the trouble to read Bernheim, it is clear that the distinction between consciousness and the unconscious is far from being clear-cut. Imitation, for him, takes place at different levels of awareness, and one does not need to be a mindless automaton in a state of deep somnambulism in order to be under the sway of suggestion. Hence his replacement of the notion of hypnosis (from hypnos, sleep) with the one of suggestion.6 As he puts it, our thoughts, ideals, tastes, emotions, ‘may be suggested to our minds by others, and they are sometimes accepted without being challenged’ (2001: 131). This claim offers a serious challenge to a rational, volitional, and autonomous conception of the subject; yet if you think of the ways in which opinions, fashions, tastes, desires, and all kinds of cultural habits are formed, it may account for a disconcerting mimetic phenomenon central to social life. This was, of course, Gabriel Tarde’s point. As he noted, ‘we are not born similar; we become so’ (2001: 131–2). How? Via an unconscious imitation transmitted from ‘brain to brain’ (257, n1) that operates on Bernheim’s model of suggestion. As Tarde puts it: ‘to have only suggested ideas and to believe them spontaneous: this is the illusion characteristic of the somnambulist and of the social man’ (2001: 137). Hence, he sets out to trace the ‘contagious’ fluxes of imitation that, at different speeds, are at play in ‘fashion’ (imitation-mode), ‘customs’ (imitation-coutume), ‘beliefs’ (imitation des croyances), and desires (imitation de désirs) that can be ‘conscious’ or ‘unconscious,’ based on ‘internal’ and ‘external’ models (2001: 247–57). T ­ arde’s social evaluation of mimetic behavior, as Andrea Brighenti persuasively shows, resonates with a minor tradition of theorists who ‘resisted disciplinary specialization’, like Canetti and Deleuze (Brighenti, 2011). At the same time, the concept of suggestion has fared less well among dominant trends in social theory (Borch, 2012); it has been responsible for discrediting authors who rely on this mimetic tradition, and it even marked a break between the school of Nancy and the school of the Salpêtrière, generating rivalries that will contribute to dissolving interest in both hypnosis and suggestion in the twentieth century. But perhaps Nietzsche can help us see that the quarrel between the two schools is not as clear-cut as it appears to be and that if joined they can both contribute to grounding the current revival of interest in suggestion on the physio-psychology of the mimetic unconscious. Notice, in fact, that Nietzsche speaks of ‘physiological suggestibility to suggestion’ as well as ‘psychomotor rapport’ joining, once again, physiology with psychology. This should not be dismissed as a simple contradiction, or as a

The mimetic unconscious  45 misunderstanding of a psychological notion (suggestion) for a somatic one (hypnosis). As ­Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, one of the most incisive recent advocates of ­Bernheim’s theory of suggestion, writes: ‘The contrast between the somatic theory of hypnosis advocated by the Salpêtrière School and the psychological theory of the Nancy School is actually much less than it appears for they are both rooted in one and the same psycho-physiology’ (2009: 110). Nietzsche fundamentally agrees. Hence his fluid oscillation between the physio-psychology at play in these rivalrous schools. And in a mirroring move, he adds a diagnostic supplement to this fundamental realization. Nietzsche’s move is subtle, not fully explicit, and requires genealogical attention to what Foucault calls the ‘most unpromising places’ to be brought to the fore (1977: 139). But the move is insidious, grounds the mimetic unconscious in a materialist hypothesis, and there is something to be gained for both hypnosis and suggestion in this mirroring psycho-­physiological operation. Schematically put, with the School of Nancy, contra the Salpêtrière, Nietzsche stresses the suggestibility of all subjects opening up his diagnostic of the mimetic unconscious to the psycho-­physiological sphere of emotions, art, culture, and politics; conversely, contra the School of Nancy, with the Salpêtrière, he focuses on the psycho-physiology responsible for the specific mirroring effects of motor inductions. And revealing his genealogical source of inspiration, Nietzsche specifies that this ‘induction psycho-motrice’ is indebted to what ‘Charles Féré thinks’ (1968: 809, original emphasis). Who, then, was Charles Féré? And what does he think? Schooled at the Salpêtrière as an assistant of Charcot, Féré was particularly interested in measuring the physio-psychological effects of movements on sensations. In a book aptly titled, Sensation et mouvement (from 1887), Féré noted that ‘the sight of a movement determines, among certain subjects, the necessity to reproduce them’ and sets out to define ‘induction psycho-motrice’ as ‘the automatic reproduction of movements that we see performed’ (1900: 87, 123, original emphasis). On the basis of this psychomotor observation, he redefines suggestibility as the ‘capacity to accept an idea communicated directly or indirectly by words, gestures, or by whatever sensorial stimulant’ (1904: 337). We are thus back to what has become familiar territory since the discovery of mirror neurons in the 1990s. But notice that in the 1880s it was not obvious to register, let alone determine the cause of this bizarre claim. There were, in fact, good reasons to simply dismiss it as pathological. For instance, Féré could have diagnosed this mirroring feeling as a relative rare physiological pathology characteristic of hysterical patients prone to unconscious mimicry (Charcot). Alternatively, he could have considered this mirroring induction as the effect of a psychic suggestion in which the patient consciously or unconsciously simulates the movements he or she is expected to perform (Bernheim). Instead, Féré, opens up a middle route as he senses that in matters of physio-psychology it is more productive to join, rather than divide, forces. Thus, he considers that this activation of the feeling of

46  Nidesh Lawtoo the other in the self is indicative of a ‘psycho-motor induction’ which involves both psychic and physiological levels of suggestion. An advocate of experimental psychology, Féré actually sought to measure the force of suggestion with the help of a dynamometer, an instrument for measuring power, or as Nietzsche will call it, will to power. As Féré reports in a book on Animal Magnetism (1888) co-authored with Alfred Binet, here is how they proceeded. They first attempted to induce in the patient a motor act, such as the act of clenching the fist, with a verbal suggestion, that is, by ordering the patient: ‘Clench your first!’ Then, in a second moment, they performed the gesture in front of him. Here is what the find out: ‘verbal suggestion,’ they write, ‘only augments his normal dynamometric force by a few degrees, but if the action of firmly clenching the fist is imitated before him, his muscular force is not merely increased but doubled’. Conclusion: ‘the suggestion given by gestures gives more intense results than it is possible to obtain by words only’ (1888: 180). As the authors readily acknowledge, this is a rudimentary experiment; yet it already registers a mysterious mimetic supplement generated by the perception of a goal-oriented movement that doubles the power of verbal suggestion. Féré and Binet attributed this mimetic supplement to the suggestive force of psychomotor induction; now neuroscientists attribute it to the MNS. Still, the diagnostic is basically the same and confirms that what used to be called the psyche and now is called the brain responds mimetically to the perception of movements. Now, if the experiment is historically interesting, the theoretical speculations triggered by the experiment are even more so. On the basis of this mimetic reflex, Féré, paving the way for Nietzsche and Tarde, offers the following solution to the riddle of how we access the emotions of others, the so-called ‘theory of mind’: ‘If we can read the thought of one’s interlocutor on his face, it is because while we observe him, we unconsciously assume his expression, and the idea presents itself as a consequence’ (1900: 16). Unconscious mimicry of an affective expression gives rise to a conscious insight into the thought of others; sym-pathos paves the way for a shared logos. And in a speculative mood, he specifies: It is possible that certain subjects who are particularly sensitive to the phenomenon of induction imitate unconsciously [imitent inconsciemment] the movements that necessarily accompany the idea of the one in his presence, and will consequently be led to feel the same emotion, the same thought, in a word, to obey what we call mental suggestion [la suggestion mentale]. (1900: 16) For Féré there is thus a direct path that leads from the reflex of imitation of movements to the psychic life of the other. For him, communication is first of all an unconscious, bodily, and mimetic communication in which the automatic reproduction of movements leads to an immediate understanding

The mimetic unconscious  47 of the other’s emotions and thoughts. Conversely, he adds: ‘the communication of thoughts is only a communication of movements and mental suggestion reduces itself to a suggestion via mimicry [suggestion par la mimique]’ (1900: 123, original emphasis). Nietzsche, always bolder in his theoretical speculations, generalizes this mimetic hypothesis as he echoes: ‘One never communicates thoughts: one communicates movements, mimic signs, which we then trace back to thoughts’ (1968: 428). Contemporary neuroscientists may smile at experiments with a dyna­­ mometer but they are likely to take his theoretical conclusion seriously. Marco Iacoboni, for instance, writes: ‘For centuries, philosophers scratched their heads over humans’ ability to understand one another. Their befuddlement was reasonable: they had essentially no science to work with’ (2008: 4). And then he proceeds to rely on fMRI studies of mirror neurons to debunk the twentieth-century idea that we necessarily need to know the reasons of the other’s feelings in order to empathize (or theory theory) with the more ­recent realization that we unconsciously mime the expressions of the other and that leads us to a direct understanding of the other (or simulation theory). For Iacoboni in fact, ‘we understand the mental states of others by simulating them in our brain, and we achieve this end by way of mirror neurons’ (2008: 34). Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia confirm this point as they say that a ‘mirror mechanism […] permits our brain to immediately understand what we are seeing, feeling, or imagining others to be doing’ (2008: 190). If mirror neurons are currently receiving much attention, it is thus not only because they reveal an unconscious reflex at the heart of subjectivity, but also because they may be at the source of how we access other people’s minds, emotions, and intentions in an immediate, unconscious, and embodied way –which is what the tradition of the mimetic unconscious had been saying all along. This genealogy of the mimetic unconscious, then, brings us back to where we started. But we are now in a position to see that looking back to the riddle of suggestion was actually a way of looking ahead to solutions neuroscientists are currently rediscovering. There is now growing evidence that unconscious imitation is constitutive of subject formation. Mirror neurons are indeed found to be operative in newborns who respond to facial expressions immediately after birth – records ranging around 42 minutes (Meltzoff and Moore, 1983) – and urge us to rethink subjectivity in relational, intersubjective terms from the very beginning, along the lines Nietzsche and Féré, and later Pierre Janet and George Bataille, had already suggested (see Lawtoo, 2013: 260–80). For thinkers of mimesis, it is in fact because the subject is open to a relation of mimetic communication with a privileged other (or socius) such as a parent from the very first hours of life that they remain open, for better and worse, to the suggestion of exemplary figures in adulthood – be it friends or lovers, teachers or leaders. Susceptibility to suggestion in adulthood, in other words, rests on this primary receptivity to the mirroring influences in

48  Nidesh Lawtoo childhood that bring the self into being as a relational, embodied, and plastic creature. The subject is thus, in this fundamental sense, already a social subject for it is the product of unconscious, intersubjective, and mimetic communication in which the distinction between the subject and the socius, self and others, and, by extension, the psychic and the social, is porous at best. If only because the social is constitutive of a mirroring subject that is already plural – always unconsciously affected by a multiplicity of others. And yet, this mirroring genealogy of the mimetic unconscious is ­double-faced. If one side shows that the MNS supports the validity of the psycho-physiology of ICS, the other side indicates that theories of ICS can help us supplement cognitive approaches to mimesis along lines relevant for broader social, cultural, and political concerns. In order to bring this brief genealogy to an end, I schematically flesh out some of these reflections, more as starting points for further developments, than as actual ‘conclusions’.

Mirroring reflections (and inversions) Epistemic Reflection: In the wake of the discovery of mirror neurons in monkeys, Iacoboni, Rizzolatti, and others designed a series of experiments to better understand the role of the MNS in coding intentions in different contextual situations for humans. Experiments show, for instance, that mirror neurons are more active if the subject watches someone grab a cup of tea in the context of a table laid for breakfast than in the context of a messy table that needs clearing (Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia, 2008: 125–31). The implication being that the MNS is neither activated by the object alone nor solely by the gesture of the subject but, rather, by the goal or intention that, in a specific social context, motivates the gesture. So far so good. But what about the context in which, not the object, but the subject of the experiment is located to objectively measure the neural response to such actions? Let us recall that in a fMRI machine, absolute stillness is the rule as the subject lies horizontally, sometimes for hours, in a state of physio-­ psychological relaxation, while at the same time fixing its gaze on a series of images. Genealogical lenses make us wonder: isn’t this, quite literally, an ideal position to induce what we could call a light hypnotic trance? That is, a state in which, the same theorists who first intuited the presence of mirroring reflexes in humans noticed, one is by definition more susceptible to suggestion and thus prone to unconscious imitation? I do not mean to imply that mirror neurons are only active in light hypnotic states; only that the subject whose neurons neuroscientists are seemingly objectively measuring is also a subject who responds mimetically to the environment in which he or she is immersed – and quite unconsciously so. Metaphysical Reflection: We have seen that contemporary neuroscience emphasizes the active role mirror neurons play in the process of cognition and ‘understanding’, this being, as Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia put it, their ‘primary role’ (2008: 124, original emphasis). Mirror neurons are thus said

The mimetic unconscious  49 to ‘read intentions’, ‘understand emotions’, ‘acquire language’, in a pre-­ reflexive, immediate and unconscious way. Féré and Nietzsche had reached similar conclusions. And yet, they also reminded us that the mimetic unconscious problematizes the very notion of a rational, monadic and volitional subject. This point is worth recalling. Notice, in fact, that the MNS tends to perform the transitive activities that used to be attributed to the old category of the ‘subject’: mirror neurons not only ‘fire’, but also ‘read’, and above all they ‘understand’. Such a ‘faith of grammar’ (2003: 47) as Nietzsche would have named it, calls for some suspicion for it may still bear the traces of a monadic, rational, and autonomous subject (call it ego, man, or neuronal man) who is considered as the cause of predicates, such as reading, coding, and understanding. Could it be that behind the novelty of the MNS still lurks the shadow of what Nietzsche calls ‘that famous old “I”’ (2003: 47)? Perhaps. Let us thus not forget Nietzsche’s diagnostic claim that we are entering a phase of ‘modesty of consciousness’ (1968: 676, emphasis added), a phase in which herd behavior, docility, credulity, automatism, lack of awareness, suggestibility, and irrationality are also manifest symptoms of unconscious imitation. The mimetic subject might read other minds in the lab, but in the real world we might also fall prey to the power of social suggestions we do not even see – let alone read, or understand – yet inform, conform, and transform our behavior nonetheless. Artistic Reflection: The last observation is far from original. Since classical antiquity imitation, or as it was once called, mimesis, and irrational behavior have been intimately related. This is perhaps the reason Nietzsche speaks of ‘an ancient association between movement and sensation’ (1986: 89, emphasis added). He was thinking of Féré but when a philologist specialized in classical antiquity says ‘ancient,’ he usually means what he says. Nietzsche is, in fact also thinking of Plato’s critique of the power of mimesis in general and theatrical mimesis in particular in fueling irrational affects that spread contagiously in the theater. This is an unpopular critique, which is usually dismissed as a tyrannical, perhaps even totalitarian, exclusion of literature from the ideal city. But is it only that? I can only briefly recall that when Plato critiques the irrational and contagious emotional effects of poetry in Book III of Republic, his target is not poetry in general but mimetic poetry, by which he means theatrical spectacles that were actually performed, and thus ­embodied – not read. The target of Plato’s critique of mimesis is specific. It addresses a type of dramatic speech (mimetic lexis) in which the actor does not narrate what a literary character did in the third person (diegesis). Rather, the actor (or mimos) impersonates his character, that is, he mimes his role, not only in ‘speech’ but, as Socrates specifies, in ‘bodily bearing’ (1963: 638, 393c) as well. It is thus not simply mimetic speeches Plato critiques, but the mimetic movements and expressions these speeches generate in the actor, and, at an additional remove, in what Plato called ‘the mob assembled in the theater’

50  Nidesh Lawtoo (1963: 830, 604e). Why? Nietzsche, thanks to Féré, knows the answer: because the force of a verbal suggestion is doubled by the presence of a psychomotor suggestion. Ancient philosophers blamed this contagious effect on mimetic lexis, modern psychologists on psychomotor induction, now we can blame it on mirror neurons, but the message remains essentially the same and is that mimesis is the medium of affective contagion. Political Reflection: crowd psychology emerges in the late nineteenth century precisely to address the problem of contagious mimesis that already preoccupied Plato, and it does so via the model of hypnotic suggestion. ­Gustave Le Bon, for instance, argued that unconscious imitation in the crowd does not lead to cognitive acts, but to irrational, violent, and highly contagious acts. To be sure, Le Bon’s theory was haunted by the specter of socialism and, in the past century, was generally dismissed for its ideological bias. Still, with the history of the twentieth century behind us and the rise of new fascist leaders ahead of us, there are good reasons to return to the insights of crowd psychology. This is especially urgent since contemporary neuroscientists turned social theorists argue that the solution for a ‘healthy democracy […] consists in mechanisms of empathy and identification between the people and their political representatives’ (Iacoboni, 2008: 243). While empathy between leaders and suffering people remains much needed, indeed, the times seem ripe to remember that mirroring identifications between suffering people and their leaders can easily backfire depending on the model who is imitated. If our genealogy of the mimetic unconscious taught us anything, it is that mimesis cannot be prescribed only as a cognitive therapy, for it simultaneously work as an irrational pathology – or, as Plato called it, as a ‘pharmakon’. To conclude these mirroring reflections, Gabriel Tarde, offers a lucid reminder in The Laws of Imitation that could perhaps serve as a springboard for future inquiries to rethink the social on the basis of a newly confirmed image of Homo mimeticus. Speaking of an ‘inter-cerebral action at a distance’, which has been our primary concern to diagnose in this chapter, Tarde defined it as nothing less than the ‘elementary and fundamental problem that social psychology must try to resolve’ (2001: 262). This is perhaps why he immediately adds that social psychology ‘begins where physio-­ psychology ends’ (262). Ending on that note might well be a modest way to suggest that we can now finally begin.

Acknowledgments This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement no 716181). I am grateful to Christian Borch and to all the participants to the ‘Imitation, Contagion, Suggestion’ Conference in Copenhagen for friendly and stimulating exchanges on mimetic matters.

The mimetic unconscious  51

  Notes 1 Given the centrality of imitation in Nietzsche’s physio-psychology, it seems worth to qualify this ‘cerebral’ unconscious as mimetic to stress its relational, socio-cultural, and aesthetic orientation. 2 References to the German editions are from Nietzsche (1967–77). 3 While initial skeptics questioned the existence of a MNS in humans, the most recent critics claim that ‘there is no theoretical pressure to abandon the idea that mirror neurons support imitation in a broader sense of associations between actions, as in observational learning’ and focus on the role social ‘context’ plays in ‘unconscious mimicry’ (Hickock, 2014: 199, 203). For a concise and informed confrontation of the main challenges to the concept of mirror neurons, ­ amachandran (2011: 312–14, n2). see R 4 Homo mimeticus is the title of an ongoing ERC-funded research project of which this chapter is a part. For initial outputs see Lawtoo (2017a,b, 2018). 5 Unless specified otherwise, all translations from French are those of the author. 6 Bernheim retains the notion of hypnosis to designate ‘an exalted susceptibility to suggestion induced by an influence exercised over the subject’s imagination’ (2001: 17).

References Bennett, J., and Connolly, W. (2002) ‘Contesting Nature/Culture: The Creative Character of Thinking’, Journal of Nietzsche Studies 24: 148–63. Bernheim, H. (2001) Suggestive Therapeutics, trans. C. A. Herter. Westport, CT: Associated Bookseller. Borch, C. (2012) The Politics of Crowds: An Alternative History of Sociology. ­C ambridge: Cambridge University Press. Borch-Jacobsen, M. (2009) Making Minds and Madness: From Hysteria to Depression. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Borch-Jacobsen, M., and Shamdasani, S. (2012) The Freud Files: An Inquiry into the History of Psychoanalysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brighenti, M. A. (2011) ‘Tarde, Canetti and Deleuze on Crowds and Packs’, Journal of Classical Sociology 10(4): 291–314. Chertok, L. (1993) Hypnose et suggestion. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Connolly, W. (2002) Neuropolitics: Thinking, Culture, Speed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. De Saussure, R., and Chertok, L. (1979) The Therapeutic Revolution: From Mesmer to Freud, trans. R. H. Ahrenfeldt. New York: Brunner/Mazel Publishers. Ellenberger, H. F. (1970) The Discovery of the Unconscious. The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry. London: Allen Lane The Penguin Press.

52  Nidesh Lawtoo Féré, C. (1900) Sensation et mouvement: études expérimentales de psycho-méchanique, 2nd ed. Paris: Félix Alcan. Féré, C. (1904) Travail et plaisir: nouvelles études expérimentales de ­psychoméchanique. Paris: Félix Alcan. Féré, C., and Binet, A. (1888) Animal Magnetism. New York: D. Appleton & Company. Foucault, M. (1977) ‘Nietzsche, Genealogy, History’, in D. F. Bouchard (ed.), Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews (pp. 138–64). New York: Cornell University Press. Gallese, V. (2005) ‘Embodied Simulation: From Mirror Neurons to Phenomenal Experience’, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 4: 23–48. Gallese, V. (2011) ‘Two Sides of Mimesis: Mimetic Theory, Embodied Simulation, and Social Identification’, in S. R. Garrels (ed.), Mimesis and Science: Empirical Research on Imitation and the Mimetic Theory of Culture and Religion (pp. ­87–108). East Lansing: Michigan State University Press. Garrels, S. R. (ed.) (2011) Mimesis and Science: Empirical Research on Imitation and the Mimetic Theory of Culture and Religion. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press. Gauchet, M. (1992) L’inconscient cérébral. Paris: Seuil. Haaz, I. (2002) Les conceptions du corps chez Nietzsche et Ribot. Paris: L’Harmattan. Hickok, G. (2014) The Myth of Mirror Neurons: The Real Neuroscience of Communication and Cognition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Hurley, S., and Chater, N. (2005) Perspectives on Imitation: From Neuroscience to Social Science, Vol. 1: Mechanisms of Imitation and Imitation in Animals. ­Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Iacoboni, M. (2008) Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect with Others. New York: Ferrar, Straus & Giroux. Janet, P. (1903) L’automatisme psychologique: essai de psychologie expérimentale sur les formes inférieures de l’activité humaine. Paris: Félix Alcan. Latour, B. (2002) ‘Gabriel Tarde and the End of the Social’, in P. Joyce (ed.), The Social in Question: New Bearings in History and the Social Sciences (pp. 117–32). London: Routledge. Lawtoo, N. (2013) The Phantom of the Ego: Modernism and the Mimetic Unconscious. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press. Lawtoo, N. (2017a) ‘The Plasticity of Mimesis’, Modern Language Notes 132: 1195–218. Lawtoo, N. (2017b) ‘The Power of Myth (Reloaded): From Nazism to New Fascism’, L’Esprit Créateur 57(4): 64–82. Lawtoo, N. (2018) ‘Violence and the Unconscious (Part One). The Cathartic ­Hypothesis: Aristotle, Freud, Girard’, Contagion 25: 159–92. Le Bon, G. (2003) Psychologie des foules. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Meltzoff, A., and Moore, M. K. (1983) ‘Newborn Infants Imitate Adults Facial ­Gestures’, Child Development 54: 702–9. Mukamel, R. et al. (2010) ‘Single-Neuron Responses in Humans during Execution and Observation of Actions’, Current Biology 20: 750–6. Nietzsche, F. (1967–77) Sämtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe, 15 vols., eds. G. Colli and M. Montinari. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Nietzsche, F. (1968) The Will to Power, trans. W. Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books.

The mimetic unconscious  53 Nietzsche, F. (1974) The Gay Science, trans. W. Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books. Nietzsche, F. (1986) Daybreak, trans. R. J. Hollingdale. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, F. (1997) Human, All Too Human, trans. G. Handwerk. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Nietzsche, F. (2003) Beyond Good and Evil, trans. R. J. Hollingdale. London: ­Penguin Books. Plato (1963) Republic, trans. P. Shorey, in E. Hamilton and H. Cairns (eds.), The Collected Dialogues of Plato (pp. 575–844). New York: Pantheon Books. Ramachandran, V. R. (2011) The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Quest for What Makes Us Human. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Ribot, T. (1879) ‘Les mouvements et leur importance psychologique’, Revue philosophique de la France et de l’étranger 8: 371–86. Ribot, T. (1888) Les maladies de la volonté. Paris: Félix Alcan. Richet, C. (1879) ‘De l’influence des mouvements sur les idées’, Revue philosophique de la France et de l’étranger 8: 610–15. Rizzolatti, G., and Sinigaglia, C. (2008) Mirrors in the Brain: How Our Minds Share Actions and Emotions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stingelin, M. (2000) ‘Psychologie’, in H. Ottmann (ed.), Nietzsche-Handbuch (pp. 425–6). Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler Verlag. Tarde, G. (2001) Les lois de l’imitation. Paris: Seuil.

3 Durkheim on imitation Bjørn Schiermer

Introduction The role of the concept of imitation in Durkheim’s thought is interesting for numerous reasons. My aim in this chapter is twofold. On the one hand, my task is historical-interpretative. I hope to demonstrate that the concept of imitation can be used as a prism to make visible a series of conceptual transformations separating the young Durkheim of The Rules of Sociological Method (2013b)1 and Suicide (1966) from the older Durkheim of The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1995). On the other hand, I wish to demonstrate the present-day relevance of Durkheim’s engagement with imitation in the late work. Thus, besides painting a more complex picture of Durkheim’s engagement with the concept of imitation and his critique of adversary Gabriel Tarde than the one found in recent literature on this conflict (see the contributions in Candea, 2010), I wish to intimate some important theoretical and empirical potentials of Durkheim’s late investigation into ritual. The basic idea behind this investigation is that the concept of imitation, finally, and after lifelong hostilities on Durkheim’s part, finds a place in his late work as a necessary and crucial ingredient implied in his descriptions of the creation of the sacred through ritual – but that this late and positive use of the concept seems to be ignored in the literature. However, to fully appreciate this reorientation, I trace Durkheim’s complex relations with the concept in the course of his life’s work. As we will see, Durkheim’s initial animosity is intimately tied to his attempt to delineate and market his own epistemological program; in fact, it is not too much to say that much of the young Durkheim’s programmatic work is defined and refined in overt opposition to Tarde and Tarde’s attempt to consecrate imitation as the fundamental ‘social fact’. There is thus a direct relation between Durkheim’s attempt to found a new sociology, his radical ‘holist’ doctrine, his emphasis on ‘exteriority’ and his idea of the social as coercive and disciplining. In short, it is because Durkheim wants to demarcate the social from the ‘individual’ or ‘psychological’ that he has to insist on the social as exterior and coercive. I wish to show, however, that the ultimate consequence of this radical wish to avoid

Durkheim on imitation  55 the psychological and the individual is doubly flawed: on the one hand, as we will see, Durkheim ends up in an untenable holism which, in reality, amounts to a ‘de-collectivizing’ of the social and an isolation of the individual. On the other hand, to ‘prove’ the lack of relevance of imitation as a central sociological category, that is, to demonstrate that it remains ‘merely’ psychological or individualistic, he deflates it to a degree where it cannot produce genuine social sentiments. As we will also see, however, Durkheim escapes this impasse in his late sociology of religion. Unsurprisingly, once he is compelled by ethnographic accounts of ritual to engage empirically with collective participation, the concept of imitation regains salience and sociological importance. It plays an absolutely crucial role in the very understanding of the social – and the relation between the social and the objective – in the late work. I start by tracing Durkheim’s complex strategic engagement with the concept of imitation during the course of his debate with Tarde.2 I try to show how his criticism of imitation is merely the other side of a program which ultimately ends in an untenable methodological holism – but which is, nevertheless, distinctively individualistic. I then turn to The Elementary Forms (1995). I briefly sketch the ‘projectionist’ template at the base of Durkheim’s concept of the sacred and the crucial role of the concept of imitation within it. In concluding, I review my findings and contour the principal consequences of Durkheim’s sudden welcoming gesture toward the concept of imitation in his late work.

The Rules of Sociological Method Except for a few neutral to critical remarks in The Division of Labour in Society (see esp. 2013a: 294),3 the first time Durkheim criticizes Tarde ­directly – though mostly without mentioning his name – is in The Rules, published in 1895 (2013b). The Rules is a programmatic book meant to lay down the guidelines for ‘doing’ Durkheimian sociology. Durkheim wants to secure an exclusive object for the new science of sociology and this leads him to the idea of the social as sui generis and thus to his wish to distance himself from everything ‘psychological’ or ‘individual’. Essentially, Durkheim thinks of ‘social facts’ as norms, rules or duties invested with a certain moral ‘authority’, which ‘force’ the individual into compliance with them. It may be that we do not feel this force all the time – we may have internalized it – yet, as Durkheim assures us, it ‘asserts itself as soon as [we] try to resist’ (2013b: 21). The distinction between the social and the individual is thus, in reality, an opposition. Despite the young Durkheim’s positivist critique of introspection, there is no doubt that his insistence upon the ‘thingy’ contours of the social is (also) to be understood in a very literal and introspective sense; if we run against them, they hurt us; in other words, the social is modelled on the opposition we feel between us and everybody else when (we fear) being sanctioned negatively by the community (2013b: 21).

56  Bjørn Schiermer To be fair to Durkheim, however, this formulation has to be correctly understood. In fact, there is not that much ‘community’ there in the first place. As a Kantian, Durkheim remains attached to the very idea of the social as essentially comprised of norms or rules (Durkheim, 2002). Just as Kant, moreover, he would insist that norms are not followed out of mere fear, but because they possess a special moral ‘authority’ (which calls for ‘respect’). As a sociologist, however, and in contrast to Kant, he would insist that this authority is empirically and socially construed. These facts come together in reinforcing two parallel traits in the young Durkheim’s conception of the social. The one is that the social does not seem to consist of concrete other people, but of an abstract grid of rules; the other is that the social, in essence – and despite Durkheim’s (later) insistence on more nuance (1995: 210–1, 214, 2013: 16) – is understood as disciplining and coercive. If not out of mere ‘fear’, then out of ‘respect’ for moral authority, the social in early Durkheim is meant to regulate and discipline the individuals rather than to integrate them.4 This naturalization of a concept of the social which seems inherently oppressive has been remarked upon by a number of critics (e.g. Adorno, 1979; Latour, 2014: 164; Tarde, 1969: 117–19). These characteristics are further reinforced by other elements in the early Durkheim’s positivist doctrine; notably by his repeated insistence on the ‘exteriority’ of the social. The social institutions which ‘impose’ themselves upon the individuals also outlast these individuals and are ‘sedimented’ in objective forms around us. Durkheim points to the existence of ‘legal and moral rules, aphorisms and popular sayings, articles of faith […] and standards of taste drawn up by literary scholars’ as sedimented ‘signs’ testifying, not only to the existence of ‘obligatory’ standards of conduct, but also to their externality to the individual (2013b: 24). This idea goes hand in hand with Durkheim’s holism, his idea that the ‘whole’ cannot be explained through the mere aggregation of its ‘parts’, but instead must explain them. Indeed, the whole is prior to the individuals and transcends them; it is capable of forcing itself upon each of them and of prescribing – from without – their behavior (2013b: 21). Again: the social in early Durkheim is not a collective comprising more or less anonymous others but is essentially to be conceptualized as a structure of norms which imposes itself on each and every individual singularly. Evidently, to the extent that forms of coherence and similarity are created by isolated individuals merely conforming to such rules, any sense of concrete participation in the social is ruled out. Durkheim’s early normative and coercive concept of the social is experientially impoverished in its very essence. This leaves Durkheim with problems. He has obvious difficulties with scenarios where the individual does not merely comply with norms but is directly engaged in the social. This is where the opposition between the social and the individual disappears, where the social is not already there as

Durkheim on imitation  57 an overarching structure imposing itself upon the individual from without, but where the individual manifestly participates in the very creation of the social. These problems are particularly tangible when the young Durkheim deals with the crowd: But even when the social fact is partly due to our direct co-operation, it is no different in nature. An outburst of collective emotion in a gathering does not merely express the sum total of what individual feelings share in common, but is something of a very different order […]. If all hearts beat in unison it is not as a consequence of a spontaneous pre-­ established harmony; it is because one and the same force is propelling them in the same direction. (2013b: 25) Even when we are at one with one another, the social, on Durkheim’s account, must be external and abstract. We are not dealing with concrete collective experience but with the experience of a common ‘force’ felt by each of the individuals taken separately. One cannot blame Tarde or more recent commentators for having a hard time with such passages. The ‘collective emotions’ seem to detach themselves from the horizontal plane of the ‘gathering’, gain autonomy from the individuals and impose themselves, as it were, vertically upon them. The result is that the experience of ‘direct co-operation’ – of concrete animation of social bonds through something emphatically shared – is lost. The dynamics of tuning in to one another – of what cannot but consist in forms of mutual imitation, that is – disappears from view. Durkheim insists on his methodological program: even in the crowd, the social is still to be conceptualized as a whole, as something of ‘a different order’, detached from and existing prior or externally to individual sentiment. Yet, on the other hand, this is exactly what is impossible in concrete crowd situations. The manifest contradictions in Durkheim’s early depictions of the crowd are salient (e.g. ­Durkheim, 2013b: 22). But also mediated mass-dynamics – such as ‘currents of opinion’ or all kinds of fads or fashions – create problems. Durkheim has to understand all these phenomena as results of normative constraint and not of imitation. Again, he insists on externality: the existence of short-lived or free-­floating and restricting normative forces explaining these occurrences (and thus explaining individual behavior) can be proved statistically (2013b: 24–5). Yet why such statistical patterns testify to the existence of ‘external’ (yet somewhat fluid or ephemeral) normative structures and not to concrete dynamics of imitation, Durkheim does not really tell us. To be sure, this is exactly what Durkheim undertakes to demonstrate in Suicide, yet in The Rules, he merely imposes his holist vision without much argumentation. Even the phenomenon of fashion in all its guises is to be explained in terms of instances of normative coercion: the dispersion, popularity or prevalence of

58  Bjørn Schiermer a certain phenomenon or object should not be credited to imitation. The following passage is crucial: It may be objected that a phenomenon can only be collective if it is common to all members of a society, or at least to a majority, and consequently, if it is general. This is doubtless the case, but if it is general it is because it is collective (that is, more or less obligatory) […]. It is a condition of the group repeated in individuals because it imposes itself on them. (2013b: 24–5) The ‘repetition’ of a certain ‘general’ phenomenon is not enough to make it qualify as a ‘social fact’; what makes it social is not its sheer ‘generality’, but its ‘obligatory’ or coercive character. Now, this obligatory status is conveyed to it by the ‘group’ – the whole – which thus ‘imposes itself on the individuals’ through conveying certain norms or objects with an aura of ‘obligation’. Again: similarity is caused by coercion – not a result of imitation. But why can’t imitation, in Durkheim’s view, cause or explain such projection? To understand this, the following compressed remark, found in a footnote on Tarde, is extremely important: ‘[A]n individual state which impacts on others none the less remains individual’ (2013b: 27). This remark demonstrates how Durkheim conceives of the ‘psychology’ of imitation at this point and intimates an important aspect of his later critique. The reason why he cannot – or will not – assign sociological importance to dynamics of imitation is that he – not completely without justification when thinking about Tarde – essentially sees imitation in terms of one-way suggestion or contagion. Consequently, it remains individual. It merely transports objects without adding energy or ‘authority’ to the conscious ‘state’ of the individual who apprehends the imitated object. Imitation thus builds no collectivity and has no sociological importance. It produces no energy to project upon the object. Durkheim urges the reader to remark how ‘far removed’ his ‘definition of the social fact’ is from ‘that which serves as the basis for the ingenious system of Tarde’ (2013b: 27). Yet, does this mean that Durkheim finds no use for the concept at all? No, it does not. Indeed, he appropriates it for his own needs: ‘Doubtless every social fact is imitated and has, as we have just shown, a tendency to become generalized, but this is because it is social, i.e. obligatory’ (2013b: 27). In this alternative and rather paradoxical version, imitation merely amounts to a production of similarity, which is not, however, created through imitational suggestion, but results from abiding to ‘authoritative’ norms. I shall call it imitation-through-norms. Durkheim readily admits that this use of the term ‘to designate a proliferation which occurs through some coercive influence’ (2013b: 27) has little to do with the usual understanding of imitation. The reader should note that the Durkheim of the Rules does not explain exactly how our normative standards, our ‘manners of acting, thinking and

Durkheim on imitation  59 feeling’, are actually ‘invested with coercive power’ or ‘authority’ in the first place. Where does this normative force come from? It is clear that we ourselves produce it, but how? As we will see, it is only in the late work that Durkheim answers this question – and as we will also see, his answer will imply yet other reconfigurations of his understanding of imitation.

Progressive interlude: the Italian review Tarde responds quickly and polemically to The Rules.5 Durkheim, for his part, contributes to further escalating the conflict in a review of French sociology for an Italian journal (1975a: esp. 81–9) published later the same year (1895).6 Several pages of the review are reserved for a critique of Tarde and the concept of imitation. On the face of it, Durkheim’s argument here seems to be the same as in The Rules. Again, he understands and dismisses imitation as mere unconscious one-way suggestion: ‘pure imitation’ is essentially a form of ‘transmission’; it is ‘completely automatic’ in the sense that it sidesteps any conscious ‘disposition’ on the part of the imitator (1975a: 85).7 Such dynamics, however, are, in reality, ‘exceptional’ and thus of ‘very secondary’ importance to sociology (1975a: 84). What is worse, the incantation of imitational suggestion prompts us to overlook all the concrete social and historical factors belonging to the ‘inner social environment’. Yet it is exactly these social variables – again the reader should think of Durkheim’s model study in Suicide where social facts such as divorce rates and laws, gender roles, and religious confession are analyzed as so many independent variables effecting suicide rates – that sociology should investigate, and not mere ephemeral resonance among individuals which remains on the ‘psychological’ level (2013b: 90). Again, as in The Rules, Durkheim then appropriates the concept of imitation for his own needs. He wants to ‘define’ the concept of imitation differently and insists that it – in this reshaped version – may serve ‘to orientate sociological method’ (1975a: 85): ‘A juridical, moral, economic or artistic practice is imitated because it is furnished with a prestigious character which suffices to ensure that it is imitated – whether it is actually practical [utile] or not’ (1975a: 85). It is important to note, however, that this appropriation differs from the one found in The Rules in a crucial aspect: it is not about following coercive norms but about ‘prestigious’ ‘practices’ or objects. This indicates a certain transformation in Durkheim’s understanding of imitation. Instead of referring to semblance through norm-following, it is now brought about by the socially constructed attraction of or attachment to a certain object: ‘a fact propagates itself because it possesses an intense energy’ (1975a: 85). It is, for instance, because they enjoy ‘prestige’ or ‘intensity’ that the fashions of the higher classes or the big cities are imitated (1975a: 86). In this scenario collectively constructed forms of positive cathexis explains similarity or coherence among individuals. I shall call this form of imitation

60  Bjørn Schiermer imitation-through-objects. Such imitation bypasses critical judgment. Due to the strong forms of fascination with the object or practice in question, it circumvents usual critical reflections on ‘utility’ or use value. This stamps ­i mitation-through-objects with a mark of irrationality: This explains why the harmful practices are as much imitated as other practices; the vile is as imitated as the healthy. The teleological considerations could thus be left behind. This regression constitutes in our view a veritable progress for the social sciences. (Durkheim, 1975a: 86) Durkheim targets Comte’s naïve belief in progress here. Thus, even though he elsewhere scolds Tarde for turning historical development into a random play of imitational currents,8 he nevertheless, on this occasion, commends Tarde for avoiding ‘teleology’ and naïve evolutionism. There is a contingent moment to the development of institutions, and this contingency is indeed inscribed in the idea of imitation-through-objects. Object-borne imitation is, if not directly irrational, then at least ‘non-­logical’: ‘There is nothing more blind than imitation’, Durkheim insists (1975a: 85). It should be maintained that Durkheim here is talking here about imitation through fascinating and attractive objects or practices and not about mere automatic and unconscious copying. We are dealing with a form of ‘blindness’ other than the mere ‘automaticity’ implied in his critique of contagious imitation. This is not a form of irrationality rooted in mere unconscious and instinctive copying, but in ‘irrational’ forms of cathexis. In fact, the moment of blindness, coincidence or contingency evoked here points forward to D ­ urkheim’s insistence, in The Elementary Forms, that even ‘the most commonplace object’ can become ‘sacred and powerful’ (1995: 229). Unfortunately, Durkheim does not at this point make any explicit analytical distinctions between this form of imitation and the one found in The Rules. Admittedly, he may not even remark at this point that he places the emphasis differently, yet the two accounts, it must be maintained, are as different as night and day. Even though both imitation-through-objects and imitation-through-norms depart from ‘automatic’ one-way imitational suggestion, they are far from alike. Thus, tellingly, the Italian review avoids the coercive ontology so salient in The Rules. For instance in The Rules, even clothing fashion – the paradigmatic case of collectively constructed objects of attraction, fascination and ‘prestige’ – is described in terms of coercive conformism (2013b: 21) – as if the fashionista (or anybody else for that matter) ‘follows’ fashion out of mere ‘fear’ of ‘penalty’ or ‘ridicule’ (2013b: 21) and not out of fascination with the fashionable object or practice. Fashion changes its objects, it places a spell upon them, and conveys them with a quasi-aesthetic luster which prompts imitation; it does not simply force this or that garment upon the individuals regardless of their aesthetic sentiment. The coercive view is simply wrong in this instance, and it is wrong because it

Durkheim on imitation  61 implies a wrong ontology of the social. It would take years for Durkheim to really move the sentiments of attraction, fascination, and attachment closer to the center of his work and allow for a truly collective construction of such resonant forms of cathexis.

Suicide Suicide (1966), from 1897, contains Durkheim’s most extended critique of the concept of imitation. The book, meant as a model study in positivist sociology, is also meant to be the final refutation of Tarde. While §III and §IV of the first chapter in the third part of the book deal with Tarde’s objections to the Rules (1966: 306–25), an entire chapter (Ch. 4 in the first part) is meant to dismiss Tarde’s concept of imitation as a fundamental theoretical concept in sociology (1966: 123–42). Tarde’s remark in his unpublished notes that ‘the book, from one end to the other, seems directed against me’ (Tarde, 2000: 233) does not seem entirely unfounded. Durkheim starts by distinguishing three different uses of the term ‘imitation’, two of which he then wants to show are spurious (1966: 124–30). What he actually does in his argument, however, is – again – to settle on a very restrictive definition of ‘pure’ imitation and then to distinguish two other idealized cases of imitation from the pure case – meaning to show thereby that pure imitation plays no role, or only a very indirect role, in these other cases. Unsurprisingly, the two latter cases both rank as paradigmatic scenarios in Durkheim’s own sociological imagination: one is about conformity through authoritative norms; the other is about the crowd. As in his previous critique, Durkheim sees ‘pure’ imitation as a one-way mechanism of suggestion or contagion. He mentions contagious ‘coughing’, ‘dance-motions’, ‘homicidal impulses [sic!]’, ‘yawning’, ‘laughing’, and ‘weeping’ (1966: 123, 125). Thus construed, imitation is instinctive; it is an ‘automatic reflex’, imitation for the very sake of imitation or, as it were, ‘mechanical ape-like repetition’ (1966: 127–8). It possesses no cognitive or intentional component and is nontransparent to the imitator. It is essentially a fortuitous and unpredictable occurrence and thus may, in fact, circumvent the social altogether: That imitation is a purely psychological phenomenon appears clearly from its occurrence between individuals connected by no social bond. A man may imitate another with no link of either one with the other or with a common group on which both depend, and the imitative function when exercised has in itself no power to form a bond between them. (1966: 123) On the one hand, merely being a question of instinct, imitation is independent of eventual prior social relations. On the other hand, it is so transient and fleeting that it leaves no social ‘bond’.

62  Bjørn Schiermer Durkheim then distinguishes his two idealized social scenarios from this one. In both scenarios Durkheim largely expands and fortifies the perspectives already intimated in The Rules. Thus, symptomatically, instead of the notion of imitation found in the Italian review – understanding imitation as the result of positive consecration of a fetishized object in a group – Suicide takes us back to the repressive perspective: ­similarity and coherence are rooted in norm-following. Thus, in Suicide, the ‘leader’, although ‘clearly the product of the crowd rather than its informing cause’, possesses no charisma to help him manipulate the crowd. He merely imposes himself upon the masses through his ‘directive action’ (1966: 126).9 In Suicide, this recurrence to force and coercion is further reinforced by Durkheim’s considerations on the psychology of imitation. A narrow focus upon the moment of opposition (or separation) between the individual and the social, so salient in the ‘coercive’ scenario of imitation-through-norms, makes it possible for Durkheim to insist on the rationality or self-­transparency of the norm-following individual. This allows him to contrast imitation-­ through-norms, now creatively redescribed as a form of ‘reasonable, deliberate behavior’, with pure imitation, again reduced to a question of ‘automatic reflex’ (1966: 128).10,11 Regrettably, however, this also implies that Durkheim must distance himself even further from the account of imitation found in the Italian review; then, as we saw above, imitation-through-objects was just as ‘non-logical’ and ‘blind’ as was the ‘pure’ form. To be sure, the fashionable object or the charisma of the demagogue hardly provoke ‘reasonable and deliberate behavior’. On the contrary, such forms of strong cathexis prevent us, as ­Durkheim noted in the review, from reflecting on the ‘utility’ of the object or the actual arguments of the politician. In fact, when Durkheim remarks in support of i­ mitation-through-norms that it is ‘not the example before our eyes’ but our ‘reasons making us consent’ which shape the determining courses of our actions (1966: 128), this not only rules out ‘pure’ imitation or automatic and unconscious copying but also his own descriptions of the imitative overtaking of attractive objects and practices found in the Italian review (1975a: 85–6). Then, at any event, in cases of ­i mitation-through-objects it is not ‘reason’ which ‘makes us consent’, but precisely the ‘prestigious’ ‘example’ we see ‘before our eyes’. As regards the second scenario, the case of the crowd, the lack of active participation seems to be even more pronounced than in The Rules. Again, there is a strange feeling of immobility to Durkheim’s crowd: Let us analyze the phenomenon. A number of men in assembly are similarly affected by the same occurrence and perceive this at least partial unanimity by the identical signs through which each individual feeling is expressed. What happens then? Each one imperfectly imagines the state of those around him. Images expressing the various manifestations, with their different shades, from all parts of the crowd, are formed

Durkheim on imitation  63 in the minds of all. Nothing to be called imitation has thus far occurred; there have been merely perceptible impressions, then sensations wholly identical with those produced in us by external bodies. (1966: 125–6) We are dealing with strangely passive individuals here. Even though they allegedly ‘think’ or ‘feel’ or are ‘affected’ by the others, they do not in any way themselves act to further reinforce, cultivate, and explore collective sentiment; they do not actively tune in to one another or amplify entrainment (Collins, 2004). That being said, Durkheim nevertheless seems to tone down his holism on this occasion. There is no abstract ‘force’ present affecting the individuals singularly. The quote does convey a sense of resonance among concrete individuals present; they all, Durkheim tells us, see the agitation of the others expressing itself in ‘identical signs’. Doesn’t this include dynamics of imitation then? The answer Durkheim gives is, no. The sheer fact that the individuals consciously experience these processes is taken to prove that the ‘sensations’ they feel are ‘wholly identical with those coming to us from external bodies’; this, in turn, is taken to prove the non-imitational nature of the event. Evidently, this merely amounts to an a priori exclusion of imitation from the creation of collective sentiment due to an extremely narrow definition of imitation as a mere one-way dynamic of robotic reproduction. Again, the reduction of ‘pure’ imitation to the mere transport of an identical object or practice prevents it from offering any support for an explanation of agitation or the emergence of social sentiment. In short, in Durkheim, there may be imitational rays, but no imitational crowds. This effectively hinders Durkheim from venturing into concrete descriptions of actual and mutual production and reinforcement of collective energies. Only much later, when he engages with actual ethnographic empirical material on ritual, will he be forced to reconsider and enrich his impoverished concept of ‘pure’ imitation. Until then, it is clear, he has no way, ultimately, to avoid the consequences of his holism: as long as Durkheim insists that the social affects the individuals ‘from without’, that they are indeed ‘acted upon’ (emphasis added), he simply cannot allow these individuals to actively and consciously produce collectivity together.

Second interlude Despite making notes for a response (see Tarde, 2000), Tarde never reacted directly to the critique in Suicide. Durkheim writes critically about Tarde again in 1900 in a second review of French sociology (Durkheim, 1973), which does not, however, say much about the concept of imitation. Neither do the testimonies we have from the final ‘showdown’ between the two adversaries towards the end of 1903 at L’École des hautes études en sciences sociales. Unfortunately, the actual debate was not transcribed and we know only a little about what actually took place.12

64  Bjørn Schiermer It is only around the time of Tarde’s death that the first signs indicating a possible change in Durkheim’s views emerge. In a short critical review of Tarde’s Interpsychologie published by Durkheim in 1905, he again comes back to the concept of imitation. On the face of it, he merely reiterates earlier ideas: since (pure) imitation cannot create collective sentiment, it presupposes the preponderant social whole to orientate itself. It is thus taking place in an already socialized group sharing ‘a sufficiently moral homogeneity’ and ‘a common life’ (1905: 135). Once more, Durkheim relates to the charismatic leader: One imitates superiors, but superiority is already a social institution, which means that in this case imitation is non-explanatory. One must know why men imitate; and the causes that lead men to imitate and obey one another are already social. (1905: 135) It is not completely obvious here whether we are placed in the repressive scenario of norms or in that of attractive and ‘prestigious’ objects. What is unmistakably clear, however, is that imitation or semblance is provoked by the sense of ‘superiority’, the ‘cause’ of which is ‘already social’. Thus, again, the social explains imitation; imitation cannot be allowed to explain anything. But this means that completely central questions still await a more concrete and elaborated answer: How, exactly, does the social stamp the leader with his charismatic ‘superiority’? What imbues the fetish with its luster? The norms with their ‘authority’? As is well known, these are the exact questions Durkheim means to answer in his last chief work in 1912. Here – in 1905 – Durkheim is not yet ready to engage in a ritual perspective permitting him to explain the actual process of production of social energies and their projection upon the objects, norms, or practices in question. Nevertheless, an emerging insistence upon the importance of possible empirical work in settling this fundamental question is unmistakable: To study the action of an individual upon another individual, it is first of all necessary to find out what a group is and how it shapes its mentality. Does the genesis of this mentality refer to the simple inter-individual acts. This is a question that one cannot answer in advance – when the scientific investigation [of it] has not even begun. (1905: 134) Echoing points made in the confrontation in Paris in 1903 (Tarde and ­ urkheim, 1969), Durkheim advocates for a more ‘empirical’, inductive, D and specialized approach. Certainly, these remarks are directed at Tarde; certainly, Durkheim criticizes Tarde for wishing to ‘explain everything’ through a mere abstract ‘philosophy’ of imitation; certainly, he distances

Durkheim on imitation  65 himself here, as elsewhere, from Tarde’s ‘unscientific’ use of literal ‘anecdotes’ (1905: 134); nevertheless – permitting myself to speculate – aren’t these reproaches also, to a certain extent, levelled against himself? Doesn’t his earlier work, for all its positivism and empiricism, promote a more or less standardized and clichéd ‘literary’ depiction of the crowd? Don’t we need a more methodological and controlled gathering of empirical material on exactly these issues? At any event, admitting, after ten years of successful Durkheimian-school sociology, that the ‘scientific investigation’ of the completely central sociological question, ‘What is a group?’, has not ‘even begun’, also point toward a certain wish on his own part to start over, that is, to engage in a new form of empirically motivated investigation into this central question. It makes good sense to see here the contours of an intellectual development on Durkheim’s part which finally leads him to delve into ethnographic material on actual ritual. Indeed, it is only at this point that Durkheim’s turn to religion – initiated already in the 1890s – will finally lead him to empirical accounts of actual participatory production of group sentiment. It is this turn to ritual, moreover, which will finally lead to a repatriation of the concept of imitation. It will also lead to a conception of the social as actively created and maintained by the individuals together, instead of being forced upon each and every one of them in the shape of a primordial system of norms.13

The Elementary Forms of Religious Life There can be no doubt that the account of ritual given in The Forms includes imitation as a central ingredient (see Durkheim, 1995: 218, 220, 232): It is by shouting the same cry, saying the same words, and performing ­ ustralians] arrive the same action in regard to the same object that [the A at and experience agreement […]. The individual minds can meet and commune only if they come outside themselves, but they can do this only by the means of movement. It is the homogeneity of these movements that makes the group aware of itself, and that, in consequence, makes it be. (1995: 232)14 Here, in contrast to earlier scenarios, the individuals need to ‘come outside themselves’, they need to ‘meet’, and they can only do so through active participation in common ritual. They need, in other words, to produce the collective sentiments which will overtake them; they need to be both active and passive; free and determined. Nowhere is there a sense of ‘imposition’ or ‘coercion’ to be found here, and nowhere is there an opposition between the individual and the collective in terms of a free yet restricted actor versus a determining yet ‘decollectivized’ structure.15

66  Bjørn Schiermer The dynamic here combines imitation and projection: on the one hand, collective energies – ‘experience of agreement’, tightening of social bonds – are enforced through bodily imitation, that is, mutual tuning in, entrainment, horizontal suggestion and contagion, mutual copying of bodily movements and sounds. But this form of imitation is not modeled after Tarde’s ‘sleepwalker’ (1903: 76); rather, it is participative, mutual, and active; it permits collective energies to emerge and evolve; it is not automatic, nor spontaneous or random, nor merely transitive. On the other hand, everything revolves around an object upon which these energies are projected. The imitational tightening of the common bond passes through an animation of what ‘it is all about’, what is shared, the object around which the imitational processes occur, the shared ‘occasion’ of the crowd; the spirits, the gods, the flag or the totem, the shared theme on the media agenda or the iconic artwork, the danger we all know must be avoided, the common enemy that must be defeated or ostracized, the charismatic leader or the pop star, the popular political or scientific ideology, the new technological gadget or the fashionable object. This object, standing at the center of collective attention gains a phenomenological surplus. It becomes ‘sacred’. The generality and explanatory power of this timeless template can hardly be overestimated. What Durkheim tells us is, essentially, that the social revolves around breathing life, fascination, importance, sensuous attraction, presence, and actuality into emphatically shared objects. This goes on in the most intimate settings and it goes on in extended, mediated, and anonymous ‘groups’. All the time, we animate social ties by animating what we talk about or do together; and all the time, we animate what we talk about or do together by animating social ties. The social and the objective – material or immaterial – interweave. The social consists essentially of mutually reinforcing forms of imitation, consciously and voluntarily engaged in, and taking place around objects (in the broadest sense of the word). It should not, moreover, be understood merely as a result of the phenomenological force of these charged objects, but just as much as the cause of this phenomenological force.

Conclusion Durkheim never systematically works out all his different but interrelated and partly overlapping uses of the concept of imitation. Already his insistence that imitation ‘does not explain anything’, that it is what ought to be explained and not what explains, implies a complex and implicit play with different conceptions. In concluding, I wish to contour these different conceptions, their internal relationships, and the major drift in the course of Durkheim’s life’s work. First: Durkheim wishes in general to downplay the sociological relevance of what he takes to be the Tardean sense of the concept of imitation. He ends up reducing Tarde’s psychologically and socially multifaceted concept to a somnambulist caricature: a ‘psychology’ which is so impoverished that it

Durkheim on imitation  67 can neither produce nor retain collective energies. This is Durkheim’s concept of ‘pure’ imitation. Certainly, construed in this way, imitation does not explain much. Second, thus insisting that imitation is what ought to be explained, Durkheim uses the concept in his own way. This is the concept of imitation as appropriated by Durkheim. Paradoxically, imitation now merely indicates the ascertainment of similarity and coherence created through means other than pure imitation. Third: It is in considering these means that Durkheim vacillates between two different forms of (appropriation of) the concept. In The Rules and in Suicide – the most anti-Tardean of all Durkheim’s books – imitation is produced through compliance with norms, the authoritative status of which is collectively produced. In this derived sense, Durkheim insists, imitation is of great social and sociological significance, yet the sense of the concept has changed drastically. Essentially, it simply amounts to conformism through individual restraint and self-discipline rooted in respect for norms. The social is essentially coercive. Yet Durkheim also conceives of an alternative version of this reshaped concept of imitation: imitation-through-objects. Here similarity and coherence are produced through attachment and cathexis. The social is not held together through respect for authoritative norms but through common object identifications. This way of seeing the social escapes the coercive ­template so manifest in Durkheim’s early work. Fourth: it is only in The Elementary Forms that Durkheim is finally led to an empirical investigation into the creation of such energetic objects and the forms of collectivity they presuppose as well as help to retain and provoke. This leads to an interest in ritual practice, which, in turn, leads to the introduction of yet another concept of imitation – in reality, a transfiguration and recharging of the concept of ‘pure’ imitation – regrettably left by Durkheim in a rather untheorized and unelaborated state. This latter form we could call imitation as mutual entrainment. Ultimately, it is this form of imitation which produces the social energies which are then projected upon the objects standing at the center of attention, animating them and intensifying their appearance – and, in turn, making them capable of animating and intensifying imitational entrainment. The circle here is intended. Durkheim was not attentive to the principal ontological and normative issues and questions at stake in the distinction between imitationthrough-norms and imitation-through-objects. The ideas of exteriority and coercion never completely leave his work just as he never gives up the holist doctrine. Most significantly, on the theoretical level – and even after manifestly letting imitational phenomena enter his empirical work – he never completely sacrifices his idea that the social essentially consists of (moral) rules and norms ‘imposing’ themselves upon the individuals from ‘without’. The difference between imitation-through-norms and ­imitation-throughobjects may sometimes be difficult to draw in practice. Yet it is  of  acute

68  Bjørn Schiermer ontological, normative, and theoretical importance. Imitation-through-norms is essentially individualist; it understands the social as necessarily oppressive, and social order as an expression of individual ‘respect’ for the collective ‘authority’ of certain prevalent norms. Imitation-through-objects, on the other hand, is essentially collectivist and entails a hedonistic dimension; it takes its point of departure in a wish to be the same, in the enjoyment of sharing, entraining, and integrating. The former conception highlights the opposition between the social and the individual, insists on a ‘whole’, prior and exterior to its parts, and thus ‘de-collectivizes’ the social by turning it into a primordial grid of norms imposing itself on isolated individuals. The latter conception insists on our active participation in the production of the social; it avoids the dualism between actor and structure, freedom and determinism, the individual and the social, activity and passivity, and insists on a hybrid ontology where the collective and the individual, the objective and the psychological are always-already entangled. Durkheim never reached such anti-dualistic conclusions. Yet many of his observations in the late work transcend or break apart the ideological theoretical framework which seeks to contain them. This goes especially for his account of the collective production of the sacred. We are dealing with a timeless combination of imitation and projection, the explanatory scope and sociological importance of which Durkheim never investigates nor exploits in its own right and which is also, it seems to me, persistently overlooked by the literature.16 Coda: The last time Durkheim mentions Tarde and the concept of imitation is in a third review of French sociology from 1915 (1975b: 115–16). Its tone, ten years after Tarde’s death, is neutral to positive. The usual objections are there, certainly, yet this time Tarde’s work is also recognized as ‘important’ and genuinely ‘sociological’. Could it be, again permitting myself to speculate, that this change in tone may have something to do with the fact that Durkheim has finally let the concept of imitation enter into his own work?

Acknowledgments This text has been written while benefitting from a Marie Skłodowska-­ Curie grant (agreement No. 665958) permitting me a one-year fellowship at the Max Weber Centre for Advanced Social and Cultural Studies at Erfurt University.

Notes 1 In the following, if the publication is translated into English, I use the English title and cite from the English text. Where no translation is to be found, citations are translated by me. In the reference list I have listed the year of original publication [in brackets] to help the reader keep track. When a Durkheimian work is repeatedly referred to in the text I abbreviate the title.

Durkheim on imitation  69 2 For reasons of space, I will leave aside Durkheim’s interesting attempt in Suicide at an empirical refutation of the relevance of the concept (generalizing from the ‘case’ of suicide) (Besnard, 1995; 236–8; Besnard and Borlandi, 2010: 220–1; ­Borlandi, 2001; Durkheim, 1966: 131–42). The present chapter exclusively treats the theoretical side to Durkheim’s critique. 3 Contrary to Steven Lukes’ rendering of the conflict, it seems Durkheim was less the ‘attacked’ party (Lukes, 1973: 302) than the attacking one (see Besnard, 1995: 226; see also Jones, 1999). I have chosen not to go deeper into the rather complex remarks on imitation found toward the end of The Division of Labour, in the section on the ‘abnormal forms of division of labor’ (see 2013a: 294), partly because they are embedded in the argument of the book, which I cannot recapitulate here, and partly because they point towards a recurrent theme in Durkheim which lies beyond the scope of the present chapter: Durkheim’s contempt for the ‘morbid’, unstable, and hectic dynamics traversing modern culture and the modern economy. Yet the remarks also point toward themes which will remain central: the preponderance of the whole and the insistence that imitation does not explain but, rather, should be explained. 4 It is true that Durkheim already in Suicide and then later and more systematically in Moral Education (2002: 64 ff.) from 1902 to 1903 would add such an integrative dimension. Yet, ultimately, the holistic perspective asserts itself and thus again blocks all contact with concrete others; in short, ‘integration’ in Durkheim always ends up as a ‘love’ for ‘society’ as such. This merely rubs salt into the wounds felt by the critical theoretician: society is not only coercive but should also be loved for it. These complex matters cannot be done justice here. 5 Durkheim published the first chapters ahead of the book, which explains why it was possible for Tarde to respond even before the book came out in 1895. One finds no less than six texts from his hand addressing these issues, all written within a year after the publication of The Rules and all strongly critical (see Besnard, 1995: 228–9). The most important one is Tarde’s intervention at the First International Sociology Congress (ISS) in Paris in 1894, published the same year (see Tarde, 1969: esp. 114–25). 6 Durkheim goes as far as to allude to Tarde as a ‘bluffer’, or ‘charlatan’, or ‘dilettante’ [ faiseur] in his correspondence from this period – even though, it must be noted, he uses the same expression in his correspondence with Tarde about other enemies (see Besnard, 1995: 230; Borlandi, 2001: 107–8, 110). 7 Durkheim also criticizes Tarde for assembling heterogeneous and ‘non-­ imitational’ kinds of object or action appropriation, production or exchange under the heading of imitation (1975a: 84–5). He wishes to restrict the concept to ‘pure’ or ‘blind’ contagion. A like critique of Tarde’s inflation of the concept can be found in Simmel (1999: 250). Weber is a bit more accommodating toward Tarde, in the sense that he makes room for a secondary form of ‘meaningful’ imitation (see Weber, 1978: 23–4). 8 This is a recurrent critical point in Durkheim’s reviews of Tarde (see 1973: 18–20, 1975a: 86–9, 1975b: 115). 9 This echoes the authoritarian portrait of the leader found in the Rules (2013b: 99–100). There, also, the emphasis is placed on ‘authority’, ‘force’, and ‘command’ (2013b: 99). The contrast to the famous description of the politician fascinating and animating the ‘crowd’ in The Forms (1995: 212) is salient. Here we find descriptions of ‘society’ becoming directly ‘infatuated with a man’ (1995: 215). 10 It does not make the reader less confused that Durkheim adds in a footnote that ‘a manner or tradition may indeed be reproduced through mere ape-like imitation; but then it is not reproduced as a manner or tradition as such’ (1966: 127). Then, if there are ‘manners’ or ‘traditions’ which are transmitted through mere contagion, how can the ‘generality’ or popularity of these traditional practices or

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manners be held separate from the internalization of ‘real’ tradition or ‘tradition as such’ in the form of (external) norms and rules. See also Besnard (1995: 235). The authoritative text on the nuances of the Durkheimian psychology of imitation (compared with Tarde’s) is Karsenti (2010). Yet, surprisingly, Karsenti does not draw in Durkheim’s late work. A very short summary, probably written by René Worms, is all we have left about the actual events. The resume can be found in Tarde and Durkheim (1969). Durkheim writes in his correspondence about a ‘religious’ reorientation of his work taking place in the mid-1890s. His interest in religion seems from the outset centered on the question of totemism. He sees from the beginning the clan as the fundamental social formation. However, it is only after reading the ethnological descriptions of Baldwin Spencer and Francis Gillen around 1900 that Durkheim comes in possession of the empirical material which is to be at the base of The Elementary Forms (1912). It is in Spencer and Gillen that he finds the central accounts of (what he terms) effervescent events. It must be mentioned that Spencer and Gillen denied the central importance of the clan and the relation between totemism and social organization. Indeed, Durkheim merely uses their ethnographic accounts as ‘material’ for his own purposes. Basically, the approximation of the social and the religious is Durkheim’s idea. It is not to be found in Spencer and Gillen. For a thorough and balanced review of Durkheim’s engagement with Spencer and Gillen and other scholars of Australian religion of his time, see (Miller, 2012). Durkheim’s take on the concept of fetishism, that is, the basic idea of an ‘impersonal social force’ (then to be projected upon objects) emerges around 1902 (see Durkheim, 1902). It is these ideas which lead to the chapter (6) on mana in The Forms (1995: 190–206) and from there to the central chapter (7) on projection and fetishism (1995: 207–41). The latter chapter detaches the concept of fetishism from the ‘primitive’ setting and thus from the evolutionist doctrines of his time. It sketches a timeless template of projection of social energies onto objects of all kinds. In places, it even seems that Durkheim means that it is random or ‘free’ mutual imitation in ritual which converges in collective patterns, which, in turn, lead to the selection of an object or ‘totem’ – a certain animal or plant which resembles these crystalized patterns of dance or song (see Durkheim, 1995: 218, 232; see also Schiermer, 2011). One can only wonder why the recent interest in the Durkheim–Tarde controversy (see Candea, 2010; Durkheim and Tarde, 2008, 2010) ignores these passages. The anachronistic focus in much of this discourse on the spectacular event of 1903 leads to a simplifying polarization of the work of the two sociologists and neglects the progressive tendencies emerging in Durkheim’s work after the death of Tarde. The timeless character of this template is important when it comes to judging The Elementary Forms in its political context. Then, of course, the work suffers from many of the Eurocentric, colonialist, and evolutionist flaws of the epoch. Indeed, the very birth of anthropology is ideologically entangled in colonialist policies and practices (thus, for instance, as ‘consultants’ for the settler authorities Spencer and Gillen directly helped shape the catastrophic official policy toward the Australian people). For an analysis of the ideologies permeating early Australian ethnography, see Wolfe (1999). Nevertheless, what singularizes Durkheim’s account in The Elementary Forms is his downplaying of matters of classification and organization. These matters, Durkheim tells us, are only of ‘secondary interest’ (1995: 106) and are crammed into a few pages in the book (1995: 104–11). Durkheim’s complex work on macro-scale Australian organization (matrimonial organization of webs of groups) and on ‘primitive classification’ (with Mauss) is only alluded to in

Durkheim on imitation  71 passing (1995: 107). The point I want to press is that in contrast to issues of classification and organization, issues of effervescence and symbolism are not restricted to ‘primitive’ society. Rather, as I intimate, Durkheim sketches a timeless fetishist template with enormous empirical and explanatory powers (also) in a modern context. At least in this sense Durkheim was decisively less evolutionist than most of his contemporaries. In fact, as I have argued elsewhere (Schiermer, 2015), what ultimately bars Durkheim from exploiting the potentials of this template in terms of an analysis of contemporary forms of integration is not arrogance or Eurocentrism, but his cultural conservatism and – again – his holism: Durkheim retained a deep skepticism against the aesthetic and ephemeral ‘malign cults’ of modern culture in matters of integration and a stubborn insistence on the necessity of stable moral, religious, or political ‘symbols’ uniting the ‘whole of society’. It is this mistrust of culture which prevented Durkheim from realizing the full empirical promise of his theory of imitation and projection on a ‘modern’ society.

References Adorno, T. W. (1979) ‘Einleitung zu Emile Durkheim, “Soziologie und Philosophie”’, in T. W. Adorno (ed.), Soziologische Schriften I (Gesammelten Schriften, Band 8, 1) (pp. 245–79). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag. Besnard, P. (1995) ‘Durkheim critique de Tarde: des Règles au Suicide’, in M. ­Borlandi and L. Mucchielli (eds.), La sociologie et sa méthode: Les Règles de Durkheim un siècle après (pp. 221–43). Paris: Editions L’Harmattan. Besnard, P., and Borlandi, M. (2010) ‘Gabriel Tarde: Contre Durkheim à propos de son Suicide’, in M. Borlandi and M. Cherkaoui (eds.), Le Suicide: un siècle après Durkheim (pp. 219–22). Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Borlandi, M. (2001) ‘Informations sur la rédaction du Suicide et sur l’état du conflit entre Durkheim et Tarde de 1895 à 1897’, in W. S. F. Pickering (ed.), Emile ­Durkheim: Critical Assessments of Leading Sociologists (Vol. IV, pp. 99–115). London and New York: Routledge. Candea, M. (ed.) (2010) The Social after Gabriel Tarde: Debates and Assessments. London and New York: Routledge. Collins, R. (2004) Interaction Ritual Chains. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Durkheim, E. (1902) ‘Sur le totémisme’, L’Année sociologique 5: 82–121. Durkheim, E. (1905) ‘L’interpsychologie de G. Tarde’, L’Année Sociologique 9: 133–5. Durkheim, E. (1966 [1897]) Suicide. New York: The Free Press. Durkheim, E. (1973 [1900]) ‘Sociology in France in the Nineteenth Century’, in R. N. Bellah (ed.), Emile Durkheim: On Morality and Society (pp. 3–22). Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press. Durkheim, E. (1975a [1895]) ‘L’état actual des études de sociologie en France’, in E.  Durkheim (ed.), Textes I: éléments d’une théorie sociale (pp. 73–108). Paris: Les Editions de Minuit. Durkheim, E. (1975b [1915]) ‘La Sociologie’, in E. Durkheim (ed.), Textes I: Éléments d’une théorie sociale (pp. 109–18). Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit. Durkheim, E. (1995 [1912]) The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. New York: The Free Press. Durkheim, E. (2002 [1903]) Moral Education. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications. Durkheim, E. (2013a [1893]) The Division of Labour in Society. Basingstoke: ­Palgrave Macmillan.

72  Bjørn Schiermer Durkheim, E. (2013b [1895]) The Rules of Sociological Method. Basingstoke: ­Palgrave Macmillan. Durkheim, E., and Tarde, G. (2008) ‘The Debate between Tarde and Durkheim’ (ed. by E. V. Vargas et al.), Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 26: 761–77. Durkheim, E., and Tarde, G. (2010) ‘The Debate’, in M. Candea (ed.), The Social after Gabriel Tarde: Debates and Assessments (pp. 27–43). London and New York: Routledge. Jones, R. A. (1999) The Development of Durkheim’s Social Realism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Karsenti, B. (2010) ‘Imitation: Returning to the Tarde–Durkheim debate’, in M. Candea (ed.), The Social after Gabriel Tarde: Debates and Assessments (pp. ­44–61). London and New York: Routledge. Latour, B. (2014) ‘Formes élémentaires de la sociologie: formes avancées de la théologie’, Archives des sciences sociales des religions 167: 255–75. Lukes, S. (1973) Emile Durkheim: His life and Work. London: Penguin Books. Miller, W. W. (2012) ‘Durkheim’s Re-Imagination of Australia: A Case Study of the Relation between Theory and “Facts”’, L’année Sociologique 62(2): 329–49. Schiermer, B. (2011) ‘Quasi-objects, Cult Objects and Fashion Objects: On Two Kinds of Fetishism on Display in Modern Culture’, Theory, Culture & Society 28(1): 81–102. Schiermer, B. (2015) ‘Late-Modern Symbolism: Continuity and Discontinuity between the Modern and the Pre-modern in Durkheim’s Work’, Sociological Focus 48(1): 49–67. Simmel, G. (1999) ‘G. Tarde. Les lois de l’imitation’, in G. Simmel (ed.), Gesamtausgabe (Band I) (pp. 248–50). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag. Tarde, G. (1903 [1890]) The Laws of Imitation. New York: H. Holt and Company. Tarde G. (1969 [1894]) ‘Sociology, Social Psychology and Sociologism’, in T. N. Clark (ed.), Gabriel Tarde: On Communication and Social Influence (pp. 112–35). Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press. Tarde, G. (2000 [1903]) ‘Contre Durkheim à propos de son Suicide’, in M. Borlandi and M. Cherkaoui (eds.), Le Suicide: un siècle après Durkheim (pp. 222–55). Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Tarde, G., and Durkheim, E. (1969 [1904]) ‘A Debate with Emile Durkheim’, in T. N. Clark (ed.), Gabriel Tarde: On Communication and Social Influence (pp. 136–40). Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press. Weber, M. (1978) Economy and Society. Berkeley, Los Angeles, CA and London: University of California Press. Wolfe, P. (1999) Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology. London and New York: Cassel.

4 Mimesis as a social practice of self-education Katja Rothe

At the beginning of the twentieth century, imitation was a central concept in the young discipline of sociology. Adam Smith had already discussed imitation as a fundamental, general social force via his concept of sympathy, which experienced a renaissance in the 1890s (Leys, 2009: 62). This happened at the same time as doubts were growing about the nineteenth-­ century conception of the self, according to which the individual was seen as an autonomous creator. Especially through Gabriel Tarde’s (2003) psychological sociology, the idea of a social mimesis gained importance and had a far-reaching influence, including on the sociology of the Chicago School (Leys, 2009: 76–101; Rothe, 2012a). Illustratively, imitation was discussed – from economic, moral, ethnological, developmental, etc., perspectives – as a mechanism of social regulation in groups. However, after the World War  II, the notion of imitation was largely forgotten in both the US and Europe. And yet, implicitly, imitation found its way into contemporary social ­techniques, for example, through popular forms of knowledge and the applied psychology of Kurt Lewin. In this chapter, I will demonstrate that the concept of imitation was not only highly prevalent in academic circles, but also shaped popular, practical knowledge in a German context around 1900. My argument is that the notion emerged that, in practices of imitation, the modern self takes shape within the collective, rather than in opposition to it. I will outline how concepts of mimetic self-regulation within groups developed in concrete practice. I will also describe how, during the first decades of the twentieth century, the idea of mimesis shifted away from a social technique of directing the group ‘from above’ to the notion that imitation within the group constitutes one’s own ‘personality’. In the latter case, mutual imitation does not lead to a loss of one’s own self – on the contrary, it is seen as a requirement for the emergence of one’s own self. I propose that this form of subjectification is understood as a practice of self-education (Alkemeyer, Budde, and Freist, 2013: 14–15). The concept of self-education emphasizes a shift in focus from the discourses of subjectification to the practices of subjectification. Within this praxeological perspective, the subject is considered as formed in practice (Alkemeyer, Budde, and Freist, 2013: 18). This is accompanied by a shift in emphasis,

74  Katja Rothe in which imitation becomes an active, social process of self-education, and as such is distinguished from passive concepts of imitation within a fearful crowd or mass, in which the subject effectively perishes (Gamper, 2007). I will describe this development on the basis of two at first seemingly disparate fields – namely, the debates on neurasthenia and Kurt Lewin’s applied psychology. Both the patient movement, which developed in opposition to psychiatry at the beginning of the twentieth century, and the applied psychology of Lewin sketch out surprisingly similar concepts of imitation as a simultaneously self-technology and social technology. The auto-suggestive therapy methods used to treat nervousness – mainly socalled therapeutic gymnastics (Heilgymnastik) – as well as Lewin’s methods for optimizing work dynamics, assume that the individual comes to him- or herself in group processes through mimetic practices. Furthermore, both the gymnastic forms of therapy and Lewin’s applied psychology have developed a life of their own beyond the theoretical reflection in the sciences of psychology and psychiatry. Through this mimesis, they became firmly anchored as self-education techniques in various social and private areas of Western societies and remain so to the present day. For example, popular phenomena as diverse as yoga and mindfulness exercises are based on the idea that the imitation of certain postures or behavioral routines can shape, or even cultivate, one’s ‘inner self’. Lewin’s research has also had an impact on consulting, education, and management. Assessment Center Methods remain popular as methods of personnel recruitment and placement, and theme-centered interaction (developed by Ruth Cohn, based on Lewin’s concept of group dynamics) is a standard procedure used in family counseling and nursing care, to name just a few examples.

Neurasthenia, auto-suggestion, and self-education Between 1880 and 1914, artistic, scientific, and political discourses were preoccupied with the metaphorical notion of nervousness. In medicine and psychiatry, neurasthenia was discussed as a disease of modern civilization (for example, Beard, 1881: 59). In art, for example, in the writings of Theodor Fontane, Thomas Mann, Theodor Storm, and Robert Musil, new types of hysteria and nervousness emerged, such as the hyperaesthetic, the hysterical, the nervous, the scattered, and the suggestible (see Bergengruen and Müller-Wille, 2010). In politics, entire population groups were classified as nervous and devalued as inferior or degenerate. However, nervousness was also a metaphor for the readjustment of the self-perception of the bourgeois subject in a world increasingly determined by science, media, and technology. This subject was formed by the discourses around ‘will’ (see Radkau, 1998: 357–75). Titles such as Norbert Grabowsky’s Lebensfrohsinn. Ein Handbüchlein für Lebensverdrossene. Zugleich ein Führer im Kampfe wider die sog. Nervosität (Joie de vivre: A handbook for people disgruntled with life – At the same time, a primer in the battle against the so-called

Mimesis as a social practice  75 nervousness, 1907) already superimposed the two discrete discourses found in the literature on training the will and the treatment of nervous suffering. It became generally accepted that neurasthenia was a result of technical civilization, and that the ‘fight for existence’ had intensified due to economic and technical progress (Radkau, 1994: 211). As Joachim Radkau points out, the critique of economic development, which mainly concerned changing conditions in the workplace, can be read as an expression of the (historical) zeitgeist (1994: 227–31; see also Cowan, 2013: 72). The great strides in technical progress (automotive, telegraphy, assembly line, etc.) around 1900 led to discussions about connections between increasing speed, disturbed rhythms, and the nervous age (Radkau, 1994: 228). Increasing speed in particular was the subject of constant concern, and it was argued that it is important to train the will so as not to give in to nervous weakness (Gerling, 1920: 36). Not surprisingly, therefore, around 1900 a number of guidebooks on training the will became highly successful (Gebhardt, 1912: 4–5). Radkau makes clear that the diagnosis of neurasthenia ‘in practice was usually by excluding organic causes and also by excluding any psychosis that would betray itself in delusions’ (1994: 213).1 The clinical picture was rather diffuse, associating neurasthenia with anything from fear and hot flushes to dizziness and drowsiness. This blurriness was apparent in the American physician George M. Beard’s American Nervousness (Beard, 1889 [1880]: V–VII), the first successful standard work on neurasthenia, and in Rudolph von Hösslin’s Symptomatologie (Symptomatology) (Hösslin, 1893a: 87–9). Hösslin described neurasthenia as having ‘manifold […] and varying […] appearances; depending on which of the symptoms take centre stage’ (Hösslin, 1893a: 89). Despite all the ambiguity and diversity of the disease patterns, from 1900 onward there was a clear recommendation for therapy – it was believed that movement would restore the ‘waning energy and will power’ (Hösslin, 1893a: 60, 1893b: 169).2 For example, the German physician Ottomar Rosenbach argued that neurasthenia is treatable solely through ‘the methodical disciplining of the mind and body’ (1897: 4). Incidentally, Rosenbach is regarded as the founder of autogenic training, a method that is still recommended today for burnout and depression. Similarly, Reinhold Gerling’s3 programmatically titled Gymnastics of the Will stated that: Movement is life, rest is death. Life is like a trickling stream that flows over rough and stony ground; if it becomes a stagnant water, it becomes swampy. That is why we should regard rest as a necessary evil, destined only to bring new thoughts and forces to work. (Gerling, 1920: 61) Common to these different therapy methods, which mostly recommended mental concentration and physical exercises, was that they were founded on the idea of psychomotor effectiveness, that is, the idea that concepts and behaviors are directly linked to physical movements. This idea was linked to

76  Katja Rothe the notion that willpower could be a matter of self-education. The French pedagogue Jules Payot described this idea in his 1895 book The Education of the Will (an exceedingly successful book, published in multiple translations) in the following way: Any notion of an action to be carried out or not to be carried out has […] a power of realization which is demonstrated by the fact that there is no essential difference between intention and action. A planned action is already an incipient action. (Payot, 1910: 151) In the introduction to his Gymnastics of the Will, Gerling similarly stated that ‘Every inspiration and accepted idea has the ambition to transform itself into action’ (Gerling, 1920: 5). This was taken further by the French physician Paul Emile Lévy (a friend of the internist and pioneer of psychotherapy Hippolyte Bernheim), who was close to the Nancy School and thus to hypnosis as a form of therapy. In 1903, Lévy published A Practical Guide to Spiritual Healing and Self-education. In it, he spoke of ‘suggestive therapeutics’ with regard to psychomotor functions: ‘The suggestive therapeutics now take the following self-evident fact as a basis: Every imagination contains its execution already in statu nascendi; every faint idea is already the beginning of an action’ (Lévy, 1903: 103). The proposals for auto-suggestion and for focusing attention were based on the idea that this could trigger certain actions and channel energy flows (Cowan, 2013: 74), which demonstrates how willpower training developed from the tradition of hypnosis research (Cowan, 2013: 74–6).4 However, there was one crucial difference: in hypnosis, a medical expert (the hypnotist) suspended the will of the patient. As such, hypnosis fundamentally contradicted the notion of the patient’s self-will that was accorded a central role in the discourse on the treatment of neurasthenia (Radkau, 1998: 362–4). Still, one form of hypnosis became an established therapy – namely, auto-suggestion. Here, the emphasis was on the possibility of self-treatment. In particular, it was the French contribution to the treatment of neurasthenia that located auto-suggestion and self-treatment not in the medical field, but in the pedagogical field. For example, Lévy emphasized again and again that neurasthenia should be opposed by means of education –in Neurasthenia and Neurosis (1909), he explicitly combined auto-suggestion and education (Shamdasani, 2012: 39). According to the British historian Michael Cowan, auto-suggestion was understood as an exercise in self-­education, as ‘a component of the new technologies of everyday self-­cultivation, a tool for the deliberate regulation of ideas and corresponding energy transfers’ (Cowan, 2013: 76). In this vein, Theo Seelmann wrote that ‘We have […] in the power of the mind a way of direction and guiding, by firm decision or, as one might call it, by autosuggestion the sensory life of our body’ (­ Seelmann, 1904/05: 191).5 The increasing emphasis on auto-suggestion shifted the

Mimesis as a social practice  77 balance between doctor and patient. ‘The term “nervousness” often bore witness to the “power of definition” of patients rather than physicians’, Radkau observes with regard to the medical records. ‘One must take into account the willfulness of the amateurs’ (Radkau, 1994: 224). Against this background, it is not surprising that the titles of guidebooks often referred to the ‘personal power’ (Hansen, 1906) of the neurasthenics or called for ‘self education’ (Lévy, 1903) and ‘self liberation’ (Bergmann, 1911).

Self-education through imitation: therapeutic gymnastics It was therefore widely argued that neurasthenia should be treated via self-­ education, and that self-education, which was founded on the idea of psychomotor effectiveness, should be based on auto-suggestive exercises (repeating certain words, imagining positive outcomes, etc.) and physical activities such as cycling, water treatments (e.g. swimming), or mechano-therapies. In particular, therapeutic gymnastics, which mainly originated in Scandinavia, became popular.6 These could be performed alone at home, thus meeting the need for ‘personal power’ (Hansen, 1906). In addition, they corresponded to the emerging beauty cult of the body culture movement (Körperkulturbewegung) (Möhring, 2004). However, therapeutic gymnastics were not welcomed everywhere. For example, a conflict erupted in Germany between advocates of the Swedish therapeutic gymnastics tradition of Pehr Henrik Ling and the nationalist physical education movement (Turnen) of Friedrich Ludwig Jahn.7 During the nineteenth century, the German physician Albert Constantin Neumann had developed a gymnastic healing method based on Ling, although it never gained a mass following (Schöler, 2005). It was not until the 1880s that massage and, in particular, therapeutic gymnastics were rediscovered as therapy, this time as neurasthenia therapies that sought to strengthen the will by strengthening the body. While physical education embodied the conditioning of the human body by a coach, therapeutic gymnastics were based on self-discipline, on a ‘self-normalizing body practice’ (Möhring, 2004: 88). It should be mentioned that, around 1900, a dazzling and widespread gymnastics movement had taken hold. The German gymnastics movement was composed of rather different directions, including anatomically oriented gymnastics, rhythmic gymnastics, dance gymnastics, gymnastics oriented towards physical education, and gymnastics as part of the life reform movement (Urban, 2001: 186–7). However, the boundaries between the individual directions were fluid (Möhrig, 2004: 74). Not surprisingly, therapeutic gymnastics were specifically intended to treat the ‘sick’, including neurasthenics, by ‘rhythmizing’ the body and thus to strengthen the will. Importantly, after 1900, they were quickly integrated into psychiatric practice. In 1903, for example, the psychiatrist and neurologist Otto Binswanger, author of Die Pathologie und Therapie der Neurasthenie (The Pathology and Therapy of Neurasthenia, 1896), a standard work on the treatment of neurasthenia,

78  Katja Rothe reported his enthusiasm for Swedish gymnastics (Radkau, 1998: 365). In 1913, gymnastic exercises were added to the treatment program at Berlin’s House Schönow, one of the most renowned national sanatoriums for the nervous (Volksnervenheilstätten), with a high proportion of neurasthenics. Here, patients working in groups imitated the postures of ancient sculptures. This is remarkable because sanatoriums, which previously were more concerned with restoring calm instead of following a zeitgeist that favored willfulness, now joined in the active training of the will. Imitation exercises in particular were soon offered at many health resorts. The idea was that, according to the principle of psychomotor effectiveness, imitating the ‘ideal’ movements seen in ancient sculptures would harmonize one’s own body and mind. One gymnastics teacher who subscribed to this idea was Hedwig Kallmeyer, who is associated with so-called ­rhythmic-hygienic gymnastics (Möhring, 2004: 73–6). Kallmeyer founded the Institute for Harmonic Body and Expression Culture in Berlin-Schlachtensee in 1909 and based much of her teaching on examples from classical antiquity.8 She combined the imitation of certain poses and notional movement sequences with breathing exercises, the combination of which was meant to induce ‘physical consciousness’ ­(Moscovici, 1989: 19). The body was to be taught natural movement patterns and to maintain a correct posture, in order to bring about behavioral change (Heller, 2012: 290–1; Huschka, 2002: 87). Such gymnastics exercises were widespread after 1900 – they were imparted in newly founded institutes, and explicitly developed as programs for physical self-education and for the treatment of nervousness in the guidebooks and journals of the body-culture movement (e.g. Der Kulturmensch, Körperkultur or Kraft und Schönheit). In other words, therapeutic gymnastics was no longer merely a form of therapy for the sick, but became part of the everyday culture of the ‘healthy’ in the nervous age.

Expressive movements and direct mimetic access to the psyche The popularity of gymnastics meant that the idea of self-cultivation through imitation was beginning to triumph. The phrase ‘expressive movements’ (Ausdrucksbewegungen) informed many discussions of the extent to which physical, gestural, imitative behavior permits insights into another person’s personality, soul, experience, or feelings (see also Jaspers, 1937 [1914]). For example, Konrad Fiedler defined language as an expressive movement. He also designed an aesthetic of production in which he equated the artist’s perception with his or her design process (Fiedler, 1913 [1887]). Similarly, ­Helmuth Plessner and Karl Bühler reflected on a possible affective resonance of interacting bodies (Bühler, 1933; Plessner, 1982 [1925]). Ludwig Klages (1950: 157) assumed that expressive movements realized the ‘figure of a psychic impulse’ (seelische Regung). Moreover, the question arose as to whether it was possible to unlock access to individuals’ mental facilities through movement in a group setting. Filmmakers such as Sergei Eisenstein

Mimesis as a social practice  79 took up these ideas. Following Klages, Eisenstein developed a theory of expressive movements based on Rudolf Bode’s gymnastics (Eisenstein, 1988 [1924]). He was particularly interested in counter-movement, that is, the movement that must be carried out against the impulse of movement (e.g. turning around to sit down). It was here, he believed, that conflict-laden effects would become visible. In Eisenstein’s concept, which was based on reflexology and Meyerhold’s biomechanics, the counter-movement sought to produce a physiological effect on the part of the spectator. The counter-­ movements were supposed to create muscle tensions that would instill the urge for the correct execution of the movement (Eisenstein, 1988 [1924]: 32–3). In other words, the conflict between different motifs in the film itself would motivate the viewers to perform certain movements. The ‘cinematic field’ was supposed to have a decisive retroactive effect on expressive movement, in that the viewers were supposed to imitate the filmed movements. Eisenstein designed a concept of threefold imitation for the purpose of optimizing the viewer’s behavior. In the first step, the psychological, i.e., the invisible, is imitated by expressive movements, and thus given over to cinematic imitation (double imitation). The viewer observes the movements in the film and is supposed to imitate them unconsciously (threefold imitation). Eisenstein’s work tied in with that of Rudolf Bode, who wanted to design a system that did not prescribe any movement patterns (such as the so-called Delsarte system), but was supposed to cause physiologically contagious, unconscious movements (e.g. in the Bodewelle) (Bode, 1922; Wedemeyer-Kolwe, 2004: 100–4). However, Eisenstein also emphasized the ‘structural affinity between cinematography and hypnosis’ (Andriopoulos, 2000: 99) that was often diagnosed in the first two decades of the twentieth century (Pethes, 2004: 25–49). It was assumed that, via cinema, thoughts and movement sequences could be directly transferred onto the spectators. This is indicative of a fantasy of direct control through media, in which the film, as a medium of imitation, was imbued with the power to regulate behavioral patterns. This form of long-distance media impact, or media suggestion, can be understood in terms of a socio-utopian form of mimesis, whose potential for regulating and controlling group processes was researched in sociology as well as in early twentieth-century (social and applied) psychology and management research. For example, psychotechnical training films were developed that directly addressed the audience for the purpose of carrying out aptitude tests (Eignungstests) in the cinema auditorium and studying optimized movement sequences.9 In this research, imitation was seen as the central regulatory mechanism: the spectators were believed to follow the shown behavior and then adapt to, be instructed by, and trained according to previously formulated norms. However, there were also proposals for group management that focused to a greater extent on individuals’ personal willpower. For example, the German psychotechnician Kurt Lewin, whose psychological film studies were referenced by Eisenstein (Bulgakowa, 2007),10 did not rely on hypnotic imitation, but instead on auto-suggestible imitation techniques.

80  Katja Rothe

Imitation and the ‘process of expression’: Kurt Lewin’s contribution In the 1930s, Kurt Lewin, one of the most influential pioneers of experimental psychology, developed a psychological field theory (Lewin, 2015 [1936]) that described experience, action, personality, and development, as well as interpersonal social processes, as complex, relational, mobile structures within a topological field that is dynamically constituted by individual dispositions and the environment. He did not define behavior in terms of purpose, nerves, subject, or God, but in relation to an environment consisting of force fields (for a summary, see Lück, 2001). Lewin’s psychological field theory was influenced by physical field theory, especially electrodynamics. At the beginning of the twentieth century, topology experienced an incredible boom in the cultural and social sciences, and Lewin followed suit (Dünne and Günzel, 2006). The ‘electromagnetisation’ of knowledge enabled collective behaviors to be described in a way that bypassed questions of the soul, the inner being, and the unconscious. Instead, physical field theory opened up the possibility that experimental psychology and social psychology could understand behavioral regulation as a spatial, medial process in which different forces interact and form an open, complex control system. Lewin also conceptualized behavior as a field effect and observed the spontaneous movements of the test subjects in space. He understood the body movements as imitations of psychic field movements and used film to document their ‘process of expression’ (Ausdrucksgeschehen, Lewin, 2009 [1928]: 293). In this context, the film Hanna and the Stone (1928) became famous.11 Hanna (the niece of Lewin’s wife), aged one-and-a-half years, wants to sit on a stone. The desire to sit down is theoretically interpreted as a strong force in the direction of the stone. But to sit down, Hanna would have to turn around, which means that she would have to oppose the force that urges her toward the stone. Hanna cannot do this and keeps circling the stone. The forces within the field are thus reflected in Hanna’s spontaneous movements. Against this backdrop, Lewin designed a double movement of imitation: the psychological field is imitated by the child’s involuntary ‘process of expression’, which in turn is imitated by the ‘cinematic field’ (Kinofeld, Lewin, 1926: 420). In his film studies – he had been using film since 192312 – Lewin tried to account for a possible retroactive influence of the cinematic field on the psychic field, which he sought to capture by filming with a hidden camera and telephoto lens (Lewin, 1926: 419). Lewin’s studies did not deal with the retroactive, hypnotic manipulation of behavior deemed desirable by experts in hypnosis. Instead, he observed processes of self-regulation in the field. His idea was that experts and test subjects would together observe an expressional process in order to find clues about the psychological field. Based on these observations, and through a process of reflecting upon and discussing them together, an ideal norm would be found to which the test subjects would then voluntarily adapt themselves.

Mimesis as a social practice  81 According to this idea, one does not adapt to a given image (e.g. ancient statues or diagrams of ideal workflows); rather, people develop an image together and then imitate it. This notion was particularly strong in Lewin’s so-called ‘re-learning procedure’ (Umlernverfahren).

Lewin and mimetic group processes In 1928, Lewin and Hans Rupp, one of the Weimar Republic’s leading psychotechnicians, developed the ‘re-learning process’, an early group-dynamic roundtable discussion that attempted to optimize working processes in the textile industry by means of self-observation of the women workers. The aim was to persuade them ‘to behave correctly in the concrete case’ by helping them to gain an understanding of the ‘benefits of performance’ (Einsicht in den leistungsmäßigen Nutzen) (Lewin and Rupp, 2008 [1928]: 256). In connection with this, the workers were invited to group sessions at which information and diagrams relating to different working methods and scientific data were presented and discussed. The workers were to be given an ‘absolutely open and transparent picture of the advantages and disadvantages of different working methods by means of simple diagrams’ (Lewin and Rupp, 2008 [1928]: 255). However, at the same time, they were also encouraged to ‘observe the effect of different working methods on their colleagues, who worked according to one way or another’ (2008 [1928]: 255) and then they were supposed to imitate the approach that seemed ideal from their point of view. The conversation, thus, functioned both as a (self-)observation technology and as a procedure for behavioral change via the imitation of optimal approaches. The relearning process was part of the ‘soft’ phase of German psychophysics. At the outset of the twentieth century, applied psychologists gained a foothold in science and industry, to a greater extent in Germany than in other countries (see Rothe, 2013b). By measuring workers’ suitability and offering training and occupational counseling, psychotechnics (­Psychotechnik) aimed at ensuring that the human factor was adapted to rationalized operations (Jaeger, 1985: 100–3). However, as early as the 1920s, there was talk of a crisis of psychotechnics, which itself became a focus of rationalization on the eve of the Great Depression. At the same time, there was a growing emphasis on the ‘human side’ (Giese, 1927: 381) of rationalization, and attention was increasingly being paid to its negative aspects, including fatigue, lack of motivation, loss of meaning, and monotony. Fritz Giese observed the: necessity and possibility of now, after more than ten years of the development of psycho-technics in Germany, examining the human side of technical work in industry, and using the results thereof, in an encompassing sense, to promote this human side as a psychological direction for rationalization. (1927: 381)

82  Katja Rothe Similarly, Hans Rupp called for psychotechnics to be broadened into a guide for the correct structuring of life (Rupp, 1929). A movement also arose in Britain (the motherland of industrialization) and in the United States that sought to humanize the rationalization of scientific management. As early as the 1910s and 1920s, before the Hawthorne studies of the 1930s (Witzel, 2012: 139–42), which are now regarded as the starting point for human relations management, there was already intensive engagement with the possibilities of the management of people (Mary Parker Follett, Meier Bloomfield, Ordway Tead, and others). The emerging discipline of psychology also played a decisive part in these new approaches. Ordway Tead’s The Instincts in Industry: A Study of Working-Class Psychology (1918) combined the new ideas emerging from psychology (James Sully, William James) with the call for a new type of management. Similarly, Lillian Gilbreth, known for the time and motion studies she conducted with her husband Frank Bunker, engaged intensely with The Psychology of Management (1914). It is no wonder, then, that at the end of the 1920s, researchers studying the optimization of work were increasingly interested in the individual in a group setting – an interest shared by Kurt Lewin. After immigrating to the US, Lewin committed himself to research into group dynamic processes (Lewin, 1947). He established the Research Center for Group Dynamics at MIT in 1945, and then in 1947 developed the so-called T-Group method at the National Training Laboratories (see Rothe, 2012b). The T-Group process was understood as an interactive process of reeducation, in which participants were encouraged to diagnose and experiment with their own behavior and relationships in a specially designed environment (Bradford et al., 1972: 13). Each participant was both an observer and an actor (Bradford et al., 1972: 140). In this process, the object of observation (i.e. the group’s behavior) was only constituted through the observation of one’s own behavior in interaction with the others (Bröckling, 2006: 32). The underlying idea was that the observations themselves would simultaneously constitute and regulate behavior, without researchers having to do actively do so, and without them prescribing a norm. The group should find its own norm by observing and imitating itself. Lewin saw in this process of reciprocal observation a process of establishing an optimal group standard, which would then be regulated by feedback on the emerging standard. This form of behavioral regulation was not mimetic, in the sense that it imitated behavior; rather, it was mimetic in that it anticipated possible behaviors. Lewin’s mimetic social techniques have remained a standard tool for social engineers in business and the public sector to this day. For example, Assessment Center Methods and change management techniques – Lewin directly contributed to the development of both – are based on the hope of the self-controlling power of processual, open-reference, speculative imitation (Rothe, 2013a).

Mimesis as a social practice  83

Conclusion: self-education as a technique of new elites In view of the debates on expressive movements and gymnastics as forms of self-education, but also with regard to the psychotechnical procedures of Kurt Lewin and Hans Rupp, as well as the methods of group dynamics, the question arises as to how the fusion of the subject’s body history and discursive constitution is to be understood. Apparently, the idea that the body in effect performs psychological processes via hypnotic, auto-suggestive, mimetic practices played a central role in the discursive repertoire I have examined in this chapter. However, contrary to late nineteenth-century discussions of hypnosis, this psychological process was not simply left to experts (medical hypnotists) without resistance. In the gymnastics movement, as well as in the psychotechnical procedures of Lewin and Rupp, emphasis was placed on self-education. Following the German historian Phillip Sarasin, they could be seen as a form of hygiene, or the art of health (from the Greek hygieiné téchne). Tracing the eighteenth-century discourse on nerves, Sarasin notes that at that time nerve therapy was seen as part of hygiene discourse, and thus as a peripheral area of medicine (Sarasin, 2001). Already in the eighteenth century, a fusion of body history and discourses of the subject arose in relation to discussions of the nerves. According to Sarasin, this fusion served the purpose of the psychophysical self-regulation of the body with a view toward self-empowerment. Specifically, ‘as a marginal discipline of medicine, hygiene was not exactly part of the art of living, but it was to a large extent a manual for careful, attentive treatment of oneself’ (Sarasin, 2001: 23–4). This notion of self-treatment came to occupy a central role in discussions of nervous patients, who were believed to be developing an emerging semi-sovereign sociality through practices of self-education. Indeed, the reluctant patients, the middle-class practitioners of gymnastics, and Lewin’s textile workers all constituted themselves as acting subjects in body practices based on imitation and suggestibility, although these practices seemingly pointed to a loss of autonomy. It bears repeating that in the imitation of movement sequences, the individual connects to collective ideas and norms, but this does not in any way result in a loss of self, but rather in self-­assertion and the experience of self-efficacy. Subjectification does not seem to be designed here just as an active process of the subject using certain practices to come to him- or herself. Rather, it is the result of an intrinsic interaction between social practices and their subjects (Alkemeyer, Budde, and Freist, 2013: 21; Schatzki, 2002: 76). The sociologist Thomas Alkemeyer and the historians Dagmar Freist and Gunilla Budde speak of self-education in this context: ‘The subject is no longer the sovereign point of departure for social action, but is in some way subordinated to the practices’ (2013: 17, 21). Within both discursive and nondiscursive practices, the subjects make themselves intelligible for others as well as for themselves, and show themselves to be capable of participating in group activities (2013: 18), thereby earning membership of a particular social group. Practicing gymnastics, imitating

84  Katja Rothe exercises, or exploring ideal movement sequences together turns individuals into members of a new social group. Based on this view, the subject is not considered transcendent, that is, someone behind the practice, but rather as something empirical, that is, someone formed by practice. It also means that the subject develops its self-relationships [Selbstbeziehungen] and its capacity to position itself [Stellungsnahme] in historical-social practices (2013: 18). As practitioners, the subjects experience social recognition in the group, but are also required to live up to certain expectations and norms. According to Alkemeyer, Freist, and Budde, the individual must publicly ‘show the fulfilment of these norms in order to establish itself as a subject’ (2013: 19). This performance is not simply an enactment of a social role. Rather, the expectations are appropriated, and thus ‘internalized and visibly embodied’ within the process of subjectification, ‘i.e. they become a part of the subject’ (2013: 19). It is precisely this ‘self-contribution of individuals to the practical shaping and redesigning of found subject forms and thus to their own becoming subjects’ that Alkemeyer, Freist, and Budde call ‘self-education’ (2013: 21). They consciously emphasize the concept of education, which they define as ‘processes of formation and experience, which one makes through participation in social practices on and with oneself’ (2013: 21). From this perspective, education is conceived as a ‘socio-culturally framed process of discovery, finding, invention and creation’ (2013: 21). I propose that the debates on auto-suggestion in gymnastics, on movements of expression, and on self-regulation in the group should be understood in the context of a similar self-education process. In fact, as I have shown, ‘personal power’ (Hansen, 1906) and ‘self-education’ (Lévy, 1903) were repeatedly emphasized. Again and again, the self-responsibility of the nervous, in opposition to prevailing medical hypnotic discourse, was brought to the fore – as was that of the women workers, against prefabricated norms. Gymnastic exercises, which also have a physical effect during longer training sessions, allowed nervous people to participate in the flourishing beauty cult of the body culture movement (Möhring, 2004). They were able to participate in the performance of a new social elite, because, within the context of each exercise, they presented and produced themselves as adequate players. Similarly, the women workers who contributed to the development of the effective working standard in the relearning process were also considered co-players, as they were part of both a research process and a design process. This seems to be the reason for the assumed effectiveness of the procedure. To this day, this insight is used in motivational psychology, including in pedagogy and management (e.g. with regard to intrinsic motivation, Deci and Ryan, 2008: 183). This also demonstrates that imitation, including group imitation, need not be seen in opposition to the self. By contrast, imitation may play a central role in manufacturing the self. In other words, there is no sovereign ‘me’ that rules over the self. On the contrary, subjectivity is conceived here as a collective process of imitation, in which, after anticipating the reaction of the other, an ego is formed within practices of concerted self-education.

Mimesis as a social practice  85

Notes 1 All translations of German texts are by Katja Rothe and Conrad Nowack. 2 This turn to movement is noteworthy insofar as, until the turn of the century, rest and retreat were recommended therapies for neurasthenia (Radkau, 1994: 232). 3 Gerling was a playwright and actor who also published the naturopathy magazine Der Naturarzt (The Naturopath). He was one of the most influential protagonists of the so-called life reform movement (Lebensreformbewegung), see Hau (2002: 131). 4 On the cultural history of hypnosis, see Andriopoulos (2000). 5 See also: ‘Thoughts are forces that are realized in the body. Perceptions of illness are the first symptoms of their actual occurrence. To be healthy, you have to believe in health’ (Freund, 1910: 273). 6 Franz Kafka, for example, had been ‘Müllern’ since 1910, meaning that he practiced the gymnastics and, in the tradition of Pehr Henrik Ling, breathing exercises prescribed by the Danish athlete and gymnastics teacher Jørgen Peter Müller. 7 This conflict played out particularly aggressively between the officer Hugo ­Rothstein, who wanted to enforce Ling’s gymnastics in the military and in schools, and the followers of Jahn. See Schöler (2005: 116). 8 Elements of Asian philosophy were referenced just as frequently as Greek antiquity. In the mid-nineteenth century, Ling, the European great-grandfather of therapeutic gymnastics, devised a system of Swedish gymnastics based on Far Eastern gymnastics methods and Chinese acupuncture, and combined these with European mechanistic thinking. See Heller (2012: 291). 9 This includes the German training films ‘Menschen-Ökonomie. Berufseignung und Leistungsprüfung. Methoden der Psychotechnik’ (Human Economics: Professional aptitude and performance tests – Methods of Psychotechnology, 1921); ‘Eignungs- und Leistungsprüfung im Sport, psychotechnischer Lehrfilm aus der Filmvortragsreihe: Der rechte Mann am rechten Platz’ (Suitability and Performance Tests in Sports: Psychotechnical instructional film from the series of film lectures The Right Man in the Right Place, 1922); ‘Werkstattgeheimnisse des Uhrmachers’ (Workshop Secrets of the Watchmaker, 1922). 10 Lewin was also interested in Eisenstein and is said to have consulted with him about his own films (see Elteren and Lück, 1990: 43–4). 11 The video is archived at the Fern-Universität Hagen. 12 From 1923 onward, Lewin, together with a group of researchers (Bluma ­Zeigarnik, Tamara Dembo, Anitra Karsten, Richard Meili, and students of the Psychological Institute), filmed children exposed to conflicts in an experimental setting (Reichert, 2009: 158–63).

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88  Katja Rothe Plessner, H. (1982 [1925]) ‘Die Deutung des mimetischen Ausdrucks’, in H. Plessner (ed.), Gesammelte Schriften VII: Ausdruck und menschliche Natur (pp. 67–130). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Radkau, J. (1994) ‘Die wilhelminische Ära als nervöses Zeitalter, oder: Die Nerven als Netz zwischen Tempo- und Körpergeschichte’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft 20(2): 211–41. Radkau, J. (1998) Das Zeitalter der Nervosität. Deutschland zwischen Bismarck und Hitler. Munich: Hanser. Reichert, R. (2009) ‘Medienkultur und Experimentalpsychologie. Filme, Diagramme und Texte des Sozialpsychologen Kurt Lewin’, in B. Griesecke, M.  Krause, N.  Pethes, and K. Sabisch (eds.), Kulturgeschichte des Menschenversuchs im 20. Jahrhundert: Epistemologien – Settings – Repräsentationen (pp. 156–80). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Rosenbach, O. (1897) Nervöse Zustände und ihre psychische Behandlung. Berlin: Fischer. Rothe, K. (2012a) ‘Creative destructions: Gabriel Tarde’s Concept of a Passionate Economy’, in A. Laagay and M. Lorber (eds.), Destructive Dynamics and Performativity (pp. 179–94). Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi. Rothe, K. (2012b) ‘Mimesis als Sozialtechnik: Kurt Lewin, der Film und die ­Nachahmung’, Mimesis. Archiv für Mediengeschichte 12: 127–36. Rothe, K. (2013a) ‘Spekulative Praktiken: Zur Vorgeschichte des Assessment Centers’, ilinx – Berliner Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft 3: 58–73. Rothe, K. (2013b) ‘Economy of Human Movement: Performances of economic knowledge’, Performance Research 17(6): 32–9. Rupp, H. (1929) ‘Die Aufgaben der psychotechnischen Arbeitsrationalisierung’, Psychotechnische Zeitschrift 4: 17–19. Sarasin, P. (2001) Reizbare Maschinen. Eine Geschichte des Körpers 1765–1914. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Schatzki, T. (2002) The Site of the Social. A Philosophical Account of the Constitution of Social Life and Change. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Schöler, H. (2005) Über die Anfänge der Schwedischen Heilgymnastik in Deutschland. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Krankengymnastik im 19. Jahrhundert. Diss. Medizinische Fakultät der Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität Münster. Retrieved from http://d-nb.info/99216589X/34 (accessed 1 March 2017). Seelmann, T. (1904/5) ‘Körper und Geist’, Der Kulturmensch 1: 191. Shamdasani, S. (2012) ‘Psychotherapy, 1909: Notes on a Vintage’, in J. Burnham (ed.), After Freud Left: A Century of Psychoanalysis in America (pp. 31–48). ­Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press. Tarde, G. (2003) Die Gesetze der Nachahmung, trans. J. Wolf. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Tead, O. (1918) The Instincts in Industry: A Study of Working-Class Psychology. ­Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company. Urban, E. (2001) ‘Rhythmische Gymnastik für Frauen – eine andere Strömung der Frauenbildung’, in P. Ciupke and K. Derichs-Kunstmann (eds.), Zwischen Emanzipation und ‘besonderer Kulturaufgabe der Frau’. Frauenbildung in der Geschichte der Erwachsenenbildung (pp. 180–95). Essen: Klartext. Wedemeyer-Kolwe, B. (2004) Der neue Mensch: Körperkultur im Kaiserreich und in der Weimarer Republik. Würzburg: Königshausen u. Neumann. Witzel, M. (2012) A History of Management Thought. New York: Routledge.

Part III

Adaptations The proliferation of mimetic thought

5 Market mimesis Imitation, contagion, and suggestion in financial markets Kristian Bondo Hansen and Christian Borch

In 2013, the American economist Robert J. Shiller was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics (formally, the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel) in recognition of his analysis of the ways in which social and psychological factors impinge on financial markets. Shiller has spent decades arguing that in order to fully understand how financial markets operate, attention needs to be paid to how imitation, contagion, and herding affect the behavior of market participants. In this perspective, investors are not portrayed as independent, cool-headed, self-interested decision-makers, guided by rational calculations, but rather as people who are susceptible to ‘mass psychology’ (1984: 459). In other words, their investment decisions inadvertently reflect and augment various fads and fashions. In his book Irrational Exuberance, Shiller shows that such behavior is likely to generate financial bubbles (Shiller, 2015). While we do not wish to detract from Shiller’s achievements, our aim with this chapter is to demonstrate, (1) that there is in fact a long history, dating back more than a century, of scholarly work that ties financial markets to a mimetic register of imitation, contagion, and suggestion (ICS); but also (2) that this mimetic register has been valorized in various ways, in that mimetic market features have been associated with both rationality and irrationality. Interestingly, the notion that economic affairs are not merely a matter of atomistic agents pursuing rational self-interest can be traced back to the foundation of modern political economy. This can be demonstrated most significantly via the work of the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher and economist, Adam Smith. Nowadays, Smith is often cited as one of the founding fathers of what would later be termed ‘rational choice theory, in which rationality is identified with intelligently pursuing self-interest’, according to which the person pursuing such self-interest is seen as an atomistic agent who makes decisions in a social vacuum (Sen, 2009: x). That Smith is associated with rational choice theory is due in large part to the following quote from his 1776 book The Wealth of Nations: ‘It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love’ (1981: 26–7). Although it has regularly been

92  Kristian Bondo Hansen and Christian Borch pointed out (by, e.g. Raphael and Macfie, 1974) that it would be a serious misreading of Smith’s project to see The Wealth of Nations in isolation from The Theory of Moral Sentiments (published in 1759), the close links between these two works are rarely fully acknowledged and understood. Most crucially, the emphasis on (atomistic) self-love that can be found in The Wealth of Nations is profoundly nuanced in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which opens on the following note: How selfish soever man [sic] may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it. (2009: 13) Elaborating further on this observation, Smith presents a theory of sympathy or ‘fellow-feeling’, which aims to understand how one person’s passions may be conveyed to others looking at that person. In Smith’s words, ‘Whatever is the passion which arises from any object in the person principally concerned, an analogous emotion springs up, at the thought of his [sic] situation, in the breast of every attentive spectator’ (2009: 15). Importantly, the image of the individual under scrutiny in The Theory of Moral Sentiments differs markedly from the one portrayed in the abovequoted paragraph in The Wealth of Nations. While the individual of self-love is inward-looking and self-referential, The Theory of Moral Sentiments is based on a theory of spectatorship. More specifically, it presents an inherently relational notion of the individual, in which self-referentiality is profoundly entangled with hetero-referentiality. In other words, what is at stake here is a distinction between a anti-mimetic notion of the self (the atomistic, self-loving individual) and a mimetic notion of the self (based on sympathy and fellow-feeling). Smith notes that in some instances this mimetic constitution of the individual materializes in rather radical ways: ‘The passions, upon some occasions, may seem to be transfused from one man [sic] to another, instantaneously, and antecedent to any knowledge of what excited them in the person principally concerned’ (2009: 15, emphasis added). While Smith goes on to observe a number of limitations to this extreme case, it is illustrative of some of the fundamental issues to which the theory of sympathy might be said to draw attention. For example, the apparently precognitive, instantaneous contagion of passions described by Smith strikes surprising chords with recent debates about affect – although Smith rarely figures in genealogies of affect theory, which rather emphasize a Spinoza-­ inspired lineage (e.g. Clough and Halley, 2007; Massumi, 2002). For present purposes, it matters little whether the complexity of Smith’s work might have been lost not only on economists, but also on affect scholars. What is more important is that Smith pays attention to both self-love and sympathy, and that both can be related to economic affairs. Thus,

Market mimesis  93 argues Amartya Sen, the central point of Smithian thought is not that economic behavior can be reduced to either self-love or sympathy, but rather that ‘a variety of human motivations’, as Sen puts it, may be manifested in economic behavior: ‘The role of self-love in explaining particular economic phenomena does nothing to reduce the relevance of different motivations [such as sympathy] in the understanding of other economic regularities’ (Sen, 2009: ix). Sen’s argument entails a kind of division-of-labor approach, according to which self-love can be deployed to explain certain forms of economic behavior, whereas sympathy can account for others. Below, we shall use this idea as a starting point from which to pursue two objectives. First, in the two sections following this introduction, we will argue that a broad analytical current can be identified in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that portrayed financial markets as captured by mimetic forces, and which did so in at least partial recognition of Smith’s notion of sympathy. The first section will attend to how mimetic dynamics were ascribed to financial markets by key proponents of late nineteenth-century ICS theory, in particular by the sociologist ­Gabriel Tarde. The second section illustrates how economists identified similar dynamics. The two sections will demonstrate that, in spite of an overall agreement about the role of mimesis in financial markets, these scholars varied in terms of the way that they valorized such mimesis. Whereas Tarde in particular portrayed mimesis in neutral terms, arguing that the social bond is imitatively constituted, for other scholars, particularly the economists, mimesis had a bad reputation, as it was often seen as an expression of irrationality. Second, we will argue that present-day financial economics displays an interest in mimesis that goes far beyond the work of Shiller. Fast-­forwarding from early twentieth-century developments, the third section zeroes in on a strand of literature that emerged in financial economics around 1990, which suggests – in a manner similar to Shiller, but differently anchored – that mimetic forces are endemic to financial markets. What is interesting about the types of research examined in that section is that they entail a further shift in valorization. Instead of analyzing mimesis in neutral terms or as being indicative of profound irrationality, mimesis is here associated with rationality. In other words, this branch of research asserts that imitation is rational, which is why it plays such an important role in financial markets. Finally, we must note that while our approach in this chapter is genealogical, in that we seek to trace particular incarnations of ICS theorization as applied to financial markets, the plethora of examples we discuss (and we only include a fraction of a much wider array of such incarnations) may prompt speculation that ICS is not merely a fascinating vocabulary with which to theorize markets, but that it may in fact point to dynamics that are deeply ingrained in finance. In other words, in addition to offering a point of entry into the ways in which financial markets have been theorized

94  Kristian Bondo Hansen and Christian Borch for more than a century, the true significance of the ICS framework when applied to financial markets may lie in identifying dynamics that have practical salience. This is certainly what has been suggested by many of the scholars whose work we examine below. Along those lines, we propose that although things should never be taken at face value, perhaps this discursive repertoire should be treated as more than mere discourse. Perhaps it actually offers a window into the workings of financial markets (see also Arnoldi and Borch, 2007).

The mimetic nature of stock markets By advancing imitation as a key sociological concept for describing the social bond, Tarde positioned himself as a champion of the kind of ICS theorization that gained traction at the end of the nineteenth century (Borch, 2019). In his sociological masterpiece The Laws of Imitation, he developed the notion of imitation in dialogue with Smith’s concept of sympathy. On the one hand, Tarde asserted that sympathy constituted a form of ‘mutual imitation’ and that it was ‘the primary source of sociability and the hidden source or overt soul of every kind of imitation’ (1962: 79, original emphasis; 79, n. 2). On the other hand, he argued that prestige (of, say, a magnetizer) rather than sympathy was the ‘foundation and origin of society’, because the ‘unilateral must have preceded the reciprocal’, that is, unilateral imitation precedes mutual imitation (1962: 79). Tarde returned to Smith in his economic treatise Psychologie Économique. Lamenting the apparent disconnect between The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations (a disconnect that related to the seemingly ‘watertight partition’ of Smith’s psychological and economic writings), he argued for bringing the two together (Tarde, 1902a: 96–7). To that end, Tarde opened Psychologie Économique by defining society – and by implication, economic matters – as ‘a web of interspiritual actions, of mental states acting upon each other’, such that one person ‘modifies the other mentally with or without reciprocity’ (Tarde, quoted in Hughes, 1961: 555). Importantly, within this conception, psychology is seen as an indispensable factor in economic life since the individual’s pursuit of self-interest is never completely disentangled from emotions and social (i.e. inter-mental) relations. Passion and reason ‘progress hand in hand’, as Tarde put it (2007: 631). He conceived of this as a significant step forward vis-à-vis the dominant economic theorization of his time and its alleged exemption of human psychology: In conceiving of the homo æconomicus economists have engaged in a double abstraction. First, the unwarranted one of having conceived of a man [sic] with nothing human in his heart; second, of having represented this individual as detached from any group, corporation, sect, party, homeland, or association of any sort. (2007: 631)

Market mimesis  95 By emphasizing the role of inter-mental imitation, Tarde hoped to remedy this double abstraction and to illuminate both the psychology and sociality of economic life. In Tarde’s view, financial markets – and especially stock exchanges – ­constitute sites where the imitative traits of economic life are eminently visible. Rather than being populated by homines œconomici, that is, agents acting as if in a social vacuum, stock exchanges were, as portrayed by Tarde, veritable ‘laboratories of collective psychology’ in which all the peculiarities of social life can be observed (1902a: 225). Stock market participants were therefore seen as profoundly mimetic creatures that are susceptible to an array of influences from diverse sources, such as sensational newspapers, ‘corridor conversations’, the sheer attraction of popular stocks, and the mesmerizing force emanating from prominent figures in the market (Tarde, 1902a: 138–9). To understand and explain market behavior, it was therefore necessary to examine the ‘psychological causes’ or ‘inter-mental actions’ that Tarde considered to be the subjective aspects of the economy (Blackman, 2007: 576; Latour and Lépinay, 2009: 61; Tarde, 2007: 630, 1902b: 136). Tarde’s view of price formation in the stock exchange provides a good understanding of how he viewed financial markets as a whole. Rather than conceiving of the stock price being an accurate reflection of supply and demand at a given point in time, Tarde argued that the sellers and buyers who constitute the ‘public of the market’ are all affected by the ‘imitative diffusion of news’ (1902b: 41). He thus claimed that the ‘propagation of a good or bad sensational story in the minds of speculators’ has a significant and arguably bigger impact on the formation of prices than the actual supply and demand (2007: 630). According to Tarde’s overall theorization, imitation constitutes the social bond that ties together individuals, and should therefore be valorized positively (Tarde, 1962). In keeping with this understanding, Tarde did not regard the imitative nature of financial markets with contempt. Of course, market contagion might at times lead to all manner of crashes and crises, but in themselves, the markets’ imitative and contagious features are a testament to market sociality. Moreover, the imitative currents of financial markets do not preclude these markets from facilitating highly sophisticated, uniform, and regulated forms of economic transactions (Tarde, 2012: 42–3). In addition, according to Tarde’s conception, rational action is not, in principle, exempted from financial markets. However, it is embedded in contagious imitation, meaning that what one market actor may consider rational independent action may in fact be a form of action imitated from others (see also 1962: 193). While the publication of Psychologie Économique did not go unnoticed in the academic milieu, the book was not particularly well received by economists (see Wärneryd, 2008). In a review in the Journal of Political Economy, Thorstein Veblen bluntly stated that the book was ‘not a work with which economic science will have to count’ (1902: 147). Even Tarde’s admirers,

96  Kristian Bondo Hansen and Christian Borch another reviewer argued, had to question whether his economic psychology would ‘greatly add to his reputation’ (Davis, 1902: 542). Despite Psychologie Économique’s dubious reception, the ideas Tarde espoused did make an impact on early twentieth-century economic thinking. Specifically, his theory of imitation was widely utilized in reflections on economic phenomena. As the section below will demonstrate, economists soon appreciated the analytical value of reckoning with imitation as a core part of financial markets. First, however, it should be stressed that Tarde was not the only ICS adherent to refer to financial markets as places where ICS dynamics thrive. In The Psychology of Socialism from 1899, Tarde’s compatriot Gustave Le Bon delivered a harsh critique of ‘cosmopolitan financiers’, whom he described as ‘masters of public opinion’ (Le Bon, 2001: 82). He feared that financiers used their alleged power over the press to manipulate the public and reap the benefits of having the gullible masses under their spell (2001: 82). According to Le Bon, financial markets are just another arena in modern ­society – along with politics and the metropolis – in which crowd leaders try to gain and exert power over susceptible crowds. Only slightly less opinionated about financiers and financial markets was Boris Sidis, who in a 1904 article in the American Journal of Sociology was listed alongside Le Bon and Tarde as a central contributor to ‘the morbid psychology of the group, as displayed in mental epidemics and mob violence’ (Vincent, 1904: 152). Sidis wrote about financial markets in his 1898 book The Psychology of Suggestion. In a chapter on financial crazes, he argued that mass suggestibility, that is, the subconscious workings of the mobmind, was the primary cause of instability in financial markets (Sidis, 1898: Ch. 32). Along somewhat similar lines, the American sociologist William Graham Sumner asserted that suggestion was evident in financial markets. In Folkways (1907), he argued that ‘[t]he stock exchange shows the possibility of suggestion’, and that it is ‘only the most exceptional men [sic] who can hold to a personal opinion against the opinion of the surrounding crowd’ (1907: 220). Summing up his general view of crowd psychology as applied to stock exchanges, Sumner claimed that it is always ‘the power of the crowd over the individual which is constant’ (1907: 220). In contrast to Tarde, these and other sociologists and psychologists writing about financial markets tended to be concerned with the latter’s alleged ICS dynamics. Once mimesis seemed to proliferate, sound decision-making ceased to exist. As the next section will show, it is precisely this point that would be emphasized particularly strongly by the growing number of early twentieth-century economists who conceded that mimesis is at the core of financial markets.

The adoption of imitation theory by economists For the American economist Edward David Jones, there was no doubt that the transactions undertaken in financial markets could only be adequately

Market mimesis  97 understood if their social and psychological dimensions were accounted for. In Chapter 9 of his book Economic Crises (1900), Jones set out to outline ‘the chief psychological phenomena of crises’ (1900: 181), and in doing so gave a comprehensive account of the ways in which psychological factors impact the actions of economic agents. Jones’s main argument was that individual as well as shared desires and emotions tend to significantly distort economic agents’ ability to make sound, unbiased decisions (1900: 185–8). The distortion of rational decision-making was augmented both by modern communication technologies and by people’s physical proximity; and nowhere were people as cramped together – and nowhere was the transfer of hopes, beliefs, and emotions from an individual to the collective as smooth – as in the stock and commodity exchanges of the great American cities (1900: 203–5). Jones saw the stock exchange as the epicenter of the ‘power of mental contagion’ and as a place that gave rise to ‘hypnotic influence’ (1900: 205, 206, n. 27). When discussing the different psychological factors that hamper rational decision-making in financial markets, Jones drew on the work of prominent psychologists such as Alexander Bain, James Sully, and Hugo Münsterberg. However, when substantiating his claim that the ‘compactness of trading communities’ (1900: 218) enabled the contagious transfer of hopes, beliefs, and emotions between market actors, Jones mainly relied on Tarde’s theory of imitation. One idea he drew from Tarde was that the force of imitation intensifies when people are closely gathered in one place, such as in large cities and commercial exchanges (1900: 204–5). He also emphasized the notion of sympathy, defining it as an ‘intense feeling’ that communicates states of mind, hopes, and beliefs from one person to another (1900: 204). In line with his Tarde-inspired reflections on imitation, Jones argued that the intensity of the sympathetic force is contingent upon people’s physical proximity (1900: 204). However, unlike Tarde, who did not disqualify imitation in normative terms, Jones believed that the force of sympathy constantly fosters irrational behavior: The force of sympathy and imagination in the propagation of opinions is not an intelligent one and in economic matters it makes for the support of opinions dangerous to the stability of industry. An undue concentration of interest resulting in intense emotion is always prejudicial to sound reasoning. The general tendency of emotion is to paralyze thought, and particularly to withhold the mind from those considerations which are out of harmony with itself. (1900: 205–6) In its most extreme phase of operation, the force of sympathy would trigger ‘mob action’ in the markets (1900: 204). Therefore, when it came to the question of rational contra irrational market action, Jones was more closely aligned with Sidis, whose work he also briefly discussed, than with Tarde.

98  Kristian Bondo Hansen and Christian Borch Jones was not the only economist to argue that the physical proximity of people in the stock and commodity exchanges could affect their mental states and decision-making abilities. Others, too, resorted to the ICS register in order to explain facets of economic phenomena that seemed inexplicable via the lens of conventional economics. In The Principles of Economics (1904), the American economist Frank Albert Fetter argued that people have a tendency to either over- or underestimate value, a phenomenon that is allegedly due to the ‘psychological factor called the hypnotism of the crowd’ (1904: 353). It is worth noting that Fetter was of the Austrian School, and therefore a devotee of methodological individualism. In spite of this, he concurred with Jones that people gathered in crowds are susceptible to hypnotic influence, which in markets would mean that they are prone to push prices ‘far out of equilibrium’ because of the contagiousness of the crowd (1904: 353). More renowned scholars, such as the Harvard-based neoclassical economist Frank William Taussig and the Cambridge economist Arthur Cecil Pigou, similarly warned against the risk of contagion in places where people are in physical proximity, such as the stock and commodity exchanges. Both Taussig and Pigou believed that contagion and imitation are basic conditions of economic life, in particular in financial markets, being at once signs and consequences of the interdependence of economic actors (Pigou, 1912; Taussig, 1911; see also Mitchell, 2012: 131–2). This idea was particularly espoused by Pigou, who not only discussed Tarde explicitly, but further argued that the ‘psychological interdependence’ of economic agents becomes evident in ‘a quasi-hypnotic system of mutual suggestion’, which he described as ‘an atmosphere of sympathy’ (1912: 60, 461). Pigou likened the psychological interdependence of economic actors to ‘the psychology of crowds’ and noted that it tended to ‘promote action in droves’ (1912: 462). Years later, John Maynard Keynes, who was Pigou’s close colleague at Cambridge, famously argued – in his influential book The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936) – that markets are highly influenced by ‘irrational psychology’ and ‘animal spirits’ (1936: Ch. 12). Prior to the publication of this work, more specifically in a paper from 1910, Keynes had pointed out that investors’ and speculators’ expectations ‘often depend upon fashion, upon advertisement, or upon purely irrational waves of optimism or depression’ (Keynes, in Gerrard, 1993: 66). This was essentially a prelude to an argument that Keynes would develop further in The General Theory, according to which the psychology of crowds and people’s instinctual urge to action rather than inaction – that is, their ‘animal spirit’ – profoundly affects the functioning of financial markets. He reinforced certain platitudes of crowd theory when he suggested that price formation is susceptible to the ‘mass psychology of a large number of ignorant individuals’ who are prone to change their mind drastically in reaction to the slightest modification of the general opinion (1936: 154). One reason why market actors are susceptible to ‘waves of optimistic and pessimistic sentiment’ (1936: 154) is that people possess an inherent urge to action. In Keynes’ words:

Market mimesis  99 our decisions to do something positive, the full consequences of which will be drawn over many days to come, can only be taken as a result of animal spirits – of a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction, and not as the outcome of a weighted average of quantitative benefits multiplied by quantitative probabilities. (1936: 161) Similar to Tarde’s argument about reason and passion going hand-in-hand when it comes to economic decision-making, Keynes emphasized that ‘reasonable calculation’ will always be ‘supplemented and supported by animal spirits’ (1936: 162). If every market actor were a completely rational calculating machine, their willingness to take chances would diminish due to the risk of loss (1936: 162). Animal spirits therefore function as a kind of double-edged sword: they constitute a productive yet risky force in the economy that makes ‘the wheels go round’, while simultaneously being a force that makes people jump head-first into dubious speculative endeavors (1936: 162–3). Anticipating the fully rationalist interpretation of financial imitation that we shall analyze in the next section, the gist of Keynes’ writings on the psychology of markets lies in the emphasis that there will always be an element of uncertainty associated with investing and speculation, which is why people are inclined to either rely, at least partially, on instincts or follow others who appear more competent or informed. Indeed, in an appendix to The General Theory, published the following year in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Keynes stressed that imitation may not always indicate irrational behavior. Copying, he argued, can be necessary and perfectly rational, for example, if an economic actor has to make decisions based on incomplete information about the economic situation (1937: 213–14). Hence, mimesis is not necessarily decoupled from rational action; rather, imitating other, potentially more knowledgeable individuals may itself be rational. This idea has been further cultivated in recent financial economics, to which we now turn.

Instrumental financial contagion We opened this chapter by briefly discussing how Shiller, the Nobel L ­ aureate, pioneered the modern understanding of financial markets. His renown is based on his emphasis that mimetic fashions are endogenous to financial markets and that, in order to fully appreciate this point, the discipline of economics needs to incorporate insights from sociology and psychology (for an extensive discussion of Shiller’s work, see Borch and Lange, 2017). In light of the previous section, it might be said that Shiller builds on another, little-recognized tradition from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that also stressed the considerable role of imitation and contagion dynamics in financial markets. If that older tradition reflected

100  Kristian Bondo Hansen and Christian Borch a particular historical moment in which mimetic thought was granted a prominent analytical role for understanding financial markets, then Shiller may be seen as representative of a new historical moment that materialized around the 1980s and 1990s, in which renewed attention was paid to mimetic forces. In the following, we shall cast the net wider than Shiller and offer a sense of how mimetic ideas have been deployed in the past to analyze financial markets. Peta Mitchell provides an informative introduction to this literature in her discussion of financial contagion (2012: 130–4). She rightly takes issue with the argument put forth by economists such as Robert Kolb (2011) and Sebastian Edwards that ‘[c]ontagion is a relatively new concept in economics’ (Edwards, 2000: 873), and that its use has only really surged since the mid-1990s. Mitchell points out that although it is correct that notions of financial contagion have flourished since the 1990s, it is also the case that, ‘[f]rom the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, seemingly irrational economic phenomena, such as speculative “bubbles” or “manias” and inflation crises, were commonly described in terms of contagion’ (2012: 131). The previous section corroborates that point. A host of additional examples could be mentioned, stretching from Charles Mackay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (2002) – the first edition of which came out in 1841, and which examined several types of economic manias and moral epidemics – to contrarian speculation theory from the 1920s onward (for discussions of the contrarian tradition, see Hansen, 2015, 2017; Stäheli, 2006, 2013). However, our aim here is not to provide a genealogy of notions of financial contagion, but rather to examine some of the ways in which financial economists have redeployed a repertoire of ideas around mimesis, imitation, contagion, and herding. While different approaches to financial contagion and herding can be identified, there is widespread agreement (1) that contagion is a normal occurrence in financial markets, and (2) that this is the case because it is rational to ­ avid S. S ­ charfstein imitate others. One seminal article making this point is D and Jeremy C. Stein’s ‘Herd Behavior and Investment’ (­Scharfstein and Stein, 1990), which opens by describing the oft-repeated contrast between rational and irrational market behavior: A basic tenet of classical economic theory is that investment decisions reflect agents’ rationally formed expectations; decisions are made using all available information in an efficient manner. A contrasting view is that investment is also driven by group psychology, which weakens the link between information and market outcome. (1990: 465) Scharfstein and Stein refer to Keynes in support of seeing investment decisions as related to herd following. However, they also develop an argument, one that is more elaborate than Keynes’ position, for seeing herd behavior

Market mimesis  101 as rational in financial markets. Thus, they argue, herd behavior ‘can be rational from the perspective of managers who are concerned about their reputations in the labor market’ (1990: 466). More specifically, Scharfstein and Stein suggest that certain investment decisions may make reputational sense for investment managers, and it is therefore rational for them to imitate other managers’ investment decisions, rather than base their decisions on their own privately accrued information. The underlying argument is twofold. First, Scharfstein and Stein distinguish between ‘smart’ investment managers (whose decisions are based on information about, e.g. the underlying value of an asset) and ‘dumb’ ones (who base their decisions on noise, i.e. act in an uninformed way). But, they add, whether one is smart or dumb can only be established after the fact – namely, according to ‘(1) whether the manager made a profitable investment; (2) whether the manager’s behavior was similar to or different from that of other managers’ (1990: 466). Implicitly following an often-repeated dictum in financial economics, that prices cannot be forecasted and that it is therefore difficult systematically to make profitable investments, Scharfstein and Stein focus primarily on whether one manager’s investment decisions resonate with those of others. Thus, second, ‘managers will be more favorably evaluated if they follow the decisions of others than if they behave in a contrarian fashion’, simply because ‘an unprofitable decision is not as bad for reputation when others make the same mistake’ (1990: 466). In other words, according to Scharfstein and Stein’s model (which they formalize mathematically in their analysis of ‘herd equilibria’), if an investment manager is concerned about his or her relative reputation, then herding is entirely rational, because he or she will profit from the smart investment decisions they mimic and share the blame for the dumb ones. A similarly rational adaptation of contagion thinking is presented in the work of André Orléan, who is briefly referenced by Mitchell (2012: 164, n. 8, 10). In ‘Mimetic Contagion and Speculative Bubbles’ (1989), Orléan outlines a theory of financial markets that, like Shiller, seeks to provide a new foundation for financial economics. The paper begins by referring to a generally accepted definition of an asset’s fundamental market value – namely, ‘the expected discounted value of its dividend stream’ (1989: 63). A key assumption that usually underpins this definition is that the factors that go into determining market fundamentals, and hence the future dividend stream – factors such as ‘tastes, endowments and production possibilities’ – are ‘objective and exogenous’ (1989: 63). Within this conception, speculators (or investors, although for reasons we need not go into here Orléan prefers to speak of speculators) are preoccupied with gathering and assessing information ‘that allows them to improve their expectations about the fundamentals’ (1989: 64). However, according to Orléan, such information cannot be seen as objective. If one investor obtains a new piece of information, this might be deployed to stimulate a change in the asset price, but it will only generate profits if other market participants assess it similarly. As a result, speculators

102  Kristian Bondo Hansen and Christian Borch pay primary attention not to ‘objective’ market fundamentals, but rather to ‘the beliefs […] behavior and opinions’ of other market participants (1989: 64, 65). Or as Orléan puts it, referring explicitly to Keynes, ‘Given a piece of information, the speculator does not ask questions about its intrinsic truth, but is only interested in how it will be interpreted by the other agents’ (1989: 65). As should be clear from this, Orléan in effect argues for replacing a conception of financial markets in which prices are the outcome of market participants working independently and ‘in the privacy of consciousness’ (i.e. anti-mimetically), with a more spectatorship-driven model that conceives of market participants as inherently connected through mimesis and contagion. In Orléan’s words, the speculator ‘has to take an interest in the market itself, in its whims and manias, for it is these fanciful parameters that actually determine prices at any given moment’ (1989: 68). Against this backdrop, Orléan proceeds by mathematically formalizing various forms of imitative market processes, which we need not address here. More interesting are the central assumptions behind the mathematical models. In a discussion of ‘mimetic rationality’, Orléan argues that it is mistaken to associate mimesis with irrationality. Rather, he asserts that the opposite is true: in situations characterized by uncertainty (e.g. uncertainty about the fundamental value of an asset), it is rational to imitate others: In a situation of total uncertainty, when I know nothing about what to expect next, copying someone else improves my performance. Either this other person shares my ignorance and my expected outcome is the same, or the other person does turn out to know something, in which case my imitating him [sic] improved my situation. (1989: 77) Following this logic, Orléan suggests that the greater the uncertainty, the more pronounced the rational imitative learning. Interestingly, he is well aware that this conception rests on the assumption that those who are being imitated have the same or better information than oneself. ‘But what happens,’ he asks, ‘when the agent to be imitated is poorly chosen?’ (1989: 78), that is, when the person being imitated may be imitating others who possess no relevant or valuable information? According to Orléan, such situations of ‘generalized imitation’ are anything but rational. They generate ‘a total dismay concerning the evolution of prices’ and therefore lead to widespread confusion and further uncertainty (1989: 78). Consequently, he states, it is possible to point to ‘a certain ambivalence of imitation: effective when it is localized and when some agents have good information, imitation becomes pernicious when generalized’ (1989: 79). The latter, allegedly more malign feature is buttressed by what Orléan – with reference to René Girard – sees as ‘the most characteristic feature of mimetic contagion’ – namely, ‘its cumulative character: as the imitation spreads, it reinforces itself in that individuals show an increasing tendency to imitate’ (1989: 83–4).

Market mimesis  103 Orléan in effect presents what we might call an informational-­instrumental approach to market imitation, according to which imitation is seen as a response to informational uncertainty – in other words, informational uncertainty renders people prone to imitate others. This conception is interesting for three reasons. First, it essentially casts imitation and contagion in terms of volition, suggesting that imitating others is a rational-instrumental response to uncertainty. This volitional dimension associates Orléan’s model with the problem of volitional suggestion that was discussed in the introduction to this volume (Borch, 2019). As we saw, Hippolyte Bernheim’s late nineteenth-century work opened up the possibility that hypnosis does not produce a complete loss of self – rather, people freely and actively enter into a hypnotic state, meaning that they essentially consent to their own subjection. Orléan’s model (as well as Scharfstein and Stein’s, for that matter) might be seen as providing one answer to the question raised on the basis of ­Bernheim’s work – namely, why would people freely imitate others? These financial economists suggest that the reason is simply a lack of certainty. Second, and somewhat relatedly, Orléan’s model implies that, had there been certainty, then people would not imitate. The underlying actor assumption here is one of anti-mimetic individuals who, given a particular situation, may nonetheless decide to imitate others. In other words, central parts of Orléan’s model assume that the individual can choose whether to imitate or not, meaning that the individual is conceived as an anti-mimetic entity (rather than someone who is always-already mimetically constituted). Third, this conception of the individual introduces a tension between mimesis and anti-­mimesis, in that the anti-mimetic individual is seen to engage in mimetic behavior. At the same time, however, Orléan’s reflections on the cumulative character of imitation allow for the possibility that the notion of ‘an individual who is completely self-enclosed’ and who only imitates by will is too ‘extreme [a] hypothesis’ (1989: 84). In that sense, Orléan ends up in a position that is somewhat parallel to that of, for example, Tarde. The latter emphasized that the individual is given in a tensional relationship between mimesis and anti-mimesis (for a discussion of this interpretation, see Borch, 2017). Orléan, too, advances this notion: that the individual actor in financial markets oscillates between external influence (mimesis) and independent ­decision-making (anti-mimesis). More precisely, he asserts that the mimesis that characterizes financial markets is constantly tied to anti-mimetic volition.

Conclusion In this chapter, we have discussed how ICS vocabulary and theorization have been deployed to make sense of financial markets. While such markets might seem to constitute fields of interaction that have little to do with the clinical settings from which much of the late nineteenth-century interest in ICS originated (Borch, 2019), they nonetheless served as an important reference point for its adherents, such as Tarde. As we have demonstrated, ICS vocabulary

104  Kristian Bondo Hansen and Christian Borch has not only been mobilized to better understand financial markets, but it has also been deployed in conflicting ways. As such, in Tarde’s work, we find a rather neutral account of financial ICS dynamics. He does not conceive of market imitation as good or bad per se, nor as rational or irrational. Rather, Tarde’s theorization suggests that whether market imitation should be assessed positively or not depends on the specific instantiations it may take. We have further demonstrated that other sociological exponents of the ICS framework were more inclined to associate its dynamics in markets with a negative valorization, essentially describing ICS features as signs and causes of market malfunction. The early twentieth-century economists who adopted the ICS framework to shed light on financial markets also expressed a similar view. According to these scholars, the mimesis of stock exchanges is likely to lead markets astray. Finally, we have discussed an alternative, and more recent branch of financial ICS theorization – one that explains the prominence of market mimesis with reference to information uncertainty. We have identified the latter approach in the work of Orléan – which, interestingly, takes us back to our introductory remarks about Smith. Thus, in contrast to how Sen interprets the relation between self-love and sympathy from a division-of-labor perspective – with one being predominant in some economic domains, and the other in some others – a perhaps more interesting reading would suggest that Smith allows for the possibility that mimesis and anti-mimesis might be operative simultaneously. Accordingly, a full account of financial markets may only be arrived at once the tensional relationship between these two dimensions has been properly illuminated. Orléan gestures toward that option, in that he conceives of the mimetic nature of financial markets as being profoundly entangled with individual, anti-mimetic decision-making. We suggest that this might be a path worth pursuing: in addition to identifying the different ways in which a mimetic register has been deployed to understand how financial markets operate, it is important to study in more detail how mimesis may stand in an intimate, if tensional, relationship to anti-mimetic features – also, and perhaps especially, in financial markets. This would be in keeping with the idea we hinted at in the introduction – that is, that the reason why ICS concepts have gained such traction within discussions of financial markets might be that they actually say something important about the inner workings of these markets. In that sense, the genealogical account we have presented here invites further studies ‘on the ground’ of the ways in which ICS dynamics may be at play in financial markets (in a tensional manner or not), be it at exchanges, among investment managers, or at the level of lay investors who try their luck.

Acknowledgments Research for this chapter was funded by a ‘Crowd Dynamics in Financial Markets’ Sapere Aude Grant from the Danish Council for Independent Research. We are grateful to Daniel Souleles for helpful comments.

Market mimesis  105

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6 #Contagion Peta Mitchell and Felix Victor Münch

The advent and growth of large-scale, online social networking has brought with it not only a near-ubiquitous rhetoric of virality, but also a new wave of social contagion research focused on mathematically modeling and visualizing the spread of ‘contagious behavior’ on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. The controversial and ethically dubious study of ‘emotional contagion’ on Facebook undertaken by Kramer, Guillory, and Hancock (2014) is a high-profile example from recent years, but it follows on the heels of a spate of Twitter-focused ‘social contagion’ studies starting in the early 2010s. In their use of terms such as ‘social contagion’ and ‘emotional contagion’, these studies of social media and online social networking tacitly draw on a long and rich history of social contagion theory that has its roots in late nineteenth-century crowd psychology. And yet, by treating ‘social contagion’ as a scientific given and therefore as a dead metaphor, these studies, on the whole, elide their foundations in proto-­ social-psychological debates over the nature of imitation and suggestion and their role in crowd or collective behavior. They similarly do not engage with the ‘digital’ or ‘network’ contagion theory that took shape from the mid-2000s – a theory that, in contrast, is in part driven by a conscious rehabilitation of Tardean social contagion theory (via Bruno Latour), but that also has had very little to say, so far, about its application to social media platforms and dynamics. In this chapter, we begin to address this disconnect between emergent empirical and theoretical approaches to contagion in/and the network with the aim of positing an approach to ‘big’ social data that brings computational methods for social media analysis into closer dialogue with social and digital contagion theory. Focusing on the hashtag as viral artifact, we examine the emergence, spread, and evolution of #illridewithyou, a hashtag that emerged during and in response to the December 2014 siege by a lone gunman in Martin Place, Sydney. In doing so, we aim to suggest the ways in which a theoretically informed digital-methods approach may assist in understanding the networked, viral politics of the hashtag.

108  Peta Mitchell and Felix Victor Münch

Contagion in/and the network: bridging the empirical and the theoretical In 2007, two sociologists, Damon Centola and Michael Macy, published what has become a highly influential article in the field of network science. Titled ‘Complex contagions and the weakness of long ties’ and published in the American Journal of Sociology, Centola and Macy’s article explicitly draws and builds upon Mark S. Granovetter’s (1973) seminal work on the ‘strength of weak ties’ in social networks. Yet, where Granovetter (1973) mentions the term ‘contagion’ only in passing reference to Kerckhoff and Back’s (1968) famous study of the ‘June Bug’ hysteria, for Centola and Macy, ‘contagion’ is a central and defining concept for their study, which posits that for contentious information to spread through a network, a more ‘complex’ form of contagion is needed – one that requires ‘social affirmation from multiple sources’ (2007: 702). Despite the centrality of ‘contagion’ to Centola and Macy’s study (the word appears roughly 150 times in their article), they spend little time defining it. Centola and Macy neither cite nor invoke any earlier sociological theories of social or emotional ‘contagion’, such as those of Durkheim, Le Bon, or Tarde, and neither do they mention or engage with the question of imitation or suggestion. Indeed, at first glance, they seem to use the term ‘contagion’ simply as a byword for ‘collective behavior’. In their introduction, Centola and Macy write: ‘Most collective behaviors spread through social contact. From the emergence of social norms […], to the adoption of technological innovations […], to the growth of social movements […], social networks are the pathways along which these “social contagions” propagate’ (2007: 702). This rapid shift from ‘collective behavior’ to ‘social contagion’ is neither glossed nor developed further, and what remains ambiguous is whether the authors consider ‘collective behavior’ to simply be synonymous with ‘social contagion’, or whether this conceptual transition occurs only when the enabling social network is considered. Following Granovetter, Centola and Macy make an important concession to the material effects of the network on patterns of behavior, noting that ‘the structure (or topology) of a social network can have important consequences for the patterns of collective behavior that will emerge’, with studies demonstrating how ‘weak ties’ within social networks can ‘dramatically accelerate’ the diffusion of information, behavior, and disease (2007: 703). Although they refer throughout their article to ‘actors’ within the network, it is the contagion (or collective behavior) that appears to act rather than that network’s so-called ‘actors’. Imitation – whether conscious or ­otherwise – is, similarly, not considered a driver of contagion within the network. The actions of ‘actors’ in Centola and Macy’s network are not described in mimetic terms – they do not ‘imitate’ or ‘copy’ anything. Indeed, the word ‘imitation’ (or any of its variants) does not appear in the article. Instead, an ‘actor’ is subject to ‘exposure’ or ‘infection’ by a contagion within the

#Contagion  109 network, requiring multiple exposures in the case of a ‘complex’ contagion. If the exposure is successful and the actor is ‘infected’, then the contagion is ‘activated’ and the actor then becomes a further ‘source of exposure’ or a ‘carrier’ of contagion within the network (Centola and Macy, 2007: 707). We have engaged at some length here with Centola and Macy’s ­framing of ‘contagion’ within social networks because within a few years their ­article, along with Centola’s (2010) follow-up research, would become ­foundational to a group of studies that, since around 2010, have looked ­specifically to online social networks, such as Twitter and Facebook, as large-scale ­testing-grounds for this kind of empirical social contagion research. ­Inevitably, these studies include the terms ‘social contagion’, ‘emotional contagion’, or ‘virality’ in their titles,1 and inevitably, like Centola and Macy, they treat these phrases as ahistorical and as fundamentally dead metaphors. Indeed, within this body of research applying network science to social media, ‘contagion’ is treated largely as a self-evident fact and as something that is inherently measurable and modelable. Words that might suggest or draw attention to underlying social (or even neuroscientific) processes, such as ‘imitation’ or ‘copying’, rarely, if ever, appear. Considering that the majority of these studies originate from the fields of information science, computer science, physics, or applied mathematics, this elision of the intellectual history of the central concept they analyze is, perhaps, unsurprising. Their focus is much more on developing algorithmic processes for modeling the spread of information – and its relative ‘structural virality’ (see Goel et al., 2015) – through networks than questioning the theoretical and historical underpinnings of that spread and/or the politics and materiality of the platforms and networks through which that spread occurs. In an article titled ‘Epidemic processes in complex networks’, Pastor-­Satorras et al. (2015) summarize neatly the drive toward analyzing social networks evident in this body of research on networked contagion: At the core of all data-driven modeling approaches lies the structure of human interactions, mobility and contact patterns that finds its best representation in the form of networks […]. For a long time, detailed data on those networks was simply unavailable. The new era of the social web and the data deluge is, however, lifting the limits scientists have been struggling with for a long time. […] Sensors and tags are able to produce data at the micro-scale of one-to-one interactions. Proxy data derived from the digital traces that individuals leave in their daily activities (microblogging messages, recommendation systems, consumer ratings) allow the measurement of a multitude of social networks relevant to the spreading of information, opinions, habits, etc. (2015: 926) As we noted earlier, Centola and Macy acknowledge the structural effects of the network itself on the communication that occurs within it. However,

110  Peta Mitchell and Felix Victor Münch taken in general, this body of ‘big data’ ‘social contagion’ research tends to treat social media as a kind of reservoir that can be tapped into for largescale social data to test for contagion effects that were previously observed within smaller ‘real’-world or internet-based networks, and rarely are the affordances and dynamics of the platforms and the networks themselves addressed in any nuanced way. As digital media scholars danah boyd and Kate Crawford (2012) have argued, in their rush to harvest and analyze network data from social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, researchers from across the disciplinary spectrum have often taken data out of context and reduced it to ‘fit into a mathematical model’ while also failing to recognize that ‘the relations displayed through social media are not necessarily equivalent to the sociograms and kinship networks that sociologists and anthropologists have been investigating since the 1930s’ (2012: 670). Likewise, these researchers have often overlooked complex ethical issues raised by analyzing and publishing research on ‘so-called “public”’ social media data without explicit and informed consent (boyd and Crawford, 2012: 672), with the Facebook ‘emotional contagion’ study being a notable case in point (see Kahn, Vayena and Mastroianni, 2014; Panger, 2016). In this sense, not only does the extant body of empirical research on contagion in networked social media overlook more theoretical and historical questions about contagion, but also largely ignores critical questions raised by media and communication researchers regarding social media platforms, networks, publics, and data. Finally, it also completely ignores – though it should be noted that this disregard is reciprocal – a body of digital/networked contagion research that emerged almost in parallel with it. In the same year that Macy and Centola’s article was published in the American Journal of Sociology, media theorist Jussi Parikka (2007a,b) published both his book Digital contagions: A media archaeology of computer viruses and ­ phemera titled ‘Contagion and repetition: On the viral logic an article in E of network culture’. As one of this chapter’s authors has written elsewhere, Parikka is a central figure in the rise of an ‘incipient viral network theory’ that stemmed from a 2005 issue of Fibreculture journal on the theme of ‘contagion’ (Mitchell, 2012: 11). This digital-materialist viral network theory broadly continues the rediscovery and rehabilitation of Gabriel Tarde’s late nineteenth-­c entury microsociology by philosophers and cultural theorists since the late 1960s, including Deleuze and Guattari (2004 [1968]), Bruno Latour, who acknowledges Tarde as the ‘forefather’ of his actor-network theory (2002: 117), and Nigel Thrift (2008). Tarde’s microsociology – grounded in i­ mitative ­c ontagion –­ has proven itself an apt touchstone for network media theorists like Parikka and Tony D. Sampson for the simple reason that Tarde’s theory of contagious imitation is also a theory of the network. According to Mitchell (2012), Tarde’s theory of social influence and invention relies not only on the notion of contagious imitation, but also on the idea of society as a

#Contagion  111 complex and productive network of objects, actors and influences. In his essay on monadology, for instance, Tarde describes the ‘social elements’ as being held within a ‘dense, infinitely extensible network’ (réseau serré qui s’étend sans cesse) from which, he maintains, are born the ‘wonders of civilization’ (1895: 376). […] It is, perhaps, unsurprising that contagion and the network become such pivotal structuring metaphors in Tarde’s sociological theory. Just as nineteenth-century sociology was increasingly turning to the concept of contagion to explain otherwise inexplicable social phenomena, so too was it turning to the network. Where contagion offered a conceptual theory for explaining imitation and social influence, the network offered a conceptual model for those phenomena, one that promised to reveal hitherto concealed lines of influence and points of connection. (2012: 128–9) Indeed, Sampson’s 2012 book Virality: Contagion theory in the age of n­ etworks – the most recent major contribution to this viral network ­theory – is largely devoted to Tarde: the first chapter, for instance, is titled ‘Resuscitating Tarde’s diagram in the age of networks’. And yet, given that the focus of this collective ‘viral network theory’ is on digital networks and ­contagion – and given that, as we have seen, social media has presented itself as a rich environment for network science-driven studies of social contagion since 2010 – it is notable that this body of research pays very little attention to social media networks and platforms. Even Sampson’s 2012 book – a study of ‘contagion theory in the age of networks’ – mentions social media only very briefly and in broad terms. In it, Sampson cautions against either overstating or dismissing the ‘democratic features of Twitter or Facebook’, and concludes that ‘social media’ in general ‘is a Tardean network in which affective contagion is’, quoting Thrift, ‘boosted and extended by all manner of technologies’ (2012: 164). In a review of Sampson’s Virality, Parikka (2013) hints at this lacuna when he writes, as a conclusion: Obviously, the rediscovery of a range of theorists from the last c­ enturies – Tarde, Whitehead, Bergson, James, etc. – flags an interesting link being articulated on so many fronts at the moment. Or, to quote a tweet (28/9/12) from @karppi: ‘After reading Gabriel Tarde the concept of “social media” actually starts to make sense’. (2013: 135) What, then, is it about Tarde’s more than 120-year-old theories of imitative contagion and networked sociology that could make social media ‘make sense’? And how might social media make sense of Tarde? We should note, at this point, that researchers in the field of media and communication studies have, in recent years, similarly shown strong interest in the question of ‘virality’ and ‘contagion’ in social media, particularly in regard to the circulation of ‘viral’ memes, but these, too, tend to overlook both Tardean

112  Peta Mitchell and Felix Victor Münch and digital-materialist contagion theories, even while engaging to varying degrees with network science-based studies of the type detailed in this chapter at the outset (see, for instance, Nahon and Hemsley, 2013; Shifman, 2014). A singular exception is Sanjay Sharma’s article ‘Black Twitter?: Racial hashtags, networks and contagion’, which explores the ‘contagious effects of networked relations’ (2013: 48) by way of Tardean theory filtered through Latour and Parikka. Framing an analysis of racial hashtags and network contagion on Twitter, Sharma helpfully, and uncharacteristically for this type of research, canvasses a variety of perspectives from digital-materialist theory, Tardean analysis, and network science-based research. For Sharma, approaching social media analysis by way of Tarde allows us to understand Twitter as an ‘imitative network’ (2013: 61, original emphasis). However, Sharma stops short of offering a digital-methods or network-based analysis of the hashtag communities that he focuses upon. That is, his analysis of the hashtag communities does not move very far beyond a theoretical overview accompanied by a textual analysis of a handful of representative tweets. For Latour et al. (2012) emergent data repositories that, like Twitter, collect the ‘digital traces’ of human actors provide an opportunity to test out Tardean social theory, which at the time of its conception ‘in the early days of sociology […] never had the chance to be developed because of the lack of empirical tools adjusted to it’ (2012: 591). It would seem, then, that Tardean social theory and network science have something to offer one another in understanding social contagion in an era of social media. However, as we have outlined above, there is a deep disjunct between these two strands of research, both of which stem from a common historical root but have had, so far, little to say to one another. On the one hand, in digital contagion theory, we have a theoretically rich and historically informed approach that pays attention to the materiality of and mediated flows within networks, but that has had little to say on the topic of social media dynamics. On the other, we have a burgeoning body of research on contagion in social media that elides history, theory, and politics, but that brings a focus on robust, empirical methods and models. These are not necessarily easily reconcilable approaches, standing as they do largely on opposite sides of the qualitative/quantitative divide, employing different frames of reference, different languages, different epistemologies, but we would suggest there are benefits to be derived from bringing digital-­ materialist social contagion theory and empirical research into contagion in social networks into closer dialogue. What follows, then, represents an attempt to bridge this gap by researchers approaching the question from quite different perspectives (one more theoretical and qualitative and the other more methodological and quantitative) and seeing how those perspectives might enrich each other or provide a more robust understanding of how information spreads through these networks. For the remainder of this paper, we introduce a preliminary case study that focuses on the notion of the Twitter hashtag as a viral artifact,

#Contagion  113 before drawing some conclusions about the potential for an approach to analyzing and theorizing contagion in social media that resists rigid qualitative/quantitative, theoretical/empirical divides.

The Sydney siege as a media(ted) event Around 8:30 am on the morning of Monday 15 December 2014, a lone gunman named Man Haron Monis entered the Lindt Chocolate Café in Martin Place, Sydney, and held 18 customers and employees hostage for close to 24 hours. This event, which quickly became known as the Sydney Siege in media reports, was ended at 2 am on 16 December when a police Tactical Operations Unit raided the cafe, killing Monis. Two hostages were also killed during the siege and both during the police raid – one by Monis and the second due to a ricocheting police bullet. From its very start, the siege was heavily mediated – via both social and broadcast media – not least of all because the Lindt Café is directly opposite the headquarters of Channel 7, a major Australian news network. The Inquest into the siege, which took place over 2015–16, heard that the cafe’s proximity to television news media was likely not a coincidence, as Monis had ‘personal grudges against the Australian government and media’ and that Channel 7, in particular, was ‘a place of personal significance to Monis’, who had previously staged protests there against a morning news program (Inquest, 2017: 237, 128). The Inquest findings also reported that Monis himself ‘took a significant interest in media coverage of the siege’: he ‘frequently directed hostages to contact TV and radio stations to try and influence that coverage’, he ‘had hostages access online media reports of the siege and stream radio coverage of it’, and he displayed an ‘ongoing preoccupation with tracking Facebook likes and comments on the YouTube videos’ he had the hostages post during the siege (Inquest, 2017: 162, 184). The Sydney Siege was not only highly mediated – via both broadcast and social media – it was orchestrated to be so. The first tweet about the situation unfolding in the Lindt Café came – ­tellingly – from a journalist, Chris Kenny, at 9:52 am local Sydney time, just as police arrived on the scene (@chriskkenny, 2014). Police had been alerted by a call to emergency services by the Lindt Café manager, who, under Monis’s orders, announced that Australia was under attack by Islamic State. Monis’s claims to be an Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) operative were not initially released to the media. However, within minutes of police arriving and the first tweet being sent – at around 10 am – the Channel 7 Morning Show broadcast images filmed from its vantage point opposite the Lindt Café of the hostages holding up a flag with Arabic writing on it and speculated whether it was linked to ISIS. This image was soon shared on Twitter, and the flag very quickly and increasingly came to be described as an ISIS flag. This was quickly debunked on Twitter – the flag was not the official Islamic State flag, but one depicting the Shahada, the Muslim testament of faith and

114  Peta Mitchell and Felix Victor Münch the first of the five pillars of Islam (Inquest, 2017: 146). The broadcast news media, which began the speculation about the relationship between the flag and ISIS were slower to admit that the flag was not an ISIS one. Nevertheless, by this stage, an association between the developing crisis in Martin Place and Islam had entered news and social media discourse. At this point, although discussion was occurring on Twitter about the events unfolding at Martin Place, it was not yet forming or occurring around a particular hashtag or set of hashtags. Fairly quickly, however, #sydneysiege, #sydneyhostagecrisis, and variations on #martinplace started to emerge in the discussion, with #sydneysiege coming to the fore as the dominant hashtag. According to our dataset, the first tweet hashtagged #sydneysiege occurred at 10:05 Australian Eastern Daylight Time (AEDT). It was tweeted from the account of Australian Internet security news site Cyber War News. Within an hour, more than 1800 tweets had been tagged #sydneysiege, and after 24 hours, more than 630,000 tweets had been tagged #sydneysiege. As soon as the image of the flag in the cafe began to be circulated, discussion on the #sydneysiege hashtag turned to Islam and Muslims in Australia, much of it vitriolic, causing other Twitter users to comment on the Islamophobia starting to dominate the hashtag. In response to the anti-Islamic sentiment the siege appeared to be stirring up, later that same afternoon, around 4:30 pm Sydney time TV content editor Tessa Kum sent two related tweets. These tweets were a direct response to the Facebook post of a Brisbane-based academic who said she had witnessed a woman removing her hijab on a train, conjectured that it might have been out of fear, and offered to walk with her (‘Sydney cafe’, 2014). Inspired by this story, Tessa Kum offered to accompany anyone wearing religious attire on her Sydney bus route, and then immediately followed this up with the tweet ‘Maybe start a hashtag? What’s in #illridewithyou?’ (@sirtessa, 2014). Over the next couple of hours, @sirtessa’s #illridewithyou hashtag generated a handful of retweets and offers from others to ride with religiously attired Muslims, but it wasn’t until after 7 pm that the #illridewithyou hashtag was formally joined, in a tweet, with the dominant #sydneysiege one. Soon after this, the #illridewithyou hashtag began to take off. Between 4:30 and 7:18 pm, #illridewithyou had generated only 13 tweets. In the following hour, however, it generated a further 8,200, and within 24 hours it had generated over 280,000 tweets. #Illridewithyou was largely seen as a good news story to come out of the Sydney Siege, and one that showed a kind of grassroots response to knee-jerk Islamophobia around this crisis event. It gained international purchase, was widely reported as having ‘gone viral’,2 and was even ironically inverted a month later when a so-called terrorism expert claimed on Fox News that some British cities, such as Birmingham, were ‘totally Muslim’ and were no-go zones for non-Muslims. Bristol-based software engineer Rabeb Othmani (@Rabeb_Othmani, 2015) responded with this tweet: ‘If you are a non-muslim and would like to visit Birmingham #illridewithyou #FoxNewsFacts’.

#Contagion  115

The hashtag as ‘viral artifact’ Our case study focuses on data we collected from these two related hashtags that emerged from the Sydney Siege. Even though the dominant #sydneysiege hashtag generated significantly more tweets than the associated #illridewithyou hashtag, which emerged in response to social issues raised by the siege, only the latter was, as we noted earlier, described as having ‘gone viral’. These media reports of the virality of the #illridewithyou hashtag were not based on rigorous, empirical analysis of cascade structures within the network of Twitter users commenting on the Sydney Siege. This is very much a popular rather than network-scientific conception of virality, and indeed one of the questions we test in our analysis is whether the media reports of #illridewithyou’s ‘virality’ are supported both by the data and the definitions of structural virality within network science. In this more popular sense, hashtags might not immediately seem particularly worthy of the adjective ‘viral’ – internet ‘memes’, as evidenced on sites like knowyourmeme.com, are preponderantly visual or image-based rather than text-based (though visual memes often involve text). Hashtags and the kinds of networked publics that form around them are, nonetheless, highly interesting from both a network science and a Tardean-analytical perspective. As Christian Borch (2005) explains in an article on Tarde’s ‘urban imitations’, Tarde refocuses the locus of imitative force away from traditional hierarchies (superior to inferior, father to son, noble to peasant, etc.) toward the cities. In Tarde’s formulation, imitative power moves to an ‘aristocracy of place’ in which cities gain superiority and spread their innovations outward (Tarde, 1903 [1890]: 225, quoted in Borch, 2005: 87). This raises particular questions for social media. Do social networks generate other loci of hierarchy that work with individual and spatial prestige? Hashtag and hashtag community analysis may be one approach to responding to this question. As Borch continues, Tarde eventually moves beyond the notion of the city-based crowd to the idea of the public, a ‘physically dispersed’ grouping ‘whose cohesion is entirely mental’ and which is born out of the development of mass communication media, most notably the newspaper (Borch, 2005: 96). Indeed, Tarde was, as Tonkonoff notes, ‘one of the first to recognize the emergence and importance of the mass media and its role in the reduction of psychological distances in the global social space’ (2017: 83). Further, Tarde’s early and influential argument about the instrumental role of mass media in the transformation – even evolution – of the crowd into a potential multiplicity of publics (Borch, 2016: 29), is one that has continued resonance in debates over the potential of social media to initiate and sustain new forms of public. Research around hashtag communities has, in particular, focused on their role in the formation of publics – specifically what have been termed ‘issue publics’. As Axel Bruns and Jean Burgess (2015) have noted, hashtags were not part of the original Twitter architecture, but were soon added a year after the platform’s launch in 2006. Hashtags have their roots in Internet

116  Peta Mitchell and Felix Victor Münch Relay Chat, which used hashtags to denote particular chat topics, and in the ‘folksonomies’ created in Web 2.0 user-created content platforms (Bruns and Burgess, 2015: 16). On Twitter, Bruns and Burgess argue, hashtags create a bridge between follower/followee networks and the broader conversation occurring around a particular hashtag. In this sense, they write: what emerges […] is a picture of hashtag communities not as separate, sealed entities, but as embedded and permeable meso-level spaces which overlap both with the macro-level flow of messages across longer-term follower/followee networks and with [more] micro-level communicative exchanges. (2015: 22) ‘At the meso-level’, they continue, hashtag communities that act as ‘discursive communities’ around topics or issues that might also be playing out in other public spheres or media platforms can be understood as ad hoc issue publics, and the data generated through and around these hashtags can enable ‘researchers to trace the various roles played by individual participants […] and to study how the community reacts to new stimuli (such as breaking news and new contributors)’ (2015: 23). In other words, hashtags may enable something akin to a microsociological/actor-network approach to understanding how publics form around these issues at the same time as they present themselves as a trackable and mappable artifact of mimetic activity. When a Twitter user attaches an existing hashtag to their tweet, they are performing an act that is at once socially imitative and socially constitutive. In his article on racial hashtags, mentioned earlier, Sharma adds to this the notion of contagion, arguing that hashtags are ‘becoming integral to the viral circulation of tweets’ (2013: 50). ‘Not only are hashtags generative of ad hoc communities,’ he writes, ‘they function as means of amplifying the significance of a collection of messages and render them more readily visible and findable’ (2013: 50, original emphasis). Ultimately, Sharma argues, ‘we can characterize hashtag propagation as formative in structuring Twitter as an imitative network, that is, both as a social network made up of “intentionally” acting individuals and as a “crowd” of affective contagions’ (2013: 61, original emphasis).

#sydneysiege and #illridewithyou: data collection, analysis, and findings Our interest in tracking and analyzing the #sydneysiege and #illridewithyou hashtags, then, is to tease out the ways in which contagion and virality operate at different levels within the network and to suggest how these quantitative indicators might add further dimensions to our understanding of Twitter as an ‘imitative network’ operating within a broader system of cross-media flows. The constraints of this chapter preclude a technically

#Contagion  117 comprehensive account of the methods used to collect and analyze these datasets, though a full treatment is available in Münch (2018). We restrict ourselves here, instead, to an overview of our collection process, our questions and findings, as well as a discussion of how these findings might spark a further rapprochement between network science, media and communication studies, and neo-Tardean microsociology. Because the hashtags #sydneysiege and #illridewithyou emerged spontaneously in response to a sudden and acute event, they did not allow for a preplanned collection of data. To collect the hashtag datasets, then, a hybrid approach was employed, using the Search and the Streaming API of Twitter in a complementary way.3 Once #sydneysiege had emerged as a trending hashtag on Twitter, a collection via the Streaming API for this hashtag was started along with a backfill process via the Search API to identify tweets that were sent with the hashtag up to that point. The start of the collection of the hashtag #illridewithyou was automatically triggered when its prevalence in tweets tagged with #sydneysiege crossed a previously set percentage threshold, and tweets tagged #illridewithyou were collected with the same complementary Search and Streaming API collection process. In total, we collected roughly 690,000 tweets containing #sydneysiege over a 28-hour period starting at 10:05 AEDT on 15 December 2014 and roughly 371,000 tweets containing #illridewithyou over an 18-hour period starting at 16:29 AEDT on 15 December 2014. Plotted over time as a running total of tweets, both datasets show a key point where the hashtag surges. The #sydneysiege dataset (Figure 6.1) shows a notable upswing close to

Figure 6.1  Running sum of #sydneysiege.

118  Peta Mitchell and Felix Victor Münch

Figure 6.2  Running sum of #illridewithyou.

2 am Sydney time when the police stormed the cafe. Given the timing of the police raid, it is not surprising that this upward swing in tweets comes from accounts linked to broadcast news media – what we are seeing here is largely news reportage. In the #illridewithyou dataset (Figure 6.2), we can see that where the hashtag joins the dominant #sydneysiege one, the upswing begins. But also of interest here is that this is when the news media begins to report on the #illridewithyou phenomenon. So this cross-contamination, cross-contagion of media – the flows between broadcast and social media – is in evidence across both datasets. By plotting the number of first posts relative to subsequent ones by the same account, we can see an even more interesting picture that might, in itself, ­ sydneysiege. suggest the relative virality of #illridewithyou compared with # If we take as an assumption that the number of people tweeting a hashtag for the first time is evidence of a hashtag’s virality, then #illridewithyou shows a much greater level of this kind of virality over the entire course that we tracked it. What we see unmistakably when we plot first posts against repeat ones is that, except in its very early stages, the #sydneysiege dataset is dominated by repeat tweeters – users who have already contributed at least once to the dataset through their use of the hashtag. What we see in the #illridewithyou dataset is the exact opposite: a dataset dominated by users using the hashtag for the first time. This, in itself, however, cannot tell us how the hashtags spread through the network. To do this, we had to reconstruct the follow connections of the

#Contagion  119 accounts that posted them – that is, how the Twitter users who sent the tweets are connected to one another. Because this is a highly resource-  i­ ntensive process, we reconstructed these relations for the first 10,000 accounts that tweeted each hashtag. The Twitter handle, the account ID, as well as the account creation date of the accounts they are following (their ‘followings’ or ‘friends’ from here on) were collected between the end of May and the beginning of June 2015, allowing us to approximate the contagion cascade of each hashtag in the early phases when the diffusion process initially picked up speed. Plotting the diffusion tree networks for each hashtag (see Figures  6.3 and 6.4), shows marked differences between how each hashtag was shared and the connections between users in the network. For #illridewithyou ­(Figure 6.4), the predominance of a single shade of grey,4 due to the dominance of one single connected component, demonstrates the interconnectedness of users within the hashtag network, leading to a high structural virality of the hashtag. In this diffusion tree network, the five largest components make up for more than 86% of the network, with the largest component containing over three-quarters of all diffusion paths, meaning that we can trace back more than 77% of all shares to one original tweet. In fact, the root user account of this tree is that of @sirtessa, who tweeted the original #illridewithyou tweet. In comparison, the #sydneysiege (Figure 6.3) diffusion tree network shows significantly lower harmonic closeness of the nodes to each other within the network, indicating that the bulk of actors was considerably more distant from dominant centers of diffusion.

Figure 6.3  Force directed visualization of the diffusion tree network of the hashtag #sydneysiege for the first 10,000 accounts using it, colored by weakly connected components.

120  Peta Mitchell and Felix Victor Münch

Figure 6.4  Force directed visualization of the diffusion tree network of the hashtag #illridewithyou for the first 10,000 accounts using it, colored by weakly connected components.

As well as showing greater structural virality within the network, our analysis of #illridewithyou also indicates a greater level of complex contagion for it than for #sydneysiege. As we explained earlier, complex contagion refers to when a user requires multiple points of exposure to a behavior (in this case a hashtag) before repeating that behavior (i.e., sharing the hashtag). The spread of contentious or controversial information usually requires complex contagion. This is understandable in the case of #illridewithyou given that it is a more politically and socially motivated hashtag than #sydneysiege. However, simple contagion (where only one point of exposure is needed) and complex contagion are not mutually exclusive. Coming back to the question of initial and repeat tweets, we might be tempted to read into the dominance of repeat tweeting in the #sydneysiege dataset that it provides stronger evidence for being an issue public. That is, if users are repeatedly deploying the hashtag, rather than just responding in a one-off fashion to a viral hashtag like #illridewithyou, for instance, is this perhaps evidence of ‘deeper’ discussion? Our analysis, at least in this case, suggests not, as the major players in the #sydneysiege dataset are predominantly journalists or accounts linked to major news media organizations.5 What our data and network analysis suggest overall is that, where the #illridewithyou hashtag tends to show more structural virality growing out of a small activist core, the #sydneysiege hashtag tends to act as a broadcast one, a means to increase general visibility, developed and extended through its relationship to news media.

#Contagion  121 In both cases, however, cross-mediated flows of information are vital to the spread of the hashtags. Even though the spread of #illridewithyou was more ‘organic’ to Twitter than the broadcast #sydneysiege, it stands to mention, once more, that the ‘patient zero’ of #illridewithyou, Tessa Kum or @ sirtessa, was at the time a TV content editor, and so was professionally embedded within a network of broadcast and mass media-connected Twitter users. The Sydney Siege itself was, as we have explained, a highly mediated event – engineered to be so – and this is similarly registered in the cross-­ media flows that traverse the Twitter hashtags and issue publics that formed around it. Given the complexity of these imitative and cross-media flows, these publics, and the digital traces they leave behind, we argue that there is an ever-greater need for an approach to ‘virality’ or ‘contagion’ in social media that – in true Tardean spirit – combines robust empirical methods with critical, qualitative approaches. This hybrid approach will help us to gain a finer-grained understanding of imitative behavior on social media platforms, but will also open onto related questions, such as the contagiousness or virality of particular types of content; how the affordances of social media platforms privilege certain types of imitative/contagious activity; the role of imitation in the formation of publics on these platforms; and the matter of intermedial contagion, or how broadcast media feed into and out of social media platforms. In 2006, sociologist and media scholar Elihu Katz argued that communication research, in particular, had much to gain from the ‘rediscovery’ and ‘renewed presence’ of Gabriel Tarde. The work of the late nineteenth-­ century sociologist, according to Katz, provided critical insights for research ‘on political communication, on diffusion of innovation, on social network theory, on public opinion, on collective behavior, and on the deliberative democracy of the “public sphere”’ (2006: 263). A decade later, in an era when discussion about the future of the public sphere is dominated by concerns over ‘fake news’ and the role of social media platforms, ‘filter bubble’-trapped users, and influencing actors in its spread, communication as a discipline must, more than ever, begin to grapple both conceptually and empirically with the new contours, implications, and artifacts of imitation, contagion, and suggestion in today’s ‘platform society’ (Van Dijck, Poell, and de Waal, 2018). As we have seen, Tarde himself saw the nineteenth-century city as a form of enabling platform for networked imitative contagion based on physical proximity and underwritten by a dramatic growth in social data, while he saw the newspaper and broadcast media as key sites for the formation of a geographically dispersed, more ‘rational’ public sphere. Current debates over social media demonstrate how little – in many respects – the fundamental terms have changed: are social media users, in general, merely somnambulistic crowds trapped in their filter bubbles and open to influence and exploitation by data-mining companies, as in the recent Cambridge Analytica Facebook scandal, employing user data-driven behavioral analysis to perform ‘psychographic

122  Peta Mitchell and Felix Victor Münch microtargeting’ (Kraus, 2018); are the networked publics capable of deliberation and more ‘rational’ forms of imitation; or is something else going on that exceeds the crowd/public dichotomy? What Tarde has taught us is that to begin to answer these questions, we must follow the data, map the networks, trace the lines of influence – but we must do this in a way that is attentive to history and to the history of concepts. Tracking and analyzing hashtags, as we have done in the above case study, is just one approach to working through the question of virality by taking both the data and the concept’s history – across a range of ­disciplines – seriously. The hashtag is a relatively simple and easily trackable social media artifact, but the kind of analysis that it opens up through the more complex process of reconstructing hashtag networks could extend our understanding of the development and spread of rumor, ‘fake news’, and even language itself in a platformed environment whose networked infrastructure arguably facilitates its spread by lowering the barriers for contagion, and particularly complex contagion, to occur.

Notes 1 See, for instance, Lerman and Ghosh (2010); Romero, Meeder, and Kleinberg (2011); Fabrega and Paredes (2013); Hodas and Lerman (2014); Kramer, ­Guillory, and Hancock (2014); Ferrera (2015); Fink, Schmidt, and Barash (2016). 2 See, for instance, headlines such as ‘Martin Place siege: #illridewithyou hashtag goes viral’ in the Sydney Morning Herald (Ruppert, 2014) and ‘#IllRideWithYou goes viral as Australians band together against Islamphobia [sic]’ in Business Insider (Kimmorley, 2014); and ‘#illridewithyou goes viral after ­Sydney siege’ in Al Jazeera (‘#illridewithyou’, 2014) published in the days following the Siege. 3 This approach has been developed and the data collection has been executed by Darryl Woodford and Katie Prowd. See also Woodford, Prowd, and Bruns (2017) for an instructive overview for investigating social media audiences beyond Twitter. 4 Full-color versions of Figures 6.3 and 6.4 can be viewed at https://eprints.qut. edu.au/115830/. 5 After filtering for Twitter bots and retweets, 16 of the top 20 user accounts that contributed the greatest number of original tweets to the #sydneysiege dataset were linked to journalists or news organizations. Accounts linked to news organizations were also the top @mentioned accounts and dominated the top retweets.

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#Contagion  123 Bruns, A., and Burgess, J. (2015) ‘Twitter Hashtags from Ad Hoc to Calculated Publics’, in N. Rambukkana (ed.), Hashtag Publics: The Power and Politics of Discursive Networks (pp. 13–27). New York: Peter Lang. Centola, D. (2010) ‘The Spread of Behavior in an Online Social Network Experiment’, Science 329(5996): 1194–7. Centola, D., and Macy, M. (2007) ‘Complex Contagions and the Weakness of Long Ties’, American Journal of Sociology 113(3): 702–34. @chriskkenny (2014, 15 December) ‘Scary situation Martin Place – Cops Clearing Area – Woman Says Man May Have Shotgun’ [Tweet]. Retrieved from https:// twitter.com/chriskkenny/status/544263658058940416 (accessed 1 May 2018). Deleuze, G., and Guattari, F. (2004 [1968]) Difference and Repetition, trans. P. ­Patton. London: Continuum. Fabrega, J., and Paredes, P. (2013) ‘Social Contagion and Cascade Behaviors on Twitter’, Information 4(2): 171–81. Ferrera, E. (2015) ‘Measuring Emotional Contagion in Social Media’, PLoS ONE 10(11): e0142390. Fink, C., Schmidt, A., and Barash, V. (2016) ‘Complex Contagions and the Diffusion of Popular Twitter Hashtags in Nigeria’, Social Network Analysis and Mining 6(1). doi:10.1007/s13278-13015-10311-z. Goel, S., Anderson, A., Hofman, J., and Watts, D. J. (2015) ‘The Structural Virality of Online Diffusion’, Management Science 62(1): 180–96. Granovetter, M. S. (1973) ‘The Strength of Weak Ties’, American Journal of Sociology 78(6): 1360–80. Hodas, N. O., and Lerman, K. (2014) ‘The Simple Rules of Social Contagion’, Scientific Reports 4. ‘#illridewithyou goes viral after Sydney siege’ (2014, 15 December) Retrieved from www.aljazeera.com/news/asia-pacific/2014/12/illridewithyou-goes-viral-­a ftersydney-siege-2014121512387983113.html (accessed 1 May 2018). Inquest into the Deaths Arising from the Lindt Café siege: Findings and Recommendations (2017) State Coroner of New South Wales. Glebe, NSW: Coroners Court of New South Wales. Kahn, J. P., Vayena, E., and Mastroianni, A. C. (2014) ‘Opinion: Learning as We Go: Lessons from the Publication of Facebook’s Social-Computing Research’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111(38): 13677–9. Katz, E. (2006) ‘Rediscovering Gabriel Tarde’, Political Communication 23: 263–70. Kerckhoff, A., and Back, K. (1968) The June Bug: A Study of Hysterical Contagion. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Kimmorley, S. (2014, 16 December) ‘#illridewithyou goes viral as Australians Band Together against Islamphobia’, Business Insider Australia. Retrieved from www. businessinsider.com.au/illridewithyou-goes-viral-as-australians-band-­togetheragainst-islamphobia-2014-12 (accessed 1 May 2018). Kramer, A. D., Guillory, J. E., and Hancock, J. T. (2014) ‘Experimental Evidence of Massive-Scale Emotional Contagion through Social Networks’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111(29): 8788–90. Kraus, R. (2018, 24 March) ‘How “Microtargeted Psychographic” Ads A ­ ffect Behavior’, Mashable. Retrieved from https://mashable.com/2018/03/24/howmicrotargeted-ads-affect-behavior/#DmVuty74Gqqt. Latour, B. (2002) ‘Gabriel Tarde and the End of the Social’, in P. Joyce (ed.), The Social in Question: New Bearings in History and the Social Sciences (pp. 117–132). London: Routledge.

124  Peta Mitchell and Felix Victor Münch Latour, B., Jensen, P., Venturini, T., Grauwin, S., and Boullier, D. (2012) ‘“The Whole Is Always Smaller than Its Parts” – A Digital Test of Gabriel Tarde’s Monads’, British Journal of Sociology 64(4): 590–615. Lerman, K., and Ghosh, R. (2010) ‘Information Contagion: An Empirical Study of the Spread of News on Digg and Twitter Social Networks’, Proceedings of the Fourth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (pp. 90–7). Menlo Park, CA: The AAAI Press. Mitchell, P. (2012) Contagious Metaphor. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Münch, F. V. (2019, forthcoming) Measuring the Networked Public – Exploring Network Science Methods for Large Scale Online Media Studies. PhD Dissertation. University of Technology, Brisbane City, QLD. Retrieved from https://eprints. qut.edu.au/view/person/M=FCnch,_Felix_Victor.html (accessed 1 May 2018). Nahon, K., and Hemsley, J. (2013) Going Viral. Cambridge: Polity. Panger, G. (2016) ‘Reassessing the Facebook Experiment: Critical Thinking about the Validity of Big Data Research’, Information, Communication & Society 19(8): 1108–26. Parikka, J. (2007a) ‘Contagion and Repetition: On the Viral Logic of Network Culture’, Ephemera 7(2): 287–308. Parikka, J. (2007b) Digital Contagions: A Media Archaeology of Computer Viruses. New York: Peter Lang. Parikka, J. (2013) ‘Review of Virality: Contagion Theory in the Age of Networks’, Theory, Culture & Society 30(3): 131–6. Pastor-Satorras, R., Castellano, C., Van Mieghem, P., and Vespignani, A. (2015) ‘Epidemic Processes in Complex Networks’, Reviews of Modern Physics 87(3): 925–79. @Rabeb_Othmani (2015, 12 January) ‘If You Are a Non-Muslim and Would Like to Visit Birmingham #illridewithyou #FoxNewsFacts’ [Tweet]. Retrieved from https:// twitter.com/Rabeb_Othmani/status/554396771238305792 (accessed 1 May 2018). Romero, D. M., Meeder, B., and Kleinberg, J. (2011) ‘Differences in the Mechanics of Information Diffusion across Topics: Idioms, Political Hashtags, and Complex Contagion on Twitter’, Proceedings of the 20th international conference on World Wide Web (pp. 695–704). Hyderabad: ACM. Ruppert, B. (2014, 16 December) ‘Martin Place Siege: #illridewithyou Hashtag Goes Viral’, Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved from www.smh.com.au/nsw/ martin-place-siege-illridewithyou-hashtag-goes-viral-20141215-127rm1.html (accessed 1 May 2018). Sampson, T. D. (2012) Virality: Contagion Theory in the Age of Networks. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Sharma, S. (2013) ‘Black Twitter?: Racial Hashtags, Networks and Contagion’, New Formations 78(1): 46–64. Shifman, L. (2014) Memes in Digital Culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. @sirtessa (2014, 15 December) ‘Maybe Start a Hashtag? What’s in #illridewithyou?’ [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/sirtessa/status/544363674505199616 (accessed 1 May 2018). ‘Sydney cafe: Australians say to Muslims “I’ll ride with you”’ (2014, 15 December) BBC News. Retrieved from www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-30479306 (accessed 1 May 2018). Tarde, G. (1903 [1890]) The Laws of Imitation, trans. E. C. Parsons. New York: Henry Holt.

#Contagion  125 Thrift, N. (2008) Non-Representational Theory: Space, Politics, Affect. Abingdon: Routledge. Tonkonoff, S. (2017) From Tarde to Deleuze and Foucault: The Infinitesimal Revolution. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Van Dijck, J., Poell, T., and de Waal, M. (2018) The Platform Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Woodford, D., Prowd, K., and Bruns, A. (2017) ‘Audiencing through Social Media: A Brief Overview’, in C. Hight and R. Harindranath (eds.), Studying Digital Media Audiences (pp. 76–97). New York: Routledge.

7 Charlie Hebdo and the two sides of imitation Elisabetta Brighi

One of the neuroscientists instrumental in discovering ‘mirror neurons’ in the early 1990s commented a few years ago that there are always ‘two sides to mimesis’. In his 2009 paper ‘The Two Sides of Mimesis: G ­ irard’s Mimetic Theory, Embodied Simulation and Social Identification’, ­Vittorio Gallese argued that imitation is one of the most basic yet important functional mechanisms of human beings. The fact that from birth we are wired to imitate means that through life we experience a radical openness to others which, among other things, constitutes the basis for the development of our subjectivity as intersubjectivity. In and of itself mimesis is ‘neither good nor bad’, argued Gallese – it is simply a core quality of the human and social condition: ‘Our constitutive openness to others, of which mimesis is one of the main expressions, can be declined both in terms of conflictual or social behaviour’; ‘It has the potential to lead not only to mimetic violence but also to the most creative aspects of human cognition’, particularly processes of ‘social identification, henceforth to sociality’ (Gallese, 2009: 38, 21). Imitation provides the scaffolding upon which the whole edifice of consciousness, society, and politics are built – domains shot through with power, conflict, as well as cooperation and peace. One of the most significant theoretical perspectives of the last half-­ century to have foregrounded the centrality of imitation in the functioning of societies and cultures is René Girard’s mimetic theory. A maverick intellectual, elected in 2005 as one of les immortels of the Académie Franҫaise after decades of relative sidelining, Girard single-handedly fashioned a synthesis of anthropological, cultural and linguistic insights into a theory whose main axiom concerns mimesis, and in particular the nature and workings of mimetic desire. The human ability to imitate, and to imitate especially the desire of others, constitutes the fundamental structure of human existence, according to Girard. However, rather than as a neutral observation, Girard offered this insight as a warning. In fact, Girard’s entire œuvre is arguably preoccupied with showing the ill effects of imitation and illustrating the range of ‘coping mechanisms’ that humans and societies developed to contain them. All conflict, according to Girard, originates

Charlie Hebdo  127 in imitation because the nature of mimetic desire is always rivalrous and potentially violent. Although sympathetic to mimetic theory, Gallese opened his paper with a cautionary remark: ‘one could in principle object against such apparently negative and one-sided view of mankind, in general, and of mimesis, in particular’ (2009: 21). The aim of this chapter is to take this remark and this objection seriously. The great majority of work on imitation, contagion and suggestion (ICS) has after all emphasized imitation as either a vector of the social or as the building block of our social ontology (Borch, 2019). The ‘ill effects’ with which these approaches have been preoccupied have typically related to the irrational behavior of the masses, the suggestible nature of the human psyche, or the speed and intensity of the contagious circulation of social mores, economic trends, and human affects (Borch, 2012). Mimetic theory stands out as perhaps the only approach that has significantly raised the stakes, in that it has elevated imitation to the status not of ‘vector of sociality’, but rather of ultimate cause for the breakdown of such sociality. Why is this so? In order to answer this question, the chapter will proceed in three stages. In the first section, I will briefly review the main themes of mimetic theory and the way in which they place imitation at the center of its conceptual palimpsest. The second section will also situate mimetic theory in the broader literature on ICS and argue that mimetic theory suffers from a curious selective amnesia – for an approach so interested in the question of origins and historical development, mimetic theory has dismissed its links to nineteenth-century thinkers such as Gabriel Tarde, despite its fascination with fin de siècle philosophers, and preferred to build bridges with premodern approaches to imitation, arguably in an effort to foreground the link between imitation and violence. In the third section, the chapter will return to Gallese’s remarks about the double-sided nature of imitation and will attempt to throw light on the social and conflictual potential of imitation by turning to a highly imitative political phenomenon, namely terrorism, and in particular to 2015 Charlie Hebdo terror attacks. My argument is that the attacks demonstrate, firstly, that imitation was central to both the violence perpetrated by attackers and the political and affective order that emerged out of the attacks. Secondly, I argue that each of these sides of the Charlie Hebdo affair contains a further set of ­m irrors – terrorist violence can be also thought of as a social activity driven by imitation, just as political order can be revealed to contain violent and rivalrous strains deriving from imitation. Mimesis therefore, is two-sided not only in the sense that it can lead to social or conflictual behavior, but in the sense that traces of each are always contained in their opposite. The chapter will conclude with an assessment of the future of democracy and political order in our hyper-mimetic age, characterized by the contagious spread of affect and the ever-increasing dominance of mimetic forms of communication.

128  Elisabetta Brighi

The mimesis of desire: Réne Girard on violence After a rather peripatetic academic career and a self-imposed exile from France, in the 1960s Girard started to assemble the conceptual building blocks that would, over the span of two decades, coalesce around an innovative approach to imitation, that is, mimetic theory (Girard, 1996: 1–6). Despite his heterodox position with respect to the intellectual fashions of the day, Girard’s mimetic theory was in fact the result of the peculiar convergence of a number of influences: from Girard’s interest in Jacques Derrida’s use of the concept of pharmakon (which would form the basis of Girard’s scapegoat mechanism) to Jacques Lacan’s understanding of the relation between desire and the Other, to Girard’s own interests in the great modern novelists and, ultimately, his Christian anthropology. The fundamental insight behind Girard’s mimetic theory is that humans are mimetic animals, born with a fundamental openness and permeability to the Other (for an introduction to mimetic theory, see Brighi and Cerella, 2015; Palaver, 2013). As imitative creatures, humans are driven by a tendency to imitation in many different ways and areas, but the most fundamental form of imitation is that which relates to desires, namely what we want. Human beings, Girard argues, are animals that desire – but they do not know what to desire: ‘the reason is that he [sic] desires being, something he himself lacks and which some other person seems to possess’ (Girard, 1972: 146). For this reason, individuals borrow their desires from the Other: our desires, then, are always mediated by the Other. According to Girard, our subjectivity and autonomy, if one can still use terms that reveal themselves to be problematic under the mimetic magnifying lens, emerge only through a complex matrix of imitative dynamics of which we are often unaware. Further, while we learn what to desire from others, certain ‘others’ are more important and formative than other ‘others’. To those ‘significant Others’, Girard gives the name of models: ‘We assume that desire is objective or subjective, but in reality, it rests on a third party who gives value to the objects. The third party is usually the one who is closest, the neighbour’ (Girard, 2001: 9). According to Girard, rather than dyadic or monistic, the fundamental structure of human relationships is triangular – connecting subjects, models, and their mimetic object of desire in intimate ways. This triangular dynamic, however, ends up complicating the neat relationship between Self and Other, to the point of nesting a huge potential for violence in every significant relationship. As Girard explains, ‘If individuals tend to desire what their neighbours possess, or to desire what their neighbours even simply desire, this means that rivalry exists at the very heart of human relations’ (Girard, 2001: 9). Love and admiration for our models can quickly turn into bitterness and rancor precisely because what they are, and what they desire, is necessarily also what we want. ‘The positive feelings resulting from the first identification – imitation, admiration, veneration – are fated to change

Charlie Hebdo  129 into negative sentiments: despair, guilt, resentment’ (Girard, 1972: 182). Imitation shows its rivalrous and conflictual side when it manifests itself in its acquisitive, appropriative incarnation – when it structurally sets individuals on a collision course over the same object over which desires mimetically converge. Mimetic theory, then, does not conceptualize violence as a result of scarcity, egoism or self-affirmation. Rather, violence is purely processual, created by the mimetic entanglements of self and other: ‘violence is generated by this process, or rather violence is the process itself when two or more partners try to prevent one another from appropriating the object they all desire through physical or other means’ (Girard, 1976: 9). The inevitable rivalry that stems from the convergence of desires onto the same ‘object’ of desire constitutes the origin of all conflict – and the imitative spiral at the heart of this process is responsible for its escalation and spread, namely for contagion. As Girard states, mimetic desire is ‘eminently contagious […]. It “catches” a nearby desire just as one would catch the plague or cholera, simply by contact with an infected person’ (1966: 96, 99). Contagion has the power to transform a community into a ‘mass of interchangeable beings. In this homogeneous mass the mimetic impulses no longer encounter any obstacle and spread at high speed’ ­(Girard, 2001: 22). Crucially, the closer the rivals, the higher the possibility of violent contagion: when the rival becomes ‘part of the imitating subject’s world […], mediation is no longer external […]: Girard calls this phenomenon internal mediation’ (Palaver, 2013:  59). Further, when all differences between model and imitator disappear, the result is escalating rounds of indifferentiation and a further intensification of mimetic tendencies. According to Girard, both instances lead to a mimetic crisis and the eruption of contagious violence. In a bold interpretative wager, Girard hypothesizes that this particular predicament must have over time pushed primitive societies to adopt a mechanism able to contain the enormous potential for violence generated by imitation, either by channeling or ritualizing it. For Girard, this mechanism is the scapegoat. Confronted with a mimetic crisis and the possibility of e­ ver-escalating violence leading to annihilation, crowds are driven to channel violence toward a surrogate victim, or scapegoat, through which ‘the opposition of everyone against everyone else’ is ‘replaced by the opposition of all against one’ (Girard, 1987: 24). At once, through its sacrifice, the scapegoat becomes the object onto which the community discharges its mimetic violence as well as that which restores peace within the community. This murder therefore marks a moment of distinction, constructing meaning out of chaos and establishing the conditions for peace and violence  – thus, it is responsible for the birth of culture. Furthermore, the scapegoat would be invested with sacrality, insofar as it ‘magically’ enables the community to leave violence behind and return to peace. Thus, Girard argues, this mechanism would be the founding form of signification and the origin

130  Elisabetta Brighi of culture and (ancient) religion, understood as ritualized form of sacrificial violence. Religion, according to Girard, is nothing but ‘an immense effort to keep the peace’ (Girard, 1987: 32) in conditions of imitation.

The parallel worlds of ICS and mimetic theory For a theory that holds up such a probing mirror to imitation and that imputes such dire consequences to it, one would expect Girard to be well-versed in the nineteenth-century literature on ICS, considering also how engaged Girard is precisely with some of the philosophers of that time, including Friedrich Nietzsche and Max Scheler (Palaver, 2013). And yet, this is not quite the case. As Trevor Merrill has most recently noted, ‘Girard has flatly denied that [Gabriel] Tarde is one of his sources’ (Merrill, 2017: 457). In fact, it is not so much that Girard has dismissed Tarde’s influence. Rather, he has directly taken issue with the nineteenth-century ‘sociologists and psychologists of imitation’, accusing them of being intellectuals of the triumphant bourgeoisie of the time, whose optimism they channeled into an exclusively positive view of imitation understood as source of social harmony and progress’ (Girard, 1987: 8). Striking and unexpected resonances between mimetic theory and ICS become apparent, however, upon closer inspection. As seen above, of the three concepts that coalesce at the end of the nineteenth century to inject life into the emerging fields of sociology and ­psychology – namely ICS – Girard has a lot to say about the first two. While imitation functions as the Archimedean point of the entire edifice of mimetic theory, contagion is discussed widely across his work as a necessary consequence of mimetic desire and rivalry. In Things Hidden Since the Foundation of The World, for instance, Girard states that ‘pathological contagion resembles mimetic contagion’ (Girard, 1987: 13). Twenty years earlier he was even more categorical when arguing that ‘metaphysical desire is eminently contagious’ (Girard, 1966: 96). The one concept which Girard hardly ever utilizes in his theories, however, is that of suggestion. And yet, traces of the language of suggestion can be found especially in his account of mimetic desire, which Girard initiates in his first book, Deceit, Desire and the Novel. Here, one finds connections between suggestion and mimetic desire that ­Girard’s later work simply bears no witness to, or actively seeks to conceal. Thus, when describing the way in which characters in Gustave ­Flaubert’s novels come to acquire desires, Girard approvingly draws on Jules de Gaultier’s analysis of ‘bovarysm’. With this term, de Gaultier describes Emma Bovary’s lack of character, which makes her ‘fated to obey the suggestion of an external milieu, for lack of an auto-suggestion from within’ (­Girard, ­ laubert’s 1966: 5, emphasis added). From here, Girard generalizes that all of F characters are indeed marked by ‘an essential lack of a fixed character and originality of their own […] so that being nothing by themselves, they become something, one thing or another, through the suggestion which they obey’ (Girard, 1966: 63, emphasis added). It is this that sets the stage for the

Charlie Hebdo  131 emergence of mimetic desire. If human beings are animals that desire, but not knowing what to desire, borrow desire from the Other, what is Girard’s mimetic desire if not a form of suggestion and a concealed acknowledgment of its power? Curiously, Girard comes close to saying so himself when describing Don Quixote, stating that ‘behind [his] desires there is indeed suggestion’ (Girard, 1966: 5, emphasis added) – yet, this insight is denied further space in his later works. Despite the obfuscation, it seems clear that suggestion and hypnosis do some of the work of mimetic desire. As Jean-Michel Oughourlian has noted, Girard’s description of human beings as mimetic creatures whose desires are never authentic, but rather borrowed, reduces them to puppets, ‘puppets of desire’ (Oughourlian, 1991). As a psychiatrist himself, Oughourlian concedes that this is the result of human being’s susceptibility to suggestion and hypnosis. Interestingly, Oughourlian considers the latter as expressions of mimesis and mimetic desire – not the other way around. It is clear, however, that in Girard’s triangular understanding of desire, the model whose desires are imitated functions as a suggesteur or indeed a hypnotist. Further, it is curious to note that although Girard describes in detail the experience of the loss of self that mimetic desire generates in the imitator, he never explicitly links this to the larger question of hypnosis. To paraphrase Ruth Leys, and in ways that are reminiscent of Freud’s own predicaments concerning hypnosis, Girard’s mimetic theory is thus ‘an attempt to solve the problem of the hypnotic rapport by transforming suggestion into desire’ (Leys, 1993: 283) – and specifically, in the case of Girard, mimetic desire. Two additional considerations seem important at this stage in order to draw out further connections between the ICS literature and mimetic theory. Firstly, the almost exclusive focus on the negative properties of mimesis sets mimetic theory aside from other approaches to imitation and, as such, needs investigating. Just as Girard is skeptical, in fact overtly critical, of the pretensions of the liberal autonomous subject, he is also wary of mimesis – although celebrating it, through his work he resists and ultimately opposes it. The human capacity to imitate is unceremoniously blamed for conflict: because we imitate, we turn envious, petty, and violent and from there we lose ourselves in the lynch mob, we become ‘possessed’ by forces outside of our control. In his examination of the figure of Satan in mimetic theory, the Girardian theologian Wolfgang Palaver has recently argued that ‘the devil is nothing other than the mimesis’ itself, in its endless cycle of rivalry and vengeance (Palaver, 2013: 260). It is hard not to see in Girard’s view of mimesis the echo of a rather reactionary preoccupation with the power of suggestion and of crowd behavior, however (Borch, 2012: 23). It is not by chance that Girard expresses reservations about the principles of popular sovereignty and equality on which liberal democracies are founded. Girard’s well-known conservatism shines through in his claim that only well-established hierarchies have the power to stop process of internal mediation through which mimesis turns violent and contagious. Equality is dangerous, just as mimesis is.

132  Elisabetta Brighi Secondly, the centrality of the scapegoat to the mechanisms of containment of violence also deserves a closer look, if only by way of a detour. As Michel Borch-Jacobsen has noted, in both Tarde and Freud the origins of political order are to be found in leaders that function as absolute subjects, or hypnotist-leaders (Borch-Jacobsen, 1988: 144; cf. Borch, 2012: 52). Leaders are required in order to channel the crowd’s erratic behavior, bring order to chaos and establish governance. A leader subjects the crowd in the sense that he/she emerges as subject out of the loss of subject, or self, experienced by the crowd. Leaders are involved, in other words, in a process of signification that clearly marks a difference and establishes a ‘before’ and an ‘after’. It is not far-fetched to establish a link between this take on leaders and Girard’s use of the scapegoat. The scapegoat too emerges as a subject out of the indistinction experienced by crowds. The scapegoat too ‘magically’ reestablishes order and peace by virtue of its appearance. The scapegoat too is considered by Girard as the origin of signification. Thus, as a negative a negative image of the leader, the scapegoat comes to symbolize that moment of supreme ‘decision’, the diktat that makes horizontal contagion cease by establishing a vertical identification believed to resolve the crisis of the self.

Terrorism and the two sides of mimesis: who is Charlie? To sketch the different pictures of imitation that mimetic theory and ICS paint by virtue of their divergent conceptual and normative commitments, I shall now turn to a set of events that revolve around the twin terror attacks of 7–9 January 2015 in Paris, the so-called Charlie Hebdo attacks. As Mark Sedgwick (2007) among others has illustrated, terrorism has been often considered a particularly mimetic or contagious form of political violence (for some contrasting positions in this long-standing debate, see Braithwaite, 2010; Buhaug and Gleditsch, 2008; Gleditsch, 2007; Midlarsky, Crenshaw, and Yoshida, 1980). Understood as the deliberate creation and exploitation of fear through the threat or use of violence in the pursuit of political change, terrorism is a quintessentially affective political phenomenon, trading in emotions at both ends – in its motivations (rage, resentment) and its effects (fear, terror). For these and other reasons, therefore, terrorism represents a particularly fruitful area of investigation if approached through the analytical lens of imitation. After a brief account of the events of January 2015, I argue that imitation was central to both the violence perpetrated by attackers and the political and affective order that emerged out of the attacks. I will further demonstrate, however, that these ‘two sides of imitation’ contain counterintuitive elements which can also be traced back to mimesis, thus showing the fundamental ambivalence of the social and political workings of imitation. At around 11:30 am on 7 January 2015, two brothers in their thirties named Chérif and Said Kouachi, French citizens of Algerian descent, burst into Number 6 Rue Nicolas-Appert armed with AK-47s and shouted: ‘Is this

Charlie Hebdo  133 Charlie Hebdo?’. After firing a few bullets, they left the premises and headed for number 10, the headquarters of the satirical French weekly Charlie Hebdo. Here they broke into the morning editorial meeting of the magazine and proceeded to kill 11 people, including the magazine’s Director Stéphane ‘Charb’ Charbonnier and other cartoonists, as well as staff members. After leaving the scene and killing a Muslim police officer named Ahmed Merabet who stood in their way, the two brothers escaped in a getaway car, a black Citroën C3 in which jihadist flags and Molotov cocktails were later found. The terrorist group Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) claimed the attacks justifying it as protest for the magazine’s depictions of the Prophet Muhammad. On 9 January, with the two gunmen still at large, a 32-year-old friend of the two brothers and self-declared member of the Islamic State, Amédy Coulibaly, stormed a Hypercacher kosher supermarket in Porte de Vincennes, taking several hostages inside the store. While in contact with the Kouachi brothers and as he was recorded by a supermarket phone left off the hook, Coulibaly murdered four Jewish hostages and held 15 other hostages. After a long stand-off, at around 5 pm both the Kouachi brothers and Coulibaly were killed within minutes of each other, when the police blasted the warehouse where the brothers were hiding and the supermarket where Coulibaly was barricaded (Vice News, 2015). During the 48 hours of the attacks and in the days that followed, mass demonstrations swept the streets of Paris as well as global social media. On the night of the Charlie Hebdo attack, spontaneous rallies were held at the Place de la République, gathering thousands of people, many holding up pens and pencils in solidarity with the slain journalists and in support of freedom of expression. A few hours after the attacks, French artist J­ oachim Roncin tweeted an image with a black background and the words ‘Je suis Charlie’ – in less than an hour the hashtag #jesuischarlie reached 6,500 tweets per minute and started trending on Twitter; it went on to become one of the most popular news hashtags in the history of Twitter, with over six million users across social media (The Telegraph, 2015). Demonstrations spread around the world over the following two days, gathering significant crowds, many holding the ‘Je suis Charlie’ sign. This mass mobilization climaxed on 11 January, when the largest public rally in France since World War II was held in Paris under the name of ‘rally of national unity’ (marche républicaine). Marching from Place de la République to Place de la Nation, a crowd of two million people was led by French President Hollande and joined by more than 40 world leaders. A week later, Prime Minister Valls introduced a package of ‘exceptional’ anti-terror measures, including new security and surveillance measures that were compared to the post 9/11 ‘Patriot Act’ and were further consolidated in November, when France declared an ongoing ‘state of emergency’ due to terrorism (The Guardian, 2015b). There can be little doubt that issues of ICS were central to the response to the Paris terror attacks. Firstly, from the day of the first attack, and despite minimal knowledge of events still unfolding, crowds started to aggregate

134  Elisabetta Brighi spontaneously on the streets of Paris. Through a process of mass mobilization and a contagious feeling of solidarity that lasted for days, crowds formed and hit the streets – with the Liberation newspaper titling: ‘We are one ­people’ (Fassin, 2015). That the politics of response to the crisis was a politics of crowds became also apparent with the march en masse of 11 January, which was called to condemn violence, reassert freedom of expression and celebrate national unity. Arguably, this functioned as an effective way for political leadership to harness the power of the crowd and channel contagion, reinscribing the boundaries of the existing political and social order. It did not matter, as it was later revealed, that world leaders carefully staged their participation in the rally and posed arm in arm only long enough for photographs to be taken (Gürsel, 2017; The Independent, 2015). It also did not matter that some of the leaders at the front of the march were also at the bottom of global press freedom indexes (The Guardian, 2015a), for the march to have its intended effect. The most evident manifestation of imitation and especially suggestion, however, revolved around the ­slogan-turned-hashtag #jesuischarlie. After all, the solidarity motto functioned linguistically as the affirmation of a borrowed subjectivity – ­something deeply reminiscent of suggestion. While the hashtag was spreading contagiously through social media, the ‘Je suis Charlie’ image quickly turned into a meme – and one whose fundamental structure of meaning (‘Je suis’) continues to be applied today to all manner of causes (BBC News, 2016). As demonstrated in the literature, the remarkable circulation of #jesuischarlie was due to its highly affective content, which the social media amplified and spread by virtue of their own imitative structure (Johansson et al., 2018). The hashtag did not only serve to constitute a global community of mourners and thus, create a social space through mimesis. As Burgess, Mitchell, and Münch (2018) have recently argued, just as in the case of celebrity deaths, it also underpinned a social media ritual as well, with conventions and performances that brought together the social and the personal plane. If this shows ‘one side’ of mimesis – the social, gregarious behavior it ­generates – one could also read the Paris terror attacks from a different angle and come to much less reassuring conclusions as to the effects of imitation and, in particular, its relation to violence. A reading of the attacks inspired by mimetic theory and, in particular, mimetic desire, would investigate the relationship between the victims and perpetrators of terrorism as a form of mimetic rivalry (Brighi, 2016). Just as mimetic desire is about rivalry, the encounter between Islamic terrorists and the West could be traced back to a logic of rivalry – however, not a rivalry deriving from (cultural, religious) differences, but rather a rivalry deriving from identity, especially frustrated identity. As Slavoj Zizek (2015) stated at the time of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, ‘the problem is not cultural difference and [the terrorists’] effort to preserve their identity, but the opposite fact that the fundamentalists are already like us, that, secretly, they have already internalized our standards and measure themselves by them’. This is the imitative logic that

Charlie Hebdo  135 mimetic theory recognizes at the heart of desire and its workings, which is the logic of envy and resentment. In this case, this reading would show that the radical openness created by globalization, with its inescapable mediatic/mimetic spectacle and its endless reverberations, can lead to relentless competitive, rather than cooperative, effects and the potential for the rise of disaffection whenever winning or successfully emulating the model becomes impossible (Brighi, 2015). The Kouachi brothers and Coulibaly can therefore be seen as further examples of mimetic ‘lone-wolves’: radicalized through the internet or in prison, disaffected by a failed multiculturalist or integrationist paradigm, combining personal and collective resentments regarding the perceived humiliation of Arabs and Muslims, turning violently against a model (French society) that systematically precludes them access to what the model has, is, or desires (Diallo, 2015). If this account is able to reveal the ‘two sides of mimesis’, mirroring each other like mimetic doubles, I would argue, however, that it is necessary to complicate the picture further by adding another vector through which imitation flows. The ‘social’ and ‘conflictual’ narratives of imitation are not mutually e­ xclusive – in fact, I would like to argue that they each contain elements of the other. Thus, for instance, there was a highly conflictual and exclusionary side to the social and gregarious manifestations of imitation as witnessed in response to the Paris attacks. The show of solidarity for the victims went hand in hand with an endorsement of ‘freedom of speech’ that soon turned into a form of policing (El-Enany and Keenan, 2015; Fassin, 2015). The voices that dared question the absolute status of this principle or denounce its myopic, classist defense in French society were sidelined or actively silenced. Islamophobic attacks spiked after the attacks, with Muslims targeted with harassment or called out to apologize for the attacks on behalf of their religion (­Diallo, 2015). If one crosses analytical lenses and applies mimetic theory to read social events that ICS literature is naturally placed to explain, different information is allowed to emerge. In this case, how forms of scapegoating were actively pursued during the aftermath of the attack to secure the ‘body politic’ and social order that emerged through mimesis – a process further entrenched by the declaration of a ‘state of exception’ (Bigo, 2015). The marche républicaine was stigmatized for being predominantly white and middle-class, while the process of mourning itself became the occasion to reinforce hierarchies and exclusions intended to keep the community pure (Cole, 2015). Thus, the bodies of the dead terrorists were first sent back to Algeria and Mali, respectively; they were returned by those states, however, on the ground that those bodies were of French citizens; finally, they were buried at night in unmarked graves in the apparent attempt to erase any trace. In contrast, the body of one of the policemen killed, Ahmed Merabet, also Muslim and also of Algerian descent, was symbolically placed at the center of state funerals, where he was celebrated as the ‘good Muslim’ who had sacrificed his life to defend the France laïque (Balkan, 2016). Thus, there was a highly rivalrous, exclusionary and violent side to the gregariousness of the ‘Je suis Charlie’ crowd contagion.

136  Elisabetta Brighi If we now flip our perspective, to reach the opposite end of the spectrum, the point where imitation and conflict converge, we can also recognise unexpected elements of gregariousness and sociality where only violence and separation are normally thought to be. As Olivier Roy (2016) observed in the aftermath of the Paris terror attacks, a very social and mimetic concept is at the heart of Islamic terrorism, and that is the concept of brotherhood. Terrorism scholars such as Marc Sageman and Scott Atran have argued Islamic terrorism must be investigated less in relation to the dogmas of this religion and its leaders and more in relation to the ‘leaderless’, horizontal congeries of networks and ‘bands of brothers’ it consists of (see, for instance, Atran, 2010). After all, the Islamic State identifies itself as a group of ‘brothers who have refused to live a life of humiliation’ (Al-’Adnani, 2014) – and, of course, as has been the case in a few recent terror attacks, Chérif and Said Kouachi were literally brothers (Brighi, 2015). As Silke and O’Gorman have recently argued, our understanding of terrorism would be greatly enhanced if we allowed ourselves to consider it as a form of empathetic, altruistic and pro-social behavior that rests on imitative behavior, rather than a ‘mindless’ activity beyond the pale of politics. Terrorists generally believe not only to be acting justly but, most importantly, to be serving others: ‘a terrorist movement usually presents itself as a self-declared vanguard representing the interests of the aggrieved’ (O’Gorman and Silke, 2015: 158). This is perhaps a less comfortable side to analyze, but as Emmanuel Todd argued, the terror attacks held up a mirror to French society and forced it to see the degree of resentment experienced by some of its citizens due to structural forms of injustice and discrimination (Bauman, 2015). Rather than the lack of any social and moral concerns, the Paris attacks therefore emphasized a strong commitment to sociality, albeit of a different kind and driven by a different side of imitation.

Conclusion: mimesis, affect, politics The story of the encounter between affect theory and Girard’s mimetic theory is yet to be written. Yet, this encounter appears inevitable insofar as both approaches deal with a modality of human interaction that challenges the modern conception of a rational, deliberative self. As amply illustrated by the works of Nigel Thrift, Brian Massumi, and William Connolly, the recent turn to affect has helped foreground the pre-personal, noncognitive, nonconscious level at which affective intensities travel and propagate. As suggested above, mimetic theory developed out of Girard’s fascination not only with the workings of imitation, but also with the workings of a particular form of mimesis, the mimesis of desire. Two implications follow from this consideration. Firstly, the way in which desire is mirrored in others, travels and propagates irremediably does away with the notion of the modern, autonomous, rational self – a conclusion which parallels that endorsed by affect theorists. Secondly, and perhaps even more importantly, the chapter advanced the argument that what lies behind Girard’s concerns with mimetic desire, although never explicitly articulated, is a concern with the

Charlie Hebdo  137 power of suggestion, and in particular affective suggestion. In the last segment of his life and work, Girard experienced a turn interpreted by many as apocalyptic (Girard, 1996, 2012). It is not far-fetched to hypothesize that behind Girard’s growing concern with today’s escalating mimetic crisis was also a more specific concern about the mimetic escalation of affects. According to Girard, the mimetic tendencies underpinning globalization have created a huge potential for interpersonal relations and exchange, but they have also driven rivalry and envy, already normally present in human relations given their inevitably imitative nature, out of proportion. The triumph of the very operating principles of liberal and capitalist societies – namely, equality and the market, and their competitive effects – are now amplified on a global scale and the result is that ‘the whole planet now finds itself, with regard to violence, in a situation comparable to that of the most primitive groups of human beings, except that this time we are fully aware of it’ (Girard, 1987: 260–1). Immanence and the loss of any transcendental points of reference have consigned humanity to give up its normative horizons, and to live and fight its battles mimetically which, according to mimetic theory, means violently. In resonance with other political theorists, Girard argues that this creates the conditions for a contagious wave of negative emotions and for progressively alienated, frustrated, and especially resentful, individuals. As argued by Wendy Brown, individuals are at once saturated with human power and yet are increasingly alienated from their capacity to truly act politically. ‘Starkly accountable, yet dramatically impotent’, the individual ‘quite literally seethes with ressentiment’ (Brown, 1993: 402). Curiously, Girard’s negative assessment of the contemporary condition echoes some of the critiques levied against affect theorists and the implications of a global politics of affect. In warning about the danger of misappropriating findings from the neurosciences, Ruth Leys has recently cautioned against assuming the primacy of the visceral, corporeal, and a-signifying dimension of affect. Leys maintains that the anti-intentionalism of affect theory inevitably shifts our attention away from questions of meaning, signification, and ‘ideology’ – all of which can be intersubjectively negotiated and contested through ‘reason’ – toward the ‘subject’s sub-personal material affective responses, where, it is claimed, political and other influences do their real work’ (Leys, 2017: 322). The kind of politics that is envisaged by affect theorists is, according to Leys, one not only dangerously incapacitated by an ‘affective fallacy’ – that is, by the error of judging things not for their meaning or truth, but for how they make us feel – but also one in which it becomes virtually impossible to adjudicate between values, let alone intervene intentionally and politically. We arrive here at a very familiar position, which encapsulates Girard’s own struggle against imitation. In Leys’ own words, ‘what is at stake […] in the struggle against mimesis is the very possibility of a rational, democratic politics, which is to say the possibility of a rational, democratic subject’ (Leys, 1993: 301fn62). According to both Girard and Leys, a politics yoked to mimesis and affect – which, as the

138  Elisabetta Brighi chapter has sought to demonstrate, ultimately dissolve one into the other – is a dangerous kind of politics. In this paper, I have advanced a less stark position on the question of mimesis, arguing that there are always ‘two sides to imitation’. Our radical openness to the Other, which forms the basis of all phenomena of imitation, suggestion, and contagion, has the ability to generate social as well as conflictual behavior. The fact that mimetic theory tends to be preoccupied predominantly with the latter, while ignoring the literature on ICS and the former, is worth investigating. This chapter has advanced a few interpretations as to why this may be so – from Girard’s attempt to conceal the power of suggestion to his fear of the ‘irrational’ power of mimesis. Be that as it may, the current political conjuncture seems to present possibilities and challenges that are worth interrogating from a plurality of angles. Indeed, phenomena such as contemporary terrorism testify to the complex patterns of sociality and conflict generated in this hyper-mimetic and hyper-­mediatized age.

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8 Viral chatter and the afterlife of contagion Robert Peckham

This chapter seeks to push beyond existing studies of contagion-as-­metaphor to explore the use of analogic constructions in contemporary science and biomedicine. Through an analysis of ‘viral chatter’, a term used to describe the transmission of viruses between animals and humans, the chapter shows how social and biological processes have come to function as mirror images of each other, the one borrowing from the discursive repertoire of the other. While the emphasis in the ‘viral chatter’ literature tends to be on the novelty of instrumental technologies – smart devices, cloud computing, and digital analytics – the chapter suggests that the stress on innovation obscures continuities with older conceptual models and practices. In so arguing, the chapter engages with three overlapping but distinct theoretical approaches to contagion. First, with a body of work concerned with the political and institutional milieus within which contagion metaphors are produced. The focus, here, is on resisting the constraints of metaphoric thinking in order to unhitch pathology from the moral meanings ascribed to it (Sontag, 1978). As Wald contends, contagion metaphors in film, literature, and news media as part of ‘the outbreak narrative’ have real consequences in the world: ‘They promote or mitigate the stigmatizing of individuals, groups, populations, locales (regional and global), behaviors, and lifestyles, and they change economies’ (Wald, 2008: 3). Second, the argument draws implicitly on scholarship concerned with the interrelationship between the life sciences, digital technology, and biological processes. The aim in much of this network-orientated work has been to demonstrate how human systems mimic nonhuman worlds (Parikka, 2010) and to show how technology and biology, information and life, are becoming ever more enmeshed in bioinformatics, systems biology, and biocomputing (Sampson, 2012; Thacker, 2004, 2005). Third, the chapter finds methodological purchase in studies within the ­h istory of science that have mapped epistemic shifts by tracing the often-­ convoluted migrations of ‘keywords’ from one realm to another (Williams, 1976). This work has shown how specific words ‘catch on’, acquiring d ­ iscursive force and institutional traction. Daston and Galison, for example, have demonstrated how the word ‘objectivity’ entered mid-nineteenth-century

142  Robert Peckham science from moral philosophy (Daston and Galison, 2007). Similarly, Cohen has tracked the journey of ‘immunity’ from its original juridical context into modern biology (Cohen, 2009). The meaning of a word, shaped by specific contextual circumstances, may change as it crosses domains, but it is never wholly lost: words bear traces of their former histories. At the same time, language plays a crucial role in opening up new epistemic spaces. As Gluck and Tsing note succinctly in the preface to an exploratory collection that follows the social and political life of words as they traverse the globe, ‘words have the power to make worlds’ (Gluck and Tsing, 2009).

The intra-communicative nature of contagion A businesswoman returns to Minnesota from a trip to southern China suffering from a cold-like illness. Two days later she is dead and other people begin to exhibit similar symptoms, dying in hours. Officials from the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Department of Homeland Security meet to discuss the possibility that this may be a bio-attack. Scientists determine that the disease is caused by the spillover of a highly pathogenic virus, named MEV-1, which originates in bats with pigs serving as intermediate hosts. A state of emergency is declared. Meanwhile, conspiracy theories gather momentum in the blogosphere, triggering a public panic that amplifies the spread of infection. Now health agencies are compelled to battle on two fronts: they must contain the virus and neutralize the viral fear. This is not a real pandemic, although it could be – just about (Wolfe, 2011b). Instead, it is the plotline of Steven Soderbergh’s 2011 movie Contagion, loosely based on the experience of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003 and the Nipah virus outbreak in Malaysia in 1998. One of the striking features of the movie is the ambiguity with which communication networks are envisioned. On the one hand, the beleaguered protagonists invoke the communicative power of modern technology to defeat the viral threat. The narrative is scored to a techno-beat that accentuates a latent technological capacity embodied in computer screens, smartphones, and rapid sequencers. Implicitly, the elusive, shapeshifting microparasite can only be stopped when it enters the regulated pathways of techno-communication. On the other hand, these self-same pathways generate a panic that jeopardizes public health efforts. The Internet and television function as platforms for fake news and viral rumors that are propagated by the corrupt journalist and conspiracy theorist Alan Krumwiede (Jude Law) who, for personal gain, plugs the curative properties of a homeopathic drug. Media networks intersect with biological vectors to produce a problem that is on many levels one of cross-wired communication, or rather communications. There is the communicable condition of the pathogen, airborne and spread from human to human via mass transportation systems – and there is communication, the rapid dispersal of information across proliferating technological systems.

Viral chatter and afterlife  143 Pandemic narratives, such as Contagion, encapsulate a deep-seated anxiety about the inherent ambiguity of communication summarized in the word ‘contagion’ that simultaneously denotes a disease object and the process of its diffusion (Bashford and Hooker, 2001; Wald, 2008). While modern technology is understood to provide a means of preventing lethal infections, it also serves as a route for harmful affective transmissions. These concerns have historical antecedents, of course, as other chapters in this book demonstrate. From the 1870s and 1880s, bacteriology and parasitology offered new explanations for the emergence and diffusion of disease. The focus shifted onto pathogenic agents (‘microbes’ or ‘germs’) and the role of hosts and vectors in their spread (Worboys, 2000). New biomedical insights provided a discursive frame for defining and explaining the contagious attributes of mass urban society in a period of rapid industrialization and deepening global connection (Le Bon, 1896). The afterlife of this contagious frame is evident in contemporary virology and epidemiology, where communication is viewed as tool and predicament, diagnostic instrument and infectious property. While there is a large and growing literature on contagion as metaphor, for the most part this has focused on the contagious replication of biological and epidemiological models to explain social phenomena – on the contagiousness of contagion as a heuristic device (Mitchell, 2012; Nixon and Servitje, 2016). Although it has become commonplace to elucidate interactions within social networks using epidemiological models, there has been remarkably little attention paid to how social or human-engineered networks have worked their way back into explanations of biological contagion (Barrett et al., 2011; Thacker, 2005). An important context for this understudied conceptual counterflow is the incorporation of communication technology into biomedicine and public health. The advent of transnational telegraphic networks in the late nineteenth century enabled the transmission of near real-time information. For the first time, communication became systematically untethered from transportation (Carey, 1989) holding out the prospect of anticipating epidemics through the assimilation of timely information (Peckham, 2015). Significantly, this decoupling of communication from transportation took place at the moment germ theory was being institutionalized in bacteriology. With the development of wireless systems after World War I (Manderson, 1995) and later of satellite-derived technologies from the 1960s and 1970s (Peckham and Sinha, 2017), communication networks were progressively integrated into disease surveillance programs. Particularly from the 1990s, as a consequence of the commercialization of the Internet, digital applications have also become central to epidemiology. Web-based information on Google and micro-blogging platforms, such as Twitter, are now used to identify indicators of disease outbreaks. GPS-­enabled smart devices, cloud computing, and the convergence of GIS with social media are opening up the field of digital or info-epidemiology

144  Robert Peckham (Richterich, 2016). New digital sensing systems are transforming basic research, offering the prospect of rapid gene sequencing and on-the-spot mobile phone-connected diagnostic tools. Models of digital and biological communication are becoming entangled to the extent that their interrelationship may be understood as intra-communicative. This is the reverse of a ‘bio-logic’, which holds that synthetic systems, in their complexity and autonomy, can only be understood through analogy with biological processes (Kelly, 1994). Neither is it a case of explicating biophysical operations in mechanistic terms (Glennan and Illari, 2017). Instead, conceived as a form of intra-communication, virological research and disease emergence are projected as coproduced processes, the one listening in on the other.

Viral forecasting: building an immune system The Global Viral Forecasting Initiative (GVFI) was set up by the US virologist Nathan Wolfe in 2008 as a non-profit organization to develop an early-warning system for pandemics by monitoring viral activity in sentinel sites where highly pathogenic viruses, such as the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and Ebola, had spilled over from their natural reservoirs into human populations. As Wolfe put it in 2007: ‘We need to move away from the old-fashioned fire brigade approach to disease control and move toward disease forecasting’ (UCLA, 2007).1 On its launch, GVFI received widespread media coverage, with articles and interviews in major news outlets. Wolfe’s book The Viral Storm: The Dawn of a New Pandemic Age, published in 2008, also garnered considerable publicity for the enterprise. As a news story the upbeat emphasis on leveraging new digital technologies to create a planet-wide ‘virtual global immune system’ was compelling, particularly given public fears of infectious disease after the influenza H1N1 pandemic in 2009 (Anon, 2008; Wolfe, 2011a: 5). A conviction in the feasibility of building such an early-warning system was balanced in Wolfe’s frequent media pronouncements with the specter of lethal zoonotic viruses spreading globally from remote regions of the Global South in what Wolfe, echoing Larry Brilliant’s ‘One Wish to Change the World’ TED Prize speech in 2006, called ‘planetary nightmares’ (Wolfe, 2011a: 5).2 Coincidentally, Wolfe served as a consultant on the movie Contagion (Dembosky, 2011; Wolfe, 2011b). The setting up of GVFI reflected a wider shift, as noted above, toward the development of digital epidemiological and bioinformatic surveillance systems that made possible rapid, even real-time, global coverage (Barclay, 2008). In 1993, Donald Henderson – who had led the smallpox eradication campaign three decades earlier – had argued for the imperative to build a global surveillance capacity in order to counter the threat of emerging viruses. The system he proposed to deal with ‘mutant microbes’ drew upon the model of the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service, established by the epidemiologist Alexander Langmuir in 1951 (Henderson, 1993: 283).

Viral chatter and afterlife  145 Henderson imagined ‘a network of internationally supported health centers’ monitoring for ‘unusual cases or constellation of cases’ in developing countries (Henderson, 1993: 284, 287; Morse, 1993a: 21).3 New Internet-based surveillance systems in the 1990s included the inauguration in 1994 of the Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases  – known as ProMED – the establishment of the CDC’s Laboratory Response Network in 1999, and the National Electronic Disease Surveillance System developed from 2001. In 2000, the World Health Organization initiated a Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network and, following the SARS outbreak in 2003, Health Canada launched a Global Public Health Intelligence Network. Indeed, the use of anthrax as a ‘biological weapon’ in 2001, SARS, and concerns about influenza H5N1 in 2005 gave new impetus to ‘global health security’ measures and specifically to developing a global alert and response system (IM, 2003: xii–xiii; Weir and ­Mykhalovskiy, 2010; WHO, 2007). In 2005, the International Health Regulations were overhauled to provide a more workable framework for global health cooperation (Fidler, 2005). Bioinformatic startups proliferated from the early 2000s. For example, 2006 saw the launch of the crowdsourced infectious disease tracker HealthMap, in 2008 BioDiaspora (now BlueDot) was established in Toronto, along with the Eco Health Alliance PREDICT program that was created as a subset of the USAIDS Emerging Pandemic Threats program. As a graduate student, Wolfe had become interested in infectious diseases in chimpanzees, working in Uganda and later with orangutans in Borneo, eventually completing a doctorate on immunology and infectious disease at Harvard in 1998. Wolfe was subsequently recruited by the virologist Donald S. Burke to work on the Walter Reed Johns Hopkins Cameroon program as Regional Director. Research by Wolfe from the late 1990s, principally in Central West Africa (Cameroon and Uganda) but also in Southeast Asia (Malaysia), had focused on the frequency of low-level animal-to-human ‘viral traffic’. This work had suggested, as he put it in an article co-authored with Burke and colleagues, ‘that it may be possible to predict and prevent disease emergence by surveillance of populations exposed to animal reservoirs and interventions to decrease risk factors, such as primate hunting’ (Wolfe, Heneine et al., 2005). The aim was to create a data bank of animal viruses, allowing scientists to identify those with pandemic potential. The repeated exposure of an animal or human host to a virus leaves a genetic imprint. This can be analyzed to understand the virus’s origin and evolution. Viruses are highly mutable and the elucidation of viral chatter at a molecular level is increasingly dependent on DNA technologies, including real-time polymerase chain reaction, to identify genetic differences that might signal increased pathogenicity or host specificity. The aim of early forecasting systems, such as Wolfe’s, is to detect and translate those molecular changes to predict the potential for ‘transition from “chatter” to epidemic’ (Holmes and Dominguez, 2013).

146  Robert Peckham A study of Cameroonian bushmeat hunters, for example, undertaken by Wolfe in collaboration with William Switzer from the CDC and others had revealed that 1% of a sampled population of 1,099 contained antibodies to Simian Foamy Virus (Wolfe et al., 2004). Two novel primate T-lymphotropic viruses were also discovered in bushmeat hunters, intimating that retroviruses similar to HIV were crossing species (Wolfe, Heneine, et al., 2005). As Wolfe and colleagues noted: High rates of viral chatter will increase the diversity of viruses and sequence variants moving into humans, increase the probability of transmission of a pathogen that can successfully replicate, and ultimately increase the ability of a human-adapted virus to emerge in a more widespread manner. (Wolfe, Daszak, et al., 2005) In its simplest formulation, ‘viral chatter’ designates ‘the sort of pinging of these [animal] viruses into human populations, the movement of these agents over into humans; and by capturing this moment, we might be able to move to a situation where we can catch them early’ (Wolfe, 2009). In 2005, Wolfe received a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Pioneer Award that enabled him to build a rudimentary network of tropical field sites in Central/West Africa and Southeast Asia, laying the ground for GVFI. Drawing on the Cameroon retrovirus studies, the aim was to gather and evaluate viral intelligence in order to distinguish pathogens that might evolve to become transmissible among humans. Between 2007 and 2009, Wolfe secured additional funding from a range of institutions, including Google.org, the Skoll Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the NIH, and branches of the US Department of Defense to support the project.

From viral traffic to viral chatter ‘Viral chatter’ frames interspecies infection as a form of communication – of information transmission. The concept gestures to contemporaneous scientific work that was demonstrating how bacteria are able to ‘chatter’ to produce coordinated action via chemical molecules in a process termed ‘quorum sensing’ (Waters and Bassler, 2005).4 Listening in on the ‘continuous semiotic and material exchanges that viruses undergo or undertake when in “conversation” with potential hosts’ (Hinchliffe, 2017: 166) requires the deployment of counter-communication strategies. As Wolfe has expressed it: biological connectedness necessitates an equivalent technological connectedness (Walsh, 2011). It calls for the collecting and sequencing of viruses, the use of geotechnologies (specifically GIS and GPS-enabled devices), web-based tracking programs, cloud storage, and big data analytics. In short, it requires the development of a global communications network

Viral chatter and afterlife  147 where systemic changes will trigger feedback, and through which viral data will flow from hotspots in developing countries to processing-hubs behind the lines. The ‘viral chatter’ analogy draws upon and crucially adapts an earlier formulation of microbial or ‘viral traffic’ that had developed from 1990, when the terms ‘emerging virus’ and ‘emerging infection’ were gaining traction. Although ‘microbial traffic’ had been used before – for example, in discussions of food protection that noted the impact of technology on disease reservoirs and ‘the extent of microbial traffic along pathways’ (APHA, 1972:  192) – the epidemiologist Stephen S. Morse brought the term into wider circulation, although critically redefining its meaning. ‘Our burgeoning knowledge of viral traffic,’ he noted also makes more focused approaches possible. Especially in tropical ­areas, ecological or demographic changes […] often precipitate viral emergence. These are ‘traffic signals’ for viral traffic: we should see them as warning signals. Knowing these viral traffic signals makes the surveillance task more manageable. (Morse, 1993b: 23) Morse promoted an integrated approach, which he called ‘viral traffic studies’. This ‘would provide a comprehensive map of the biological, social, and ecological forces that govern the appearance and circulation of new viruses in human populations’ – what he referred to as the ‘rules of viral traffic’ (King, 2004: 65; Morse, 1991). Decoding viral signals was crucial to understanding the environmental factors driving a virus’s emergence and spread, and ultimately to neutralizing the threat that it posed (Morse, 1990a, 1990b, 1991, 1992). The ‘viral traffic’ metaphor reflected a preoccupation with the role of transportation systems and human mobility in the diffusion of new ‘instant-­ distant infections’ (Evans, 1966) – a concern summed up in the microbiologist Richard M. Krause’s foreword to Morse’s influential edited collection Emerging Viruses: ‘Like science, emerging viruses know no country. There are no barriers to prevent their migration across international boundaries or around the 24 time zones’. If, as Carey has argued, technologies such as the telegraph and telephone severed communication from transportation (Carey, 1989), Morse’s ‘traffic’ metaphor sought to reintegrate them. Transportation in a borderless word mirrors flows of scientific know-how. Viral migration is conflated with the dissemination of scientific research along supranational info-highways. Krause’s commentary is prefixed with an epigraph by Pasteur that underlines this theme: ‘Science knows no country because it is the light that illuminates the world’ (Krause, 1993: xvi). Significantly, the only map in Emerging Viruses, which appears in a chapter on ‘Philogenetic Moments in the AIDS Epidemic’, is a strikingly unpopulated computer-generated map of Africa with the Kinshasa Highway

148  Robert Peckham marked prominently in black (Myers, MacInnes, and Myers, 1993: 123; Schell, 1997: 103). Viral and human traffic move along the same routes. In fact, as Morse declares: Inevitably, viral traffic is enhanced by human traffic. Highways and the subsequent human migration to cities, especially in tropical areas, can introduce once-remote viruses to a larger population. On a global scale, similar opportunities are offered by rapid air travel. (Morse, 1990a: 82) Not only is viral traffic enhanced by human traffic, but as Morse puts it, ‘[another] factor in viral traffic is human traffic itself’ (Morse, 1993b: 19). There is a conspicuous shift in scale in Morse’s description between the micro and the macro; between traffic as a microbiological process and traffic as a social phenomenon with global ramifications (King, 2004). As Schell has observed, ‘The metaphor of viral traffic is in some ways oddly incongruous, because viruses, unlike many other microorganisms, have no means of locomotion’. As she suggests, the causal explanation of epidemics is here mapped back onto viral activity so that viral and human trafficking are in effect equated, the one standing analogically for the other (Schell, 1997: 104). Wolfe’s subsequent reformulation of ‘viral traffic’ as ‘viral chatter’ digitizes Morse’s analog metaphor. It represents a shift from a mechanistic model of transmission to a multipoint informatics model. If Morse’s idea of ‘viral traffic’ is located, Wolfe’s ‘viral chatter’ reflects a ‘relational approach to viral space’ (Brown and Kelly, 2014). Highways imply concrete infrastructure and the possibility of closure – highways, after all, can be blocked and traffic halted. Instead of routes, roads, and highways, embodied in the horizontal East-West axis of the Kinshasa Highway, ‘viral chatter’ evokes entangled, multi-dimensional virtual networks. It intimates process, rather than structure. The materiality of microparasites and human bodies suggested by traffic is recast as immaterial information (see Thacker, 2005). Viral chatter also recombines scale and blurs temporal frames. In a digital context, ‘viral’ signifies the rapid dissemination of information across space, while ‘chatter’ connotes incessant low-level and fast-paced communication with an emphasis on form rather than content. The use of the term ‘viral chatter’ thus significantly reworks the notion of ‘viral traffic’ that developed in the 1990s. However, as Hinchliffe, Bingham, Allen, and Carter have noted, it also harks back suggestively to the idea of ‘chatter’ as formulated by Tarde at the beginning of the twentieth century. In genetic terms, viral chatter can be generative, opening up new transmission pathways for microorganisms (Hinchliffe et al., 2017: 71). Similarly, for Tarde ‘superficial chatter’ could precipitate social change as it coalesced into public opinion (Tarde, 1969: 308).

Viral chatter and afterlife  149

Networks and viral operations The ‘viral chatter’ formulation also reflects a clear security logic. The 9/11 Al Qaeda-initiated attacks on the Pentagon in Washington DC and the World Trade Center in New York, provided a trigger for new counter-­ insurgency approaches that extended to biothreats. At the same time, ­Islamist militancy was viewed as a ‘viral’ phenomenon that called for radical containment strategies. President Bush spoke in 2002 of terrorists operating ‘in remote deserts and jungles’; they were ‘parasites who [threatened] their countries and our own’ (Bush, 2004: 131). The viral metaphor was perhaps most fully elaborated by Richard N. Haas, Director of Policy Planning at the State Department, in a speech where he likened the challenge of terrorism ‘to fighting a virus’. According to Haas the nature of the new terrorist threat and the impossibility of its eradication called for new modes of operation.5 Unlike a conventional war fought between clearly defined opponents and involving delineated sovereign territories, this was a conflict fought by globally dispersed organizations via extended social networks and far-flung cells. The digital counter-networks that were mobilized in this ‘war on terror’ were in fact the same networks that were being integrated into epidemic surveillance. The term ‘viral chatter’ was allegedly coined by Wolfe’s mentor Burke as a reformulation of ‘intelligence chatter’. Burke had spent 23 years on active duty with the US Army: six of them in Thailand at the Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences in Bangkok before heading military disease research at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. As Burke has observed on several occasions: ‘I call it “viral chatter” because it’s like the terrorist “chatter” that goes on over the airwaves and suggests something serious is just around the corner’ (see Roth, 2008).6 And as Wolfe has noted: When he coined the term, Don did so as a direct parallel to intelligence chatter. One way of thinking about this is to ask the question: how do security services prevent terror events? Intelligence services use a range of techniques to monitor for potentially threatening events, but among their most valuable tools is the monitoring of chatter. Intelligence agencies scanning e-mails, phone calls, and online chat rooms can follow the frequency that certain signals occur … during testimony on the September 2001 attacks on the United States, the former CIA director George Tenet said that the ‘system was blinking red’ in the months leading up to 9/11. (Wolfe, 2011a: 179–80) Epidemiologists and virologists in their hunt for potential pandemic viruses now equated themselves with intelligence operatives sifting through Internet and telephone ‘chatter’ to anticipate terrorist attacks. This was a bio-digital construction that reversed the terrorist-as-virus analogy. While

150  Robert Peckham biomimetic approaches seek to grapple with social problems by drawing on biological processes, ‘viral chatter’ constitutes a form of sociomimetics where biological problems are solved by imitating social models. In ‘viral chatter’ microbiological activity was conceived as a form of communication across distributed networks. Post-9/11, it has become evident that network forms of organization are difficult to overcome using conventional tactical models premised on centralized control (Thacker, 2005). They are also hard to predict. The ‘network properties’ that pathogens manifest – summarized in the term ‘viral chatter’  – necessitate, according to Wolfe and his colleagues, counter-­ insurgency-like procedures to safeguard the world from pandemic threats. Biosurveillance is conceived as a type of ‘netwar’ in which epidemiologists adopt ‘the organizational designs and strategies’ of their adversaries (­Arquilla and Ronfeldt, 1996; see also Thacker, 2005). These networks are adversarial but they also crucially intersect. For example, the local bushmeat hunters who dwell on the boundary do so not only in the spillover sense, but also in the sense that they form an integral component of both networks. On the one hand, the local population is integral to the viral network, helping to propel viruses into global circuits of transportation and communication. On the other hand, the hunters are sentinels, co-opted into an expanding counter-network of biosurveillance that extends from wildlife tracking and eavesdropping on viral mutations to online data processing. Equipped with small pieces of filter paper, hunters collect blood from the animals they hunt (such as pigs, snakes, and monkeys). These samples are then analyzed in the lab to monitor for ‘viral chatter’ (Wolfe, 2012). Simultaneously, Wolfe envisions the ‘mashing’ of online viral chatter to discern patterns of activity that might indicate a spillover event. This is a task for animal scientists and data scientists (Dembosky, 2011). There is ‘viral chatter’ and there is viral chatter. Two species of communication must be tapped, and two different forms of immunity promoted: the first is microbiological; the second is virtual. Big data must be sifted to build the ‘virtual global immune system.’

Histories of the future In his book, The Viral Storm, Wolfe describes his ideal counter-network. At the heart of this imaginary is the 24/7 global situation room: The large, brightly lit, mostly white-walled room appears at once chaotic and oddly organized. Young kids in their Silicon Valley uniforms of hoodies and sneakers sit hunched over laptops, talking on the phone and instant messaging while simultaneously mashing together and analyzing massive amounts of data. Large monitors with maps and streaming news line the walls. There are no windows, so it’s hard to determine if it’s daytime or evening. (Wolfe, 2011a: 237)

Viral chatter and afterlife  151 Hoodies crunch reams of data emanating from across the world. Internet chatter, news stories, and social media content, as well as uploaded genetic data, are processed through algorithms to detect patterns that might indicate heightened risk of an outbreak. What is striking about this vision of Wolfe’s utopic counter-network is the degree to which it conforms to a conventional control-and-command system. In the ‘brightly lit’ 24/7 global processing hub we are presented with an essentially ‘centralized information network counter-acting a decentralized biological network’ (Thacker, 2005). Wolfe’s hub appears chaotic but it is at the same time oddly organized. Its white walls and brightly lit interior stand at the center of the world – a world with dark peripheries from whence the streaming data originates. Silicon Valley is projected as the antithesis to the tribal frontier hotspots of emerging infection. It is a room at once radically open, but also strategically closed (‘There are no windows, so it’s hard to determine if it’s daytime or evening’). This is not an automated detection system, but rather a system that relies upon ‘a multiplicity of human agencies [that] produces an intentional, yet indeterminate aggregate effect’ (Thacker, 2005). Epidemiological and biological networks, it turns out, are not in fact mirror images of each other after all. While GVFI promotes an idea of the extraterritorial and vital nature of the connected (and borderless) world, this is layered onto an altogether different but familiar geography characterized by frontiers, boundaries, and hard edges. ­Viral chatter thus identifies pathogenic threats as the outcome of complex, multi-­scalar human and nonhuman entanglements. At the same time, however, as a techno-­political project it attempts ‘to gain for itself the powers of expertise by resolving [the world] into simple forces and oppositions’ (Mitchell, 2002: 34).7

Conclusion: ecologies and belligerent metaphors This chapter has sketched a brief history of the term ‘viral chatter’ in relation to developments in contemporary virology. Post-9/11, and in the aftermath of SARS and H5N1, there was a renewed emphasis on global security and a call for adaptive surveillance mechanisms that instrumentalized digital technologies to target highly pathogenic emerging infections. If viruses were understood to communicate, their communicability mirrored the viral properties of the digital networks ranged against them. Biological and technological worlds reflected each other to the extent that their interactions were imagined as a form of intra-communication. While Morse’s term conflated virus with host, transmission with human mobility, Wolfe’s ‘viral chatter’ moved beyond metaphors of highway and migration to suggest pathogenicity as digital process. However, despite its focus on the future – on prediction, prophecy, and forecasting – the ‘viral chatter’ model of disease emergence reprises historical topologies.8 It reconfigures but does not wholly displace the concept of ‘viral traffic’. Even as it suggests an intra-communicative relationship

152  Robert Peckham between virus and human, ‘viral chatter’ – as Wolfe concedes – is ultimately a belligerent metaphor that reaffirms an opposition between terrorist/virus and counter-insurgent/virologist and thereby reiterates the ‘old-fashioned fire brigade approach’ to epidemics (UCLA, 2007). This tension is a spillover from earlier constructions of viral disease, exemplified in Emerging Viruses. The distinguished contributors to Morse’s 1993 collection develop an ecological vision to explain the emergence of new pathogens (see Anderson, 2004). Environmental transformations, changing human demographics, and intensifying patterns of global trade are producing new stress points, opening up the space for ‘viral traffic’. To grapple with the problem of emerging viruses requires an understanding of the eco-dynamics that furnish new niches for these viruses. This encompassing view of disease as the outcome of complex evolutionary processes, however, is undercut by a coincidental emphasis on the ‘fight’ against disease. Here, a model of complexity is replaced by a structural and oppositional framework that posits ‘mutant microbes’ as the problem, and public health targeting as the solution. As Schell has argued, the ambiguity of the language and syntax, and the frequent slippage between terms subvert the ecological views ostensibly espoused and reflect what she calls ‘a narrowed focus’. In his foreword, for example, Krause alternates between the use of ‘viruses’ and ‘microbes’, while ‘emerging viruses’, ‘epidemics’, and ‘plagues’ are used interchangeably. Elsewhere hosts and humans become equivalent (Schell, 1997: 97). On the one hand, viruses are understood as objects caught up with humans in a complex co-evolutionary system. On the other hand, virus-human interactions are conceived as a hostile encounter, a violent traffic. This contradiction has not been resolved in Wolfe’s ‘viral chatter’. Rather, these earlier analog contagion metaphors live on to trouble his informatics worldview. While ‘viral chatter’ invites us to rethink virus-host interactions as a meshing of voluble networks, it simultaneously narrows the field to ­reaffirm the pathogen as an object of incipient violence: a terrorist in a networked world. What are the worldly consequences of this confusion? For one, ecological complexities and host-parasite systems are ultimately reduced to a one-­ dimensional struggle. Second, while Wolfe’s espousal of a new and pliant disease detection system is undermined, so too is the public health message. Terror-virus metaphors evoke a long history of virus hunting analogized as crime detection (de Kruif, 1926) and thereby blunt the urgency of contemporary health challenges. In this way, ‘viral chatter’ serves as the bearer of an older message: metaphors matter.

Acknowledgments My thanks to Christian Borch for his invitation to participate in the ‘Imitation, Contagion, Suggestion: Rethinking the Social’ conference held at the Copenhagen Business School in May 2015. I am also grateful to Jeremy

Viral chatter and afterlife  153 Greene for giving me an opportunity to develop my argument at the ‘Media Medica: Medicine and the Challenge of New Media’ conference held at Johns Hopkins University in October 2017. Thanks to my fellow panelists Kirsten Ostherr and Vincent Duclos, to the panel discussant, Clara Han, and to Ria Sinha for her helpful feedback on an earlier draft of this paper.

Notes 1 In 2012, GVFI and the for-profit Global Viral Forecasting Inc. were restructured. The for-profit arm was transformed into Metabiota, a ‘company specializing in disease and pathogen detection, evaluation and response through the integration of field and lab research with health data analytics.’ Meanwhile, the non-profit arm refocused its remit as Global Viral onto ‘scientific leadership, community health development and education, and exploratory research.’ See the press release at: www.gvfi.org/assets/globalviral-metabiota-press-releases.pdf. 2 Larry Brilliant was director of Google’s philanthropic arm Google.org, which invested $5.5 million in GVFI in 2008 (Sternberg, 2008). 3 On Henderson, global health security, and the rise of a distinctive ‘pathogenic imaginary’ in the late twentieth century, see Lakoff (2015: 303–4). 4 More recently, evidence has been found of viral communication (Erez et al., 2017). 5 The speech is retrieved from https://2001-2009.state.gov/s/p/rem/5505.htm 6 See www.jhsph.edu/news/stories/2005/great-influenza.html. 7 Mitchell’s account of the spread of malaria in Egypt during World War II provides an excellent example of how social and biological worlds are coproduced, and how expertise works to simplify this heterogeneity by manufacturing imaginary binaries (2002: 51). 8 On the prophetic dimension of pandemic preparedness, see Caduff (2015) and Lynteris (2016).

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156  Robert Peckham UCLA (2007, 17 May) ‘UCLA Researchers Endorse Global Early Warning System To Prevent Future Pandemics’, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. Retrieved from https://ph.ucla.edu/news/press-release/2011/mar/ucla-­researchers-endorseglobal-early-warning-system-prevent-future (accessed 1 May 2018). Wald, P. (2008) Contagious: Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative. D ­ urham, NC: Duke University Press. Walsh, B. (2011, 7 November) ‘Virus Hunter’, Time Magazine. Waters, C. M., and Bassler, B. L. (2005) ‘Quorum Sensing: Cell-to-Cell Communication in Bacteria’, Annual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology 21: 319–46. Weir, L., and Mykhalovskiy, E. (2010) Global Public Health Vigilance: Creating a World on Alert. New York: Routledge. WHO (2007) The World Health Report 2007: A Safer Future; Global Public Health Security in the 21st Century. Geneva: World Health Organization. Williams, R. (1976) Keywords. London: Fontana Collins. Wolfe, N. D. (2009) ‘The Jungle Search for Viruses’, TED. Retrieved from www. ted.com/talks/nathan_wolfe_hunts_for_the_next_aids/transcript?language=en (accessed 1 May 2018). Wolfe, N. D. (2011a) The Viral Storm: The Dawn of a New Pandemic Age. London: Allen Lane. Wolfe, N. D. (2011b, 8 October) ‘Where Will the Next Pandemic Come From?’ Wall Street Journal. Wolfe, N. D. (2012, 21 November) ‘What if a Deadly New Virus Jumped from Animals to Humans?’ Time/World Economic Forum. Wolfe, N. D., Daszak, P., Kilpatrick, A. M., and Burke, D. S. (2005) ‘Bushmeat Hunting, Deforestation, and Prediction of Zoonotic Disease’, Emerging Infectious Diseases 11(12): 1822–7. Wolfe, N. D., Heneine, W., Carr, J. K., Garcia, A. D., Shanmugam, V., Tamoufe, U., Torimiro, J. N., Prosser, A. T., LeBreton, M., Mpoudi-Ngole, E., and McCutchan, F. E. (2005) ‘Emergence of Unique Lymphotropic Viruses among Central African Bushmeat Hunters’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 102(22): 7994–9. Wolfe, N. D., Switzer, W. M., Carr, J. K., Bhullar, V. B., Shanmugam, V., Tamoufe, U., Prosser, A. T., Torimiro, J. N., Wright, A., Mpoudi-Ngole, E., and McCutchan, F. E. (2004) ‘Naturally Acquired Simian Retrovirus Infections in Central African Hunters’, Lancet 363(9413): 932–7. Worboys, M. (2000) Spreading Germs: Disease Theories and Medical Practice in Britain, 1865–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

9 Contagious agents Epidemics, networks, computer simulations Sebastian Vehlken

Introduction Just a few days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York City’s WTC towers, the US was eclipsed by yet another seemingly imminent threat: In different locations letter envelopes with traces of the biological pathogen Anthrax surfaced, spawning anxieties this time about an imminent second bio-terrorist attack. Albeit in the end, only five contaminated envelopes were found – and more than 2,000 other suspicious postings turned out to be ‘harmless’ imitations – the possible threat of contagious biological agents entered Western political thought and popular culture on a broad basis. As historian Philipp Sarasin convincingly argued in his study Anthrax: Bioterror als Phantasma (2004), it was the transformation of ‘Anthrax’ into a metaphor by political authorities which in fact proved most infectious: ‘Anthrax’ alluded to one of modernity’s central phantasmas – the conception of the enemy as a microbe, as an invisible parasitic intruder which infected and undermined the functions of biological as well as political or social bodies. This updated fear of an infection of social bodies by contagious agents, writes Sarasin, became the foundation of a repressive form of governmentality and the defining dispositif of power in the globalized early twenty-first century. At the same time, it resonated with the epistemic horror of early sociology to conceive of crowds and masses: not coincidentally, Gustave Le Bon (1960 [1895]) described the transmission of ideas, emotions, or beliefs as a microbial epidemic process. Next to this function as an infectious metaphor, contagious agents gained an increasing presence in the discourse around networks and computational media. This became visible, as media theorists Alexander Galloway and Eugene Thacker (2005) stated, in an implosion of the differences between epidemics and bioterrorism – which, in consequence, led to the installation of a ‘medical-military system for “alert and response” to biological threats’. Contagious agents, in this context, were conceptualized by intertwining knowledge from biology and from computer science: On the one hand, the spread and reproduction procedures of computer viruses as well as immunization strategies were studied through the lens of epidemiological knowledge (see e.g. Kephart, Chess, and White, 1993; Parikka, 2016). On the other

158  Sebastian Vehlken hand, institutions began to analyze the digital traces of people’s everyday routines in order to reconstruct their movement patterns as possible routes for the ‘communication’ of biological pathogens. In this regard, contagious agents exceeded a mere metaphorical or analogical use of the term and literally transgressed the ontological distinctions between the biological and the digital (Galloway and Thacker, 2005). Or, as Thacker (2005) put it elsewhere: ‘epidemiology is predicated on the assumption that information is material. […] what we see are informed pathogens – that is, biological epidemics that, through epidemiology, become information-dense entities’. Building on both the metaphorical and the bio-computational aspects of contagion, there is yet a third feature which all the more highlights a possible operative function of contagious agents: That is, the computer simulation of epidemics by large-scale multi-agent systems. Such computational models are designed to provide environments for virtual experimentation with various epidemic outbreak scenarios. Agent-based models (ABMs) for epidemics simulations generate artificial populations of neighborhoods, cities, countries, up to global-scale models. Based on the behavior of individual agents in multiple social networks and with individual mobility patterns, they simulate all sorts of exemplary nonlinear everyday life routines. Involving a concept of emergence, they are ideally suited to embed contagious processes of different pathogens. At the same time, such models are also capable to process and depict all sorts of possible reactions to an emerging epidemic – from mass panics or communication and infrastructure breakdowns to evacuation measures. ABM thus transformed contagion into a logistical problem. For more than a decade, such simulations have become an integral part of the technological equipment of contemporary disease response systems. This chapter will examine and discuss in more detail the concepts of contagion and contagious agents in network and computer simulation studies against the backdrop of epidemic response systems. It argues that the understanding of contagion as a cross-section of biology and computer ­technology – especially in ABM – entails at least two major consequences. First, it exceeds earlier attempts which also sought to integrate knowledge and findings from biology into the description of social processes – and which manifested in the use of an ICS mindset in the writings of, for example, Gabriel Tarde, Gustave Le Bon, or Scipio Sighele. However, while computational media nowadays provide methods for a likewise improvement of information security and mathematical epidemiology, the confrontation of early research in animal societies and prevailing concepts in early sociology and mass psychology around 1900 resulted in an epistemological barrier: it led to a circular argument where the dynamics of human collectives were described by biological accounts of information transmission in animal collectives which themselves used concepts from mass psychology. Second, with ABM, the mere metaphorical conception of contagious forces between individual bodies in a crowd which are present in the classical writings of mass psychology are replaced by the logic and logistics of

Contagious agents  159 movement algorithms. In a way, ABM thus deconstructs the speculative assumptions of an ICS discourse around 1900, as well as later sociopsychological experiments in the context of panic and evacuation studies (see e.g. Guten and Vernon, 1972; Kelly et al., 1965). Agent-based epidemic simulations have been employed as an alternative way of computationally representing the spreading dynamics of contagious diseases, thereby transcending ­macro-scale (health) statistical analyses, and microscopic medical experiments. This introduced a novel synthetical epistemic element into epidemiology – an element of premediation (Grusin, 2010) which initiated a transformation of the temporal dynamics and timescales of response systems away from reactive modes and toward novel modes of preparedness.

Zombification of the crowd ‘Use your head; cut off theirs’ (Brooks, 2003) – interestingly, a recent example from popular culture well describes the entanglement of biological contagion, information transmission, computer simulation technology, and mass psychology. It is drawn from a movie genre whose resurrection has repeatedly been linked to the phantasmatic dimension of bioterrorism and epidemics, as well as to the technological structure of information networks. Alongside more conventional movies such as (sic!) Contagion (Steven Soderbergh, US 2011), a number of recent zombie movies depicted the: role of information in either transmitting, propagating, or even producing contagion. […] contemporary zombie horror asks an interesting question: how is our understanding of biological epidemics affected by our ambient environment of computer and information networks? That is, how does transmission affect contagion, and vice-versa? (Thacker, 2005) This observation holds true for the 2013 movie World War Z (Marc Foster). On first view a conventional blockbuster, a closer look at its special effects reveals that there is more to it than meets the eye. Or, to be more precise, the ‘more’ is inherent in what meets the eye: World War Z took the depiction of a ‘rage virus’ epidemic – known from predecessors like 28 Days Later (Danny Boyle, GB 2002) – which radically accelerated both the turning of infected people into zombies and their running speed to a new level: Moving Picture Company’s Artificial Life Crowd Engine (ALICE), a Computer Graphic Imaging (CGI) software, generated multi-agent animation models for choreographing huge crowds of animated undead (Haddon and Griffith, 2006). In the most impressive sequences, hunting crowds swirl down narrow streets, thereby resembling nothing but a multi-faced wave, toppling and breaking down, then piling up again while making their contagious way through congested urban environments. They leave the impression of a time-lapsed

160  Sebastian Vehlken version of Canetti’s well-known observation: ‘in an epidemic, people see the advance of death; it takes place under their very eyes’ (1962: 319). The crucial point is that the software’s modeling methods to some extent are similar to scientific multi-agent simulations of dynamic collectives. Although it is not the visual aesthetics that is interesting for the scientific use of ABM, and commercial applications usually do not care too much about making realistic assumptions (Helbing, 2012: 28), ALICE nonetheless highlights an element also crucial to serious applications: epidemic simulations provide an interactive modeling environment with multiple views and zoom functions. ‘Contagious artificial agents’ thus are assigned a key role in synthesizing not only biological and computational concepts, but also in convening the global level of modeling planetary-scale infection dynamics and the more local level of calculating scenarios for, e.g. crowd dynamics or infrastructure breakdowns. With this scope, ABMs open up a historical vanishing line to the earlier discourse and concepts of ICS in mass psychology. Around 1900, mass psychology involved hypotheses about the spreading of psychic qualities like fear, anger, and other emotions through human crowds. These would bind together the individuals of a crowd into an indistinctive, but instinctively behaving whole. Eventuated by imagined ‘contagious’ affective forces (Le Bon, 1960) and of ‘transportation’ between individuals (Tarde, 2001 [1890]), this led to the emergence of ‘the crowd’ and its animalistic and explicitly nonhumanistic side effects in the first place. It intertwined approaches, which – often against the setting of criminology – sought to extricate the animalistic nature of humans in crowds by turning to approaches from the then-­popular field of animal psychology. Scholars from this field in return, and at the same time, often sought to identify the human elements in animal societies. This mutual import of theories with little reliability, as I have argued elsewhere, in effect proved to become an epistemological obstacle for a more functional description of collective processes, both in the developing discipline of biology as well as in mass psychology (Vehlken, 2012: 77–93). However, this chapter will not review in detail the well-known treatises of mass psychology and their specific perspectives on ICS with their mix of ill-defined notions of affects, emotions, and (social) instincts: Tarde’s (2001) ideas of psycho-mechanical degeneration of humans in crowds effectuated by psychic contagion in situations of extreme physical proximity; Sighele’s (1901) positivist account of relating visual stimuli of irritation – which he believed to be a universal form of transmission in all species – to preconscious interactions, a theory that had been strongly influenced by the zoologist Alfred Espinas; or the influence of medical and bacterial knowledge on the polymath – and also doctor of medicine – Le Bon who replaced notions of suggestive psychological imitation processes with a concept of the mass as a kind of contagious organic machine of reflexes (Le Bon, 1960) which was also enriched by an epidemic component. In contrast to Tarde and Sighele, Le Bon rather dismissed ideas of ‘immediate’ psychic ICS. He put to the

Contagious agents  161 fore the analogy to contagious processes effected by microbes (1960: 9) and thus introduced a ‘materialist’ form of mediality into mass psychology (see Gamper, 2009: 83). As a result, crowds were understood as an ‘amorphous social element’ with unlimited expansive potential (see Gamper, 2009: 81). Contrariwise, and building on a research tradition of functionalist approaches to animal collectives, recent ABM in biological research has shown that information is distributed through the constantly changing and moving collective by a large number of parallel, individually distributed, and local actions and reactions. The advent of more exact measurement instruments, and later, of computer simulation methods, physically specified the conceptualization of animal collectives: The imagination of mere metaphysical concepts such as social instincts or thought-transference was supplanted by information systems in which signals – visual, acoustic, or through water and air pressure – are detected via eyes, ears, and body receptors. Here, every individual only processes the incoming movement information from a certain relatively small number of neighboring individuals. This approach effectively resulted in a global behavior that is an adequate reaction to the stimulus. Fostered by the capacities of sophisticated mathematical models, multi-agent computer simulation tools, and automated observation and tracking techniques, it initialized a thorough de-psychologization of the ICS paradigm. Most notably, such studies transformed the threatening entity of the mass into the self-reflective assemblage of a distributed network which in itself became operative as a techno-social medium (Vehlken, 2014): a system in which the need for control, as Eugene Thacker puts it, is expressed by ‘the need for an absence of control (‘emergence’, ‘self-­organization’, and so forth)’ in the computational method (Thacker, 2005). Thus, not coincidentally, some of its most advanced models are applied in the area of epidemics simulation. In the following part, the chapter sketches out the aforementioned confluence of informatic and biological views of epidemics – which has led to a macro-level understanding of disease transmission. After that, I  will explore the genealogy, epistemology, and the media-­technological ­condition of ABM in epidemiology – from tentative ­experiments with a Generative Social Science (Epstein, 2006; Epstein and Axtell, 1996) to the current heydays of Global-Scale Agent Models (GSAM) – in which both the macro- and micro-level of contagion are integrated.

Informatization of contagion In his seminal article ‘Living Dead Networks’, media theorist Eugene Thacker precisely analyzed a ‘cultural confusion between contagion and transmission’ as a reciprocal process of biological concepts imported to computer science and vice versa: In information security, biological tropes are used to understand computer ‘viruses’ and design ‘computer immune systems’. In mathematical

162  Sebastian Vehlken epidemiology, mathematical, statistical, and probabilistic methods are used to study the dynamics between populations and disease, which is now being extended in the use of computers to simulate and forecast epidemic outbreaks. (Thacker, 2005) Thacker’s account on the ‘informatization’ of biology – with epidemiology as an important connection point between computer science and biology – seems crucial when talking about the foundations of the later development of epidemics simulation. Central to his approach is a multilayered enfolding of communication processes that intertwine biological and computational networks. As Thacker (2005) put it: Between the genetic code of a virus, the rate of epidemic growth, its demographic distribution, and the role of medical records, health insurance policies, and sales of pharmaceutical vaccines, there is an ambiguous continuum of informational processes that is informatic and yet thoroughly material. Rooted in the quantitative methods of statistical analysis or ‘statistical enthusiasm’ (Hacking, 1982) of seventeenth-century ‘political arithmetic’ and ‘political anatomy’ (Petty, 1899), epidemiology qualified for a formalized treatment in mathematical equations. Later, these proved an ideal basis for computerized methods of counting, sorting, and layering, as it was not only the counting of statistical events, but at the same time the articulation of specific categories in order to differentiate disease and population types, and the layering of different networks which facilitated the deduction of causality from correlations: ‘It required an “open field” of observation, and an analytical sensibility that could encompass the indeterminate. An epidemic disease was not an autonomous entity that could be enclosed in a box, or categorized in a table’ (Thacker, 2005). This is probably most prominently expressed in John Snow’s statistical visualizations of Cholera fatalities in South London (Snow, 1855). These superimposed different types of networks, that is, street and infrastructure maps, the residences of victims, and networks of water pumps and sewage channels and thus showed a clustering of fatalities around the locations of certain wells. This indicated the transmission of the Cholera disease through this particular utility network (see also Pias, 2011) and made specific and – quite literally – well-directed counter-measures feasible. What also must be accentuated is what Thacker calls the ‘two-fold network consciousness’ of epidemiology: ‘An awareness of “epidemics” as discrete entities displaying network properties, and, inseparable from this, an awareness of the need for network-based techniques for analyzing, mapping, and securing against epidemics’ (Thacker, 2005). To conceive of the defining characteristics of an epidemic thus is a first step toward devising

Contagious agents  163 counteracting strategies, and as an effect, the gathering of information, often by media techniques of surveillance, is a central part of public health and epidemiology. For Thacker, the replacement of the disciplinary paradigm of confinement by ‘the calculation of openings, of filled and empty spaces, passages and transparencies’ (Foucault, 1979: 172; Thacker, 2005) designates the very shift of a contemporary confluence of the biological and computational notions of contagion and transmission. This posture of ‘biological security’ was aimed at the level of populations, and it was only to be effective when coupled with technologies of information transmission (Thacker, 2005), that is, with the use of information networks ‘to monitor, prevent, and counter-act epidemics’ (2005). Such socalled Disease Surveillance Networks (DSNs) proved effective in the countering of the 2003 SARS outbreak. In short, DSNs aim at several objectives: First, to detect outbreaks of unusual diseases, such as SARS or Ebola, allowing more time for public health response. Second, to detect increases in routine disease – for example, spikes in cases of measles could signal a dip in vaccination rates which would allow officials to ramp up prevention and response practices to counter an increasing disease threat and monitor an outbreak. And third, to collect information on the spread and severity of a disease during an outbreak and on potentially vulnerable populations, enabling the evaluation of the effectiveness of response measures such as vaccination to control an outbreak, and allow for eventual adjustments. Finally, after an outbreak is resolved, the collected data can inform future public health recommendations (Sell, 2010: 305). As Thacker notes, the WHO’s Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network helped limiting the spread of the SARS epidemic by coordinating among hospitals in the infected areas in different countries, providing patient data through their central servers, to issue travel advisories and to suggest countermeasures (Thacker, 2005). Consequently, the establishing of projects such as the Laboratory Response Network and the National Electronic Disease Surveillance System by the US-American CDC during the 1990s was further developed into a paradigm of biosurveillance after both the Anthrax and SARS incidents (Thacker, 2005). The US Department of Homeland Security (2004) began to actively promote the integration of several prototype regional DSN into one comprehensive nation-wide network designed to ‘enhance on-going surveillance programs in areas such as human health, hospital preparedness, state and local preparedness, vaccine research and procurement, animal health, food and agriculture safety and environmental monitoring, and integrate those efforts into one comprehensive system’ (Thacker, 2005). However, this not only resulted in digital information sharing and analysis mechanisms or the creation of laboratory networks to enhance diagnostic capacity (Jenkins, 2010), but also involved the use of novel technologies to enhance early detection and situational awareness. One example is BioWatch, an air pollution detection network whose 500 air sampling devices today are deployed in 31 major US cities and are also used in specific indoor

164  Sebastian Vehlken events like the annual Super Bowl (see Karwa, Currie, and Kvetan, 2005; Kman and Bachman, 2012: 6; Regan et al., 2008; US Institute of Medicine, 2010). Most noteworthy for Thacker is that DSNs: bring together the views of contagion and transmission into a single ‘artifactual’ system. […] in the case of epidemiology, biological or medical information is understood both as a product of knowledge-based systems (e.g. medical records and disease statistics), and as a real ‘thing’ that spreads throughout a population […]. In other words, in ­epidemiology – more specifically in its mathematical guises – ­informational processes are extracted from the particular media through which and across which information flows. These views intersect in the DSNs. Between the genetic code of a virus, the rate of epidemic growth, its demographic distribution, and the role of medical records, health insurance policies, and sales of pharmaceutical vaccines, there is an ambiguous continuum of informational processes that is informatic and yet thoroughly material. (Thacker, 2005) As an effect, what lies in the center of the idea of creating DSNs is that biosurveillance builds upon a framework which counters the dynamics exhibited by one network (the biological network of the contagious disease) with another network (the computer network that transmits crucial information about the contagion towards the appropriate addresses) (see Jenkins, 2010 for an overview on US institutions involved in biosurveillance networks). It not only builds on the automated detection and generation of responsive action made feasible by computational methods and network infrastructures, but also entails the integration of multiple human-based decision processes. This results in a conglomerate of different institutions and agencies which produce an aggregate effect which is intentional, yet always remains indeterminate: While much time and money is spent on computer systems to model and forecast epidemic spread, such systems are always ‘best guesses’. The same is implied in the human involvement – autonomous and ­conscious – in the epidemics that biosurveillance aims to prevent. As we’ve noted, the layered quality of networks (infection, transportation, communication) gives each particular epidemic incident a singularity that frustrates any sort of reductive, quantitative modeling. In short, for biosurveillance the challenge for the network management of an epidemic is how to articulate control within emergence. (Thacker, 2005) ABM, a simulation technique which was still in its infancy at the time of the publication of Thacker’s article, precisely addresses this challenge. Its

Contagious agents  165 modeling approach, as will be described in the following, operationalizes emergent processes within a computational framework for ‘virtual experimentation’. Agent-based epidemics simulation thus articulates control through the premediation of multiple catastrophic scenarios on various tempo-spatial scales. Or, to put it differently, ABM contributes to the control of emergence by allowing for emergent phenomena to be computer-­ experimentally explored.

Log(ist)ics of contagion The use of mathematical models in epidemiology is not a recent phenomenon. Yet most traditional mathematical models for understanding and predicting the course of disease outbreaks only describe interaction dynamics on an aggregate level, often simply caused by a lack of the computational and methodological means to build models of diseases interacting with dynamic human populations. This conundrum even persisted in early examples of computational modeling approaches. The standard applications used differential equation based Susceptible-Infected-­Recovered framings (see Anderson and May, 1991; Wasserman and Faust, 1994). Like in mathematical epidemiology, these models typically assume homogeneously mixing populations and neglect medical intervention, spatial dimensions, social (and network) connections, as well as symptom-based behaviors: the population-based nature of this class of models best describes the dynamics of an epidemic when large numbers of individuals are infected, rather than the initial or final stages of an outbreak, when small numbers of individuals are involved and stochastic person-to-person transmission processes dominate. To satisfactorily model the initial seeding and final quenching of small community-level outbreaks requires a fundamentally different approach. (Germann et al., 2006: 5935) Cellular-automata (CA) models for disease spread improve upon these models and allow for spatial dimensions and discontinuities (Burke et al., 2006). However, the geometry of CA highly oversimplifies the spatial reality of the real world and thus of disease propagation processes. Hence, while capturing general trends of epidemics and feedback loops, CA models ‘are problematic for the subtleties of micro- and meso-­behaviors, and they largely ignore the symbolic aspects of a population such as knowledge about school districts, recreational preferences, the calendar of events and holidays, and traffic regulations, among others’ (Carley et al., 2004: 2). This inadequate representation of a detailed population structure can lead to unrealistic scenario outcomes, especially in the beginning phase of an epidemic process

166  Sebastian Vehlken when individual variation is critical (see Epstein et al., 2007), Or, as Eubank et al. (2004: 56) put it: In real epidemics, these details matter. The rate at which susceptible people become infected depends on their individual state of health, the duration and nature of their interactions with contagious people, and specific properties of the disease pathogen itself. Truer models of outbreaks must capture the probability of disease transmission from one person to another, which means simulating not only the properties of the disease and the health of each individual but also detailed interactions between every pair of individuals in the group. It is precisely the capability to realistically model interactions on the microand meso-level of an artificial population, which make ABMs an adequate approach for epidemiology. It has been embraced by, for example, the NIH Models of Infectious Disease Agent Study Project, the Johns Hopkins Medical School’s DHS-funded Preparedness and Catastrophic Event Response Project, and the CDC-University of Pittsburgh Public Health Adaptive Systems as prominent US examples (Parker and Epstein, 2011: 2). The application of ABM thus transforms the modes of describing and of a­ cknowledging dynamic systems. Epstein and Axtell put this change of perspective as follows: ‘[ABM] may change the way we think about explanations […]. What constitutes an explanation of an observed […] phenomenon? Perhaps one day people will interpret the question, “Can you explain it?” as asking “Can you grow it?”’ (Epstein and Axtell, 1996: 20). In 1996, these authors published a computer program environment which referred to this task. Combining conceptual principles from Schelling’s segregation models and Conway’s Game of Life-CA, Epstein and Axtell promoted their so-called Sugarscape model as no less than a generative research program in the social sciences. It was designed to become especially suitable to generate: models in the absence of knowledge about the global interdependencies; you may know nothing or very little about how things affect each other at the aggregate level, or what is the global sequence of operations, etc., but if you have some perception of how the individual participants of the process behave, you can construct the ABM and then obtain the global behavior. (Borshchev and Filippov, 2004: 7) The modeler tries to delegate his or her subjective programming intelligence into the simulation’s self-organizing capacity, and thus hopes for emerging contra-intuitive or unforeseeable solutions. It is therefore not a coincidence that the authors refer to epidemics as one of the most promising application areas. In contrast to the usual process-driven simulations of their time, Sugarscape provided a model specification for epidemic simulation which

Contagious agents  167 involved agent heterogeneity on three levels. First, an individualized simulated immune system was implemented in each computational agent. Second, every agent was defined to act differently in case of an illness. ‘For example, we could easily reduce the agent’s vision while it is infected. Or, we could interrupt its normal sexual activity. Different diseases have different effects’ (Epstein and Axtell, 1996: 143). And third, the agents were equipped with a memory function, simulating natural immunization processes. As an effect, the simulation sought to integrate the effects of local bodily infections with the dynamics of interindividual contagion processes into a ‘unified bottom-up immunology-epidemiology model’ (1996: 138). According to Eric Bonabeau (2002: 7280), ABMs proved suitable for modeling social phenomena because they reproduce emergent phenomena, offer a ‘natural’ system description, and are flexible – that is, they allow to easily add further agents or environmental factors, and to adjust its parameters as well as the relations between the agents. Furthermore, the observation of the simulated system becomes possible on several levels, ranging from the entire system, to a couple of subordinated groups, down to the individual agent (2002: 7281). According to Parker and Epstein (2011: 2), in: ABM, every single individual is represented as a distinct software object. There is no aggregation into homogeneous pools. Agents are heterogeneous and can differ in myriad ways (e.g., age, disease state, behavioral rules). Events unfold on an explicit space of some sort – a social network, a city, or a multinational region, for example. Within this interaction space, agents act autonomously, executing some itinerary […]. Typically, these cyber-people have limited (often local) information, and limited cognitive capacity […] and their behavior may adapt depending on their perceived situation. Finally, and crucially, agents interact directly with one another. So, […] exact chains of agent-to-agent transmission [are] constructible. In the light of a rapid development of agent-based epidemic simulations after 2000 Epstein and Axtell’s initial emphasis on the capabilities of the quite rudimentary and abstract dotted-square grids of Sugarscape feels somewhat irritating. Facilitated by increased computing speed and hardware architectures ideally suited for implementing the parallel processing of large numbers of individual agents – such as General Purpose Computing on Graphic Processing Units (see De Chiara, Erra, and Searano, 2006) – later ABMs have integrated Geographical Information Systems for spatial accordance and reliability, and operate on much larger agent populations and with incomparably more diverse and complicated agent features and behaviors. Model scales have grown steadily, from county-level (Burke et al., 2006; Epstein et al., 2004), to city-level (Eubank et al., 2004), to small nation (Ferguson et al., 2005; Germann et al., 2006), and US scale ­(Ferguson et al., 2006).

168  Sebastian Vehlken Arguably, the advent of this new research paradigm in epidemiology was most significantly expressed by an article in Scientific American (see Barrett et al., 2005). ‘If Smallpox strikes Portland’ reformulated its ‘scientific’ version, published in Nature one year earlier (Eubank et al., 2004). It featured the Epidemic Simulation System (EpiSims), an individual-based epidemic model on the scale of a population of millions of virtual agents. It built on one of the earliest large-scale traffic simulations of the time, the Transportation Analysis Simulation System (TRANSIMS) model of the Los Alamos Center for Urban Planning (see Howard, 1997). Processed in high-performance supercomputing clusters, the TRANSIMS model provided a simulation of the myriads of interconnected movements of a large population – between 1.6 and 4 million agents in the earlier versions – in a realistic urban environment (of Portland, OR, and Chicago, IL). In EpiSims the aforementioned coalescence of the biological and computational concepts of contagion and transmission takes shape. Its developers describe it as a kind of ‘virtual laboratory’: With EpiSims, we can release a virtual pathogen into these populations, watch it spread and test the effects of different interventions. But even without simulating a disease outbreak, the model provides intriguing insights into human social networks, with potentially important implications for epidemic response. (Barrett et al., 2005: 56) Based on census data, street maps, and local traffic timetables, both TRANSIMS and EpiSims incorporate not only complete models of infrastructure and transport systems and a huge number of distinct locales (schools, offices, movie houses, residential buildings, etc.), but also a ‘synthetic population’ (Barrett et al., 2005: 57). Every member of this population, that is, every computational agent, produces specific social graphs from its simulated everyday routines: imagine the daily activities and contacts of a single hypothetical adult, Ann. She has short brushes with family members during breakfast and then with other commuters or carpoolers on her way to work. Depending on her job, she might meet dozens of people at work, with each encounter having a different duration, proximity and purpose. During lunch or a shopping trip after work, Ann might have additional short contacts with strangers in public places before returning home. We can visually represent Ann’s contacts as a network with Ann in the center and a line connecting Ann to each of them. All Ann’s contacts engage in various activities and meet other people as well. We can represent these ‘contacts of contacts’ by drawing lines from each – for example, Ann’s colleague named Bob – to all his contacts. (Barrett et al., 2005: 57)

Contagious agents  169 All this is done through a percentage distribution based on statistical data but dissimulated over the individual social contacts, which vary from agent to agent. As an effect, to each of these social contacts can be assigned a probability of transmitting a contagious disease to other agents. At the same time, the observation of the combined contact graphs of a large number of agents over time can lead to the identification of communication hubs or of formerly hidden ways that the spread of a contagious disease could take. Logistical networks and social graphs are thus coupled with the transmission of diseases. Moreover, as mentioned above, ABMs are easily expanded with additional elements. Thus, environmental features also can be incorporated into such simulations of epidemics. On the one hand, some simulations comprise of more detailed micro-dynamics: Factors such as wind turbulence, wind force, or humidity which affect the airborne transport of contaminants would rather be modeled with a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model but are then easily integrated into a hybrid CFD-ABM model. Such a simulation then calculates and visualizes how large spatially distributed populations of agents might respond in the face of a ‘physically realistic contaminant plume’ (Epstein, Pankajakshan, and Hammond, 2011: 1). As a result, one could pre-­ compute multiple evacuation scenarios for various urban centers which could be refined by real-time data (e.g., of weather conditions) in the actual emergency situation (2011: 4). And, based on the identification of crucial factors in the simulation, one could install adequate emergency instructions, exercises, and infrastructure plans – from car-pooling to traffic light settings. On the other hand, regional or nationwide simulation models can be extended to worldwide pandemic macro-simulations. This is either accomplished by combining an ABM for the initial stage of an outbreak with a model based on differential equations to model larger dissemination patterns at later stages. Alternatively, the ABM is expanded to a global level – the GSAM, for instance, is capable to process up to six billion agents. This is accomplished by a processing and storage architecture that discriminates between active and passive agents (although all agents are kept in a distributed memory architecture): Who are these active agents and why is this an allowable reduction in scope? Consider this analogy: a row of 6 billion contiguous dominoes is given. Some domino (the index case) is toppled, and a contagion of falling dominoes ensues. You wish to simulate the progress of this wave. It would be absurd to loop through the entire list of all 6 billion dominoes at every simulated time-step. Each trip through the list would examine billions of dominoes when only a handful are changing state at any one time. It is far more efficient to maintain a list of active (i.e., falling) dominoes and operate only on this set. (Parker and Epstein, 2011: 5) To track a contagion, the approach abstracts from the calculation of the day-to-day schedules of the agent population. Agent itineraries include

170  Sebastian Vehlken disease update events which ‘move an agent through the natural history of disease and are generated in accordance with the biology of the pathogen being modeled’ (Parker and Epstein, 2011: 7). This individual disease status discriminates between seven states: Dead, Recovered, Susceptible, ­Noncontagious-Asymptomatic, Noncontagious-Symptomatic, ­ContagiousAsymptomatic, and Contagious-Symptomatic (2011: 7). Only the three ­latter categories are considered active, and thus only the itinerary of agents with these states will be generated and modeled. ‘If desired, the list of possible disease states could be expanded. For instance, smallpox comes in four different varieties (ordinary, modified, malignant, and hemorrhagic) and it may prove useful to include this distinction in the list of disease states’ (2011: 7). Nonetheless, for the GSAM to use this set approach, its active agents must be able to determine with whom they will interact. This can rather easily be determined for the case of repeated contacts because agents ‘know whom they interact with on a regular basis. Examples of repeat contacts are intrafamily contacts, contacts between friends, and contacts between coworkers or classmates’ (2011: 5). However, for the incorporation of random contacts into the model, the GSAM falls back upon selecting ‘a properly distributed random agent from the entire population using a ­special probability mass function. The active agent can then ­i nteract with this randomly selected agent, thus completing a random contact’ (2011: 5). In both cases, the simulator is able to zoom into a ‘somewhat indiscernible and not easily comprehensible daily bustle’ (Pias, 2011: 47) – of realistically visualized logistical procedures on the micro level of evacuation simulations in the first case, and of realistic abstractions of a distributed ‘logics’ of disease transmission in the latter. Of vital interest is the sensitivity of the system – explored by a likewise precise determination and analysis of person-to-person transmissions of a disease and its (visual) synthetization in dynamic CGI output models: All of this action can be depicted graphically in real time, as if looking down to the social space from above, watching agents move to and from various social units (homes, schools, workplaces) changing colors as they progress through the phases of disease. (Burke et al., 2006: 1142) ABM epidemics simulations thus give rise to contagious agents in a twofold sense: as the presentation (not representation, since the simulation ­procedures generate outcomes of the interactions in an ‘artificial society’, see e.g. Vehlken, 2011) of the regular and random transmission of contagious diseases, and as the basic functional principle of the ABM paradigm – ­precisely the unforeseeable daily ‘logistical collisions’ of computational agents let emerge the meso- and macro behaviors of discernible assemblages which significantly differ from earlier sociopsychological concepts of crowd

Contagious agents  171 and mass behaviors as well as from mathematical-statistical descriptions of population-level processes. As a consequence: agent-based computer simulations do not only explore the contagious character of a given infectious disease. Instead, they oversee and manage the transmittal aspects of them in the context of their economic, social and health facets as a single, communicative complex. (Pias, 2011: 51)

Conclusion Michel Foucault, in his genealogy of governmentality, referred to different ways in which societies deal with infectious disease. As is known, leprosy stands for the epoch of the ‘great confinement’ of deviants and lunatics in asylums; pestilence for the ‘political dream’ of discipline and of a monitored space; and smallpox for a model that breaks with the image of perfectly monitored and controlled modern societies: On the horizon of this analysis we see instead the image, the idea, or the theme-program of a society in which there is an optimization of systems of difference, in which the field is left open to fluctuating processes, in which minority individuals and practices are tolerated, in which action is brought to bear on the rules of the game rather than on the players, and finally in which there is an environmental type of intervention instead of the internal subjugation of individuals. (Foucault, 2010: 259–60) This form of governmentality, based on statistics and probability, is reflected in the, as Pias calls it, ‘second-order statistics’ of synthetic populations and of the catalog of ABM outbreak scenarios (Pias, 2011: 51). One could state that Foucault’s episteme of smallpox and statistics is a setting to prevent any state of emergency, while with epidemics simulation, the (simulated) state of emergency becomes the normal condition and the mode of operativity. In Foucault, disease and statistical processing exist at the same time and generate a single common future, while in epidemics simulation, a large variety of possible scenarios adapts to all sorts of possible futures. Foucault is interested in probabilities, epidemics simulation in possibilities (see Amoore, 2013). And finally, Foucault’s model is related to prediction, the simulations approach to premediation – to use Richard Grusin’s term. Grusin’s ‘immunologic […] fills the uncertainty of the future with a torrent of mediation’ (Hansen, 2015: 111). Premediation, writes Grusin, is not about getting the future right, but: would in some sense transform the world into a […] computer game which only permits certain moves […] Although […] there are a seemingly infinite number of different possibilities available, only some of

172  Sebastian Vehlken those possibilities are encouraged by the protocols and reward systems built into the game. […] In fact it is precisely the proliferation of competing and often contradictory future scenarios. (Grusin, 2010: 46) The confluence of biological and computational contagion and transmission processes in the emergent socio-physical log(ist)ics of ABM epidemic simulations thus has to be constantly and carefully evaluated in order to secure any relevance beyond Grusin’s notion of premediation as an ‘affective prophylactic’ designed to prevent the experience of traumatic future (2010: 46). This classical garbage in/garbage out question is further complicated by an epistemological situation in which traditional processes of verification and validation do not apply – not least of all, the ABMs are designed to prevent precisely those cases of emergency which they give life to as virtual test cases. Furthermore, and at an even more fundamental level, the question arises as to how the computer-based networks and institutions of contagion management described earlier in this chapter are related to or accounted for in the individualist societal models of ABM epidemics simulation. For other areas of social simulation, it has been convincingly stated that the methodological individualism inherent in ABM leads to a rather trivial understanding of societal ties and functions and that modelers could substantially profit from looking at more refined approaches in social theory (O’Sullivan and Haklay, 2000). Even if this reprehension might less apply when only abstract contact patterns are at stake (and not belief systems or ‘culture’ as, e.g. in the context of Sugarscape), the interplay of institutional levels and the modeling of individual agent behaviors seems to play a crucial role when aiming at realistic scenarios. For what is new in comparison to both ­Foucault’s and Grusin’s categorization is that advanced simulations and their imagery induce novel forms of social feedback. EpiSims developers coined this the PIN problem: People adapt their contact patterns when they perceive a potential threat […]. This will likely result in substantial changes in the social networks that in turn will alter epidemic dynamics. In other words, individual behaviors and the social contact networks that they generate will co-evolve. For brevity we will call the problem of coevolution of Public policy, Individual behavior, and interaction Network the PIN problem. (Barrett et al., 2009: 479) This recursive structure of biological contagion, computational transmission, premediated scenarios, and social feedback is the signature of a contemporary understanding of contagious agents. Against the backdrop of epidemics simulation, it becomes clear that earlier notions of an ICS paradigm have transformed into a vocabulary of quantifiable dynamic contact

Contagious agents  173 and movement patterns which replaces psychosocial mindsets with rather physico-social concepts. However, in the face of the PIN problem, and despite abundant computing resources and enormous agent populations, the remaining question is whether these contagious agents are capable of presenting relevant scenarios, or whether these always will limp after the social dynamics of ‘real’ people – like zombies, no matter fast or slow.

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176  Sebastian Vehlken Vehlken, S. (2012) Zootechnologien. Eine Mediengeschichte der Schwarmforschung. Zurich and Berlin: Diaphanes. Vehlken, S. (2014) ‘After Affects. Zealous Zombies, Panic Prevention, Crowd Simulation’, in M. L. Angerer, B. Bösel, and M. Ott (eds.), The Timing of Affect (pp. 303–20). Zurich and Berlin: Diaphanes. Wasserman, S., and Faust, K. (1994) Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Part IV

Looking back to look ahead Rethinking individuality and the social

10 Unpacking i-c-s Montaigne and the project of the self David Toews

In solitude be to thyself a throng. – Tibullus

What would it mean for social theory if imitation, contagion, and ­suggestion – put on the table for scientific debate by Gabriel Tarde (1903) – suddenly became widely recognized as fundamental social facts? Inasmuch as the first casualties would be the dominance of such notions as rational choice, purposive social action, social system, and upstanding sociability, a number of effects could be envisaged. Social theorists would suddenly have to embrace a broader concept of collective reality. Since imitation, contagion, and suggestibility are not always about reproducing and are just as frequently about dissolving the illusions of rational choices, purposive actions, systematized social bonds, and even sociability (especially the upstanding sociability Simmel (1949) links with the reinforcement of social bonds), theorists serious about such phenomena would be forced to examine and reevaluate the myriad phenomena of passivity and unsociability. Sociologists would undoubtedly discover that they need to find ways to incorporate these erstwhile rabbit-holed enemies of the sociological imagination into their social-ontological musings. A need to recognize all the facts that had been gathering in the seething dark corners of social life beyond the view of sociologists of the sunny side of society would rapidly assert itself. We are not there yet. But are we not rapidly approaching such a day? Has not the fusion of computing and social networks created a new paradigm of imitation, contagion, and suggestion? It has reseated the world on a platform of digital media in which information about anything and everything is copied indefinitely. Imitation, contagion, and suggestion are now computerized and data is everything. Does science itself not support this ­socio-technological explosion with its never-ending microscopic distinctions and refinements? Is it not attacked precisely for this apparent alliance with difference (Toews, 2013)? The revival of Gabriel Tarde has served to unearth the circumstances and some of the reasons for the repression of his social scientific cosmology

180  David Toews (Candea, 2010; Toews, 2003). It is probably about time that contemporary Tardian thinkers connect with standard sociological categories, and one area that this section of this volume acknowledges needs to be addressed is the extent and nature of Tarde’s view of the self. In my opinion such a question can fruitfully involve unpacking the elements of affect related to so-called passivity and unsociability, namely imitation, contagion, and suggestion, in a variety of historical sources that resonate with his approach to his analysis of the universe (see Tarde, 2000). In this chapter, I unearth a Renaissance-era archive of these elements of affect, one that later, during the Enlightenment was sealed over like a tomb. This archive I have culled from a reading of the Essays of Michel de Montaigne (Montaigne, 1943). In short, I am going to read Montaigne from a kind of grave-robbing, Tardian point of view. But to be clear, the aim here is not in a presentist mode to ‘discover’ all of Tarde’s ideas in Montaigne. On the contrary my objective is to discover Montaigne, as a textual subject, as best as I can make ‘him’ out, that is, the difference of the life that is described in his Essays and the arguments we find therein that explicitly seek to elevate life to a practice of writing, and the very interesting and perhaps still relevant conundrums for textuality and praxis that all of this reveals. The point is not to ‘discover’ a ‘theory of self’ in Montaigne that can be imported into Tardian theory, but rather to hark back to an earlier time in order to illuminate what it might take to finally sever the self from the Cartesian fairy tale of an individual substance that is unproblematically mediated by flesh and blood. The phenomena that help to reveal this in Montaigne’s texts – imitation, contagion, and suggestion – I will thus frame in lower case: i-c-s. The lowercase letters signal that we have here the beginnings of a direct relation between these three terms but that at the same time there is no call here to present the history of i-c-s in terms of some kind of triumphalist, ‘return-of-the-repressed’ narrative. If anything, the relation between the self and i-c-s has today only become more complex and fraught.

Montaigne and uncertainty All of Montaigne’s writing revolved around the emerging theme of individuality. Charles Taylor has identified Montaigne as a key transitional figure in the praxis of the modern self (1989). Philosophers such as Descartes had put forward that any search for certainty in a changing, newly scientific world logically ought to entail the presence of a substantial permanent subjectivity which can be deduced and clarified employing philosophical introspection. In a dubious logic that was assailed and largely disproven by the empiricist philosophers, Descartes linked his concept of substantial subjectivity with the thinking, judging, feeling self. Contrasting Descartes with Montaigne, Taylor asserts that the latter instead developed a form of writing that explores the uncertainty of his experiences. According to Taylor, Montaigne’s aim is ‘to identify the individual in his or her unrepeatable difference’

Unpacking i-c-s: Montaigne  181 (1989: 182). Montaigne’s Essays are thus ‘the point of origin of another kind of modern individualism’ (Taylor, 1989: 182). In his use of Montaigne to offer an implicit critique of Descartes, then, Taylor assumes that individual difference is manifested as unrepeatable singularity. This assumption that such a logic must be manifested in a living breathing human – is this not in a strange way a repetition of Descartes’ (1993) error of assuming that the logic of the cogito must be manifested in the embodied self (as opposed, for example, to simply in the writing or the text)? To be sure, the historical flesh and blood individual is not equated by Taylor with an eternal thinking, judging, feeling substance but instead with a socalled unrepeatable difference. However, is not the notion of unrepeatable difference here merely a naïve kind of negation of Cartesian substance? For it must be remembered that what makes Descartes’s substance of the ‘I’ in theory eternal and self-certain is not that it is repeatable. Its substantiality is rather rooted in a kind of proto-modern notion of causality that something cannot be caused by nothing, or just by itself. There must be something doing all this thinking, judging, and feeling, Descartes muses: something that cannot be reduced away to nothing: a substance (1993). In his conception, Descartes’ substance is precisely that which is not repeated – it is that which is permanent and always there like a never-changing ghost within all the repeated efforts at thinking, judging, and feeling. This is a very non-Montaignian thought for sure. Montaigne was interested in all of the thinking, judging, and feeling of the human being: the parts, precisely that are repeated again and again, the observation of which makes the fledgling sociologist in us wonder why. He was not interested in negating a chimerical Cartesian substance, or philosophy at all for that matter. But if Montaigne could perhaps be likened to a kind of sociologist of the self avant-la-lettre, against the naïve notion of rugged ‘unrepeatable’ individualism, he was not the typical kind of modern sociologist who is used to making generalizations based on what is repeated in our behavior. It is the notion of difference in which Montaigne sought to ground himself that is created by what is repeated (in his thinking, judging, and feeling). What is repeated is used not for generalization but strictly as a basis for lessons of avoidance and cautionary tales based on actual experiences.

The difference and repetition of solitude The differences that repetition make possible are a key theme for Montaigne, the functions of which in his texts can indeed be read as adding up to one specific archive of what has been termed the non-sociological ground of sociology (Toews, 2010). In Tarde, and later in Deleuze, we find a similar theme that repetitions serve to give shape to differences rather than vice versa, and similar attempts at archiving what Deleuze will call assemblages of enunciation (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987; see also Toews, 2018). As readers of Tarde know, Tarde, in contrast, had enough faith in his premise that

182  David Toews he attempted to apply his dictum to something resembling a positive social analysis (Tarde, 2012). But if positivism seeks out supposedly stable truths, Tarde’s method of analysis traces out what imitations and convergences of imitations in societies serve to invent, not merely reproduce, therein, and everything, from this discerning point of view, is a society (Tarde, 1903). There is a good deal in common between Deleuze’s post-structuralism (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987) and Tarde’s kaleidoscopic science-cosmology (2000), as Deleuze well knew, much of which is fruitful – though I do not think it takes away from Deleuze and Tarde unfairly to say that some of their offerings are too ingenious to be useful in normal social science. They were – or at least Deleuze was – seeking to uproot normal social science just as Montaigne confronted the court of his day. Yet in both Deleuze and Tarde the theme of difference preceding repetition is spun into comparatively exotic proportions that encompass not merely sociological but the widest cosmological as well as smallest rhizomatic implications for such associative phenomena. In contrast, Montaigne is very non-exotic. He restricts his discussion to the mundane events of his own life. Therein lies a certain insight that sociologists, seeking to apply Tardian and Deleuzian theories, can perhaps learn from. Sociability, for example, is a regular topic of Montaigne’s reflections: he tells us ‘I am all in the open and in full view, born for company and friendship’ (Montaigne, 1943: 203). He likens sociability to a kind of repetitive ‘dance’ (1943: 93). And yet, he advocates solitude ‘in the midst of the dance’ (1943: 93). The inclination to solitude, he argues, does not attest to some kind of universal inner conflict between being solitary and being active. Rather, it is rooted in a feeling of being repulsed by certain behaviors observed in oneself and others. He is primarily concerned about the worldly perils of over-ambition and the intuition of losing oneself therein (1943: 93). Solitude, even within practices that continue within the context of such behaviors, is the key to escaping from their perils. The key is not separation or an externalizing taking of distance or even an overt change of behavior. The trick of solitude is to hold to the self amid the myriad distractions and repetitions. As a result, a constant, repeated theme in Montaigne’s Essays is the danger of certain kinds of association that might threaten this possibility. Thus, the full meaning of solitude as a key tactic in Montaigne’s praxis is illuminated – both in terms of what is inscribed and what is prescribed in his texts. Solitude for Montaigne is not about ‘restraining and shortening my steps, but my desires and my care, abandoning solicitude for outside things’ (1943: 203). Paradoxically, his version of solitude does not mean becoming intensely private. If he is alone, he is alone together, in a rich way, with others: ‘solitude of place, to tell the truth, rather makes me stretch and expand outward; I throw myself into affairs of state and into the world more readily when I am alone’ (1943: 203). The early ‘founders’ of sociology such as Emile Durkheim (1982) and George Simmel (1971) in

Unpacking i-c-s: Montaigne  183 a later generation would not be able to appreciate this kind of praxis: they will speak of the crowd as overwhelming the individual, producing blasé automatons. For Montaigne, to the contrary, ‘the crowd drives me back to myself’ (1943: 203). Indeed, Montaigne is blunt: ‘I never entertain myself so madly, licentiously, and privately as in places full of respect and ceremonious prudence’ (1943: 203). He explains: ‘our follies do not make me laugh, our wisdom does’ (1943: 203). This is a subtle comment, but one that reveals much about his approach to life. The individual self is paramount because it is capable not of espousing, but rather escaping, received forms of wisdom. No form of wisdom should be permitted to stand in the face of the capability of the individual to discern and appreciate the nature of difference as fundamental to all forms of associations, relations, and logic. The self must strive to accept the follies of existence and its various endeavors while espousing a certain humility mixed with joy at the contingency of life.

The conundrum of crowds Now a key context for the bringing together of the elements of i-c-s is thus identified by Montaigne: the conundrum of what crowds represent in relation to the self that struggles to enjoy a unique life. The self must distinguish itself, and escape, from the crowd. Yet the crowd presents the key opportunity for this process of individuation. If there were no crowds, the self could never know itself as an urbane individual along the lines of Montaigne’s self-descriptions. Crowds thus represent both a valued and needed opportunity and an ever-present danger. The ‘hustle and bustle of the world’ is an environment rife with ‘ambition and avarice’ (Montaigne, 1943: 93), for the crowd is a place in which many people converge around the objective of gaining ‘private profit from the public’ (1943: 93). The public nature of crowds is not what Montaigne objects to about crowds, he is rather concerned about the phenomenon in which people can get carried away with the idea that they are serving the public when they are in truth serving themselves. The notion that there are spoils to be gained from civic duty – ‘the titles, the offices’ (Montaigne, 1943: 93) – is not a new idea of course. However, for Montaigne to link this with crowd behavior is indeed new. Cautionary images of crowd behavior flourished in political discourse tasked with conceptualizing the democratic polity in the Enlightenment era during the build-up to the French Revolution and its violent aftermath (Borch, 2012:  24). Thus, Montaigne anticipates one of the key themes of political modernity. Political theorists from the Enlightenment onward generally sought to understand and support a knowledge of the state and good governance; consequences for the care of the self have to be teased out of their writings, as does any appreciation of crowd behavior more sophisticated than mere denunciation.

184  David Toews

Imitation as selective But it is nevertheless illuminating and crucial since crowd behavior forms the context for what could be termed, admittedly somewhat anachronistically, Montaigne’s social psychology of the self. On the surface, there is a certain paradox here: the self is formed in the imitation of the styles of many others who are thus in a sense models of behavior (Montaigne, 1943: 136), yet the self that is forged by the multitude of these sources should not make a display of offering itself for imitation by others as if that is what would be required for self-validation (1943: 169). ‘All my hope is in myself’ he tells us, yet immediately notes that this idea is ‘(Imitated from Terence)’ (1943: 244). The imitation of others is meant to influence aspects, certain ideas: parts of persons, not whole persons. Extrapolating from this, we can imagine a smile, a laugh, a quirk of behavior, a sentiment, an idea, an aphorism: particularities such as these are what is imitated. Interpreted as a kind of social-­ psychological theory of the self, this principle of partial, selective imitation has advantages. Limiting one’s aim to imitating the particular in a person allows for imitation to take place over broad swathes of time and place. Montaigne’s imitations of ancient writers are a key aspect of his writing, of his search for the good of human behavior. He does not, by any means, seek to copy any of his sources in all they do. Striving to imitate a whole person in every aspect of their behavior would be counter to the aim of a singular unique life but imitating a wide variety of different aspects of different people is altogether a different matter. Thus, we can see in what respect a crowd can be understood as a stimulant for Montaigne. Danger lies in imitation that is too concentrated on single individuals, yet single individuals need crowds from which to gather interesting and new data to be copied. This advantage of living in proximity to crowds, however, is immediately qualified by a serious complication: the ugly prospect of assimilating unwanted elements. A naïve view of such a situation might imagine an individual here being influenced to accept immoral or illegal aspects of behavior in the crowd; one further imagines that it may be possible to simply fight off these unwanted influences with one’s willpower. This imagined test is indeed for many the fulcrum of morality and culpability; she who seems to succeed in the test seems to shine with a halo. Due to his vociferous animosity toward the product of such fantasies, that is, the moral holier-than-thou personality, Montaigne’s view of this conundrum is quite different. The test for him is not whether one can rise above the crowd, but rather whether one can resist the temptation to hate the crowd and all its sources of so-called immorality, which of course is tantamount to hating the majority of humanity one is surrounded with on a daily basis. As he puts it ‘both these things are dangerous: to resemble them, because they are many; and to hate many of them, because they are unlike’ (Montaigne, 1943: 94, emphasis added). The hatred of the immoral leads swiftly and inevitably to the hatred of difference. A conundrum indeed for a new age.

Unpacking i-c-s: Montaigne  185 This is why the crowd is ‘dangerous’ (Montaigne, 1943: 93). Some people shun crowds because they fear assimilating unwanted elements; the notion of ‘germs’ becomes understood in terms of an intuitive social epidemiology. For Montaigne, in contrast, it is this practice of shunning crowds that is itself equally if not more dangerous. A problem equal to getting sick is the production of a fear of the sick, a production of a mentality of hating the sick. The danger here is the potential confusion of wellness with a life lived with a prophylactic of morality. Contact with others, including in crowd situations, is risky but nonetheless essential for the good life.

Contagion as ‘the love of crowds that is within us’ The crowd, then, is important for the development of the self, yet as something potentially fearsome it poses a danger to one’s solidarity with humanity. It is at the same time the source of the problem of the second figure of i-c-s, namely, ‘contagion’ (Montaigne, 1943: 93). Contagion in Montaigne’s thought is not merely the spread of something – an idea, a meme – passively due to simple proximity or contact with a medium. Nor is contagion a mere synonym for imitation, for example, the mass imitation of a look, an idea, or a sound etc. Inasmuch as looks, ideas, sounds, and so forth are imitated by many, they are immediately imbued with a moral aspect. A brief contrast here between Simmel and Tarde may be instructive. Many generations after Montaigne, at the end of the nineteenth century Simmel argued that the lower classes imitate the fashions of the upper classes, therefore, the upper classes to preserve their unique status must change their styles every so often: imitation is a working-class-based element of a cycle of behavior that is manifested in cultural phenomena such as fashion (1972: 294–323). In contrast, Tarde argued that imitation is universal among all people (1903: 3). The contrast of Tarde’s point to Simmel’s view is subtle but decisive. Simmel couched his analysis in sociological terms but the implication of his argument is nevertheless classist: that imitation and kitsch are things that characterize the lower classes, while the upper classes instead tend to value originality and authenticity. Tarde’s point is not to deny the existence of classes and statuses but his dictum that all people engage in imitation casts them in a different light. Inasmuch as modernization leads to the omnipresence of the conundrum of crowds and the need for distance from crowds the universal process of imitation produces an opportunity for originality and authenticity for those with the resources to escape from crowds, or more precisely, to move back and forth between the crowd and a point of relative distant safety. As Montaigne puts it, ‘it is not that the wise man cannot live anywhere content, yes, and alone in a palace crowd; but if he has the choice, says he, he will flee even the sight of it’ (1943: 94). Contagion, for Tarde and Montaigne, is not something to be controlled by those who would pretend to set themselves up as superior to the crowds in which it flourishes. Rather, crowds are necessary for the modern personality

186  David Toews to emerge, so the solution to the conundrum is that the danger of contagion of hating the collectivity of people and being dehumanized in that way must be mitigated by such individuals by their rendering of their practices of imitation more aware and more self-conscious. Montaigne’s work is not an exercise in painting a one-sided portrait of himself. It is an exercise in analyzing and making more aware and conscious his practices of the self. Classes and the self-justifying moralities and the ideologies they spawn are real phenomena but do not completely determine the shaping of the personality, as there is always an opportunity, in some way, to resist them. The path of resistance is escape in a certain stillness and attitudinal solitude, not willpower. It requires resources, but the scope and nature of such resources of this kind of internal escape can be defined by the individuals who are escaping. That is why the scene of culture, today, is often composed of a number of individuals who escape a crowd together by temporarily forming another crowd. It would be perverse, for example, to define the punk movement for example as a wholly ‘new conformity’. Rather, it often consists of individuals who gather into crowds for the sake of smashing into each other, known as slam-dancing (Dale, 2016). There is simultaneously a camaraderie and an anger. As Montaigne put it, ‘there is nothing so unsociable and so sociable as man; one by his vice, the other by his nature’ (Montaigne, 1943: 94). It is as if, with such unsociable physical practices, punks smash into the sides of each other that represent the public morality they despise. At their best, the individuals who use the movement to deconstruct the schooled public morality within themselves, thus create a freeing energy that becomes sociable in a different way than the public morality as it makes possible multiple simultaneous escapes (Dale, 2016: 1). The resources of such escapes are ‘doit-yourself’; they do not in themselves merely define a subculture or class. In a conservative gathering looks, sounds, and ideas are imitated by many, whereas in a punk gathering they are imitated by individuals. Alone but together, imitation is bent to an end that is very different and dispels – indeed confronts – the danger of fascistic contagion. As Montaigne put is wherefore it is not enough to have gotten away from the crowd, it is not enough to move; we must get away from the love of crowds that is within us, we must sequester ourselves and regain possession of ourselves. (1943: 96)

Suggestion as self-regulation Montaigne’s writing, anticipating such tendencies and needs of the modern personality, thus represents a very early form of practice of the self in which imitation and contagion are linked together but in a manner that is not yet conflated. If imitation is the practice of the individual copying aspects of others, contagion represents the risk of imitation becoming so intense and

Unpacking i-c-s: Montaigne  187 uncontrolled that a risk is posed of having to break off and lose contact with others. The figure that completes this dynamic is the third aspect of i-c-s, namely, suggestion. Whereas imitation receives copies of aspects of others suggestion gives copies of aspects of oneself to others. People, left ‘all alone’ without social interaction or education, are merely ‘shapeless masses and lumps of flesh’ (Montaigne, 1943: 3). We must ‘subject’ the mind ‘and sow it with certain seeds for our service’ (1943: 3). Suggestion passes on looks, ideas, sounds, and so forth. Today suggestion is generally thought of as a method of controlling others, putting ideas in their heads and so forth. Montaigne also sees suggestion as a method of control, but there is no sense in his writing of the control of others. Rather, he is concerned with suggestion as a method of control of the self. This is not just in terms of the role of suggestion in education, but also in self-regulation. Because the mind assimilates so many ideas, sounds and so forth from others it is often too prone to use the latter for imaginative constructions – ‘mad and idle fancies’ (Montaigne, 1943: 3) – that have no outlet. Montaigne contrasts a young mind with a mature mind, claiming, contrary to popular belief, that the mature mind, ‘having become heavier’ (1943: 4) is in fact more vulnerable to this problem than the young mind: ‘like a runaway horse, it gives itself a hundred times more trouble’ (1943: 4). But it is possible to control these effects of the mind. The mind that is experienced with many impressions and thoughts ‘gives birth to so many chimeras and fantastic monsters’ that in order to control them ‘I have begun to put them in writing, hoping in time to make even my mind ashamed of them’ (1943: 4). Montaigne thus recommends writing as a practice of suggestion.

I-c-s as practices of the self The aim of Montaigne’s practice of writing, then, is not to influence or manipulate the thoughts and feelings of others. Rather, he describes a process of controlling one’s own thoughts and feelings. This fits with his view of imitation and contagion. Imitation, contagion, and suggestion are methods for the individual to effect a vital communion with, or at least transmission within, society. While the first two operate in a receptive-accumulative mode, suggestion is distinct in its function for Montaigne. It not only recapitulates and passes on data that is received but more profoundly it also acts as a form of self-regulation that prevents undue damage to the self from the gradually encroaching dangers of senility caused by the heavy accumulation of experiences over time combined with idleness at the end of one’s years. In Montaigne, then, the writing and the praxis of the self is not intended as a glorification of individualism. He fully recognizes the dependency of individuals on the contexts of their social relations. He even argues it is necessary to submit oneself to socialization in order to flourish as an individual. But his model of socialization strives for placing the control of this process in the seat of power of the individual. This is the essence of why

188  David Toews Montaigne’s writing involves identifying and bringing together the elements of i-c-s. These are not fixed ideas in Montaigne’s mind, but rather must be teased out from his texts and arguments. If done correctly, this can firm up and illuminate Montaigne’s unique version of the care of the self. Montaigne’s writing gives us a clue to the pivotal moment of humanism in which i-c-s existed, for a brief time, as a conscious and open-ended problematique before it became a philosophical anthropological black box. Humanism in the renaissance shows us a window of time, not when individuals were able to emerge as rugged islands unto themselves, ready to fight each other to the death as Hobbes (2008) imagined, as much as a time when i-c-s was unhinged from religious authoritarian control, thus becoming a new playground for renaissance projects of self-fashioning. The unsociability that the practice of i-c-s involved was not yet defined as competitiveness, or rather, the jealous and other intense emotions that it seemed to bring to the surface of social life were still construed as qualities that could be managed within the project of the self. This renaissance project of the self was not seen as inherently antisocial. Solitude was indeed seen by Montaigne as a modality of social responsibility.

The conflation of i-c-s as natural passions I-c-s was first packaged together in a conflated way by Enlightenment thinkers who were far more oriented to systematic thought than their Renaissance humanist forbears. For Kant, ‘what seems complex and chaotic in the single individual’ can be shown to be going ‘toward a natural but to each of them unknown goal’ (Rorty and Schmidt, 2009: 11). His sentiment indeed kicked off a long preoccupation in philosophy with supposedly hidden dialectical laws of historical progression that one finds in Hegel and Marx and those influenced by them. In Enlightenment discourse, i-c-s became ‘absurd’ (Kant, 1987: 318), an embarrassment that was always threatening to unravel neat systems of thought. This viewpoint particularly characterized thinkers such as Kant, who wished, as he put it, ‘to see if he can discover a natural purpose in this idiotic course of things human’ (Rorty and Schmidt, 2009: 11). Imitation is judged harshly. It is linked by Kant to the ‘compulsion to let ourselves be led slavishly by the mere example that many in society give us’ (Kant, 2006: 143). Such a weakness allows to flourish in human beings our ‘manias for honor, for domination and for possession’ (2006: 170; original emphasis), that is to say, our propensity to want to gain the upper hand over others. While the manias for domination and possession are self-explanatory, ‘mania for honor’ is not merely a desire to look important and reputable to others but refers further to a human vanity and vulnerability to flattery that people regularly seek to exploit in order to influence their opinions (2006: 170). The idea of suggestion would not be named as such until the advent of modern psychology but is nevertheless present here in Kant’s thought as a figure of control. He also

Unpacking i-c-s: Montaigne  189 saw it as a capacity endowed on us by nature. Kant’s viewpoint is not merely ethical but naturalistic: such exploitations of others are not just tactics that some people employ but are rather universal tendencies rooted in human nature. Human beings are ‘naturally lazy’ (2006: 175). In the absence of using reason we are prone to manias. Manias are behaviors that purportedly spread like contagions because we all have passions. All of these supposed weaknesses related to i-c-s are packaged together by Kant into the category of natural human ‘passions’ (Kant, 2006: 171), which is then contrasted with our redeeming category of rational faculties. It is possible that Kant’s strategy here is, in part, to give the notion of the transcendence of the human condition that was rooted in theology a new meaning rooted in reason. Like many, if not all religions, Christian theology had developed the theme of self-sacrifice as its way of describing the praxis of worldly transcendence; Nietzsche described so-called self-sacrifice as merely a new form of power that denies it is power and is henceforth dangerous (Nietzsche, 2012). Kant had already anticipated this. ‘Direction from another’ becomes Kant’s watchword for describing what was in his view merely an ersatz form of the transcendence of the human condition offered by the authority of established religion (Kant, 2009: 1). Any form of knowledge in the community that circulates by means of influence, imitation, suggestion, or contagion is a mere concession to our primitive tendency to mania that is supremely exploitable. Yet religion and theology during Kant’s time were declining in authority. Obviously, the decline of the control of religion did not evince a decline in i-c-s. Thus, i-c-s – the passions – had to be defined as a part of nature.

Political consequences in the Enlightenment era In being conflated and defined as irrational passion i-c-s was now assumed to be virtually a unified thing and was given a reputation as being a moral threat to individual subjectivity and something that needs to be repressed in order to uphold the social contract of individuals in civil society. In the fledgling United States of America James Madison confronted the problem of factions that threatened to pull the new nation-state down to the level of the manias of human nature. For Adam Smith (1981) specialization was nature’s plan, and Madison concurred that ‘the latent causes of faction are sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society’ (Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, 2014: 41). For Madison the natural setting of human affairs is activity and diversity, and, as with Smith, it is by observing human endeavors and enterprises that one can observe human nature. As with Kant, human nature was seen as a problem to transcend with reason. As natural phenomena, the human tendency toward factionalism cannot be eliminated but can be transcended. It is as if the scale of the challenge for achieving this in the US – forging a more perfect union both politically

190  David Toews and socially – mirrored and was warranted by the vast scale of the problem taken as a global human condition. For Enlightenment and early American political thinkers, the natural setting of human affairs is activity and diversity – the kernel of an idea from Renaissance Humanism – but the inevitable specializations and factions that arise must be diffused and calmed. This stress on activity as the defining feature of humanity marginalizes all sorts of contemplation, meditation, and spiritualisms of various kinds that were the premodern ways of addressing problems of care. Madison argued that only a modern large-scale polity can accommodate and handle the explosion of energies that were presumed to emanate from the black box of i-c-s; he could not have anticipated how this would in fact represent an unleashing of state activism under the guise of calm governmentality. From the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries i-c-s comes to be seen as a primitive nature of human sociality that needs less to be repressed as transcended via morality to reach a higher, modern sociality. Prior to this period, the Hobbesian (2008) framing of social responsibility had involved essentially a separation of the social from nature in terms of the distinction of the figure of authority; it was Kant who laid down with the greatest precision the ground for the rise, in contrast, of biology, that is, evolutionism and naturalism, to reconstrue the social as natural, albeit no longer as simultaneously moral. What Montaigne had referred to as solitude, along with a number of other problems of care that had problematically bridged individuals and society, vanishes as a modality of social responsibility.

The impoverishment of sociology If imitation, contagion, and suggestion are to be unpacked and theorized as a discursive repertoire of the formation of the social sciences, then they must be unpacked against a background of political theory that views them as indistinct, nebulous sources of propaganda and mystification, a project of rhetorical packaging of the sources of so-called false consciousness. ­A lberto Toscano frames i-c-s plainly, and Gabriel Tarde as its alleged progenitor, when he claims ‘it was precisely Tarde’s notion that men could have ideas suggested to them and believe that they were their own spontaneous productions’ (2007: 610). Toscano is situated within a tradition of sociologically oriented critical theory in which a negative perception of i-c-s is a key aspect of the theme of the selling-out of Enlightenment ideals by powerful government, industry, and scholarly actors. As Marcuse put it, there arises in the twentieth century a ‘language of total administration’ which is characterized by a phenomenon in which ‘the elements of autonomy, discovery, demonstration, and critique recede before designation, assertion, and imitation’ (Marcuse, 2006: 88). In a more pedestrian voicing of this view, in the 1930s sociologists as prominent as Herbert Blumer berated the industry of cinema, arguing that its presentations were likely to seduce children

Unpacking i-c-s: Montaigne  191 into an unmediated relationship with visual information, undoing the literary learning they had received which supposedly, in contrast, cultivates a more critical disposition (1976). Blumer was following a commonsense opinion that received regular expression against the new media of those days (Starker, 1989). The target of the ire that has been directed at i-c-s in history on the grounds of social and/or moral values is both an obstacle and instructive. It has perhaps been concentrated in purest form in the one discipline that originally tried to bill itself as strictly confined to the intimate study of society. As if such a task were essential to proving the value of their profession, early sociologists were, ironically, really the only scientists of any kind to attribute much importance to ‘the dark side of modern society’ (Borch, 2012: 15). It was as if their aim was to discover a form of association so corrupt and subject to the vicissitudes of unprincipled variation and change that it could serve as the essential criteria for everything that modern society is not, or should not, be. The sociologists targeting i-c-s primarily converged around the notion of the crowd, as the key rationale for raising then dismissing i-c-s. As Borch has shown, by focusing on the sociological discourse of the crowd it is indeed possible to identify an alternate, darker history of sociology, a history of the repression of the other of the rational public-minded society it sought to valorize (2012). His work shows how, like i-c-s, the crowd was packed into a philosophical-anthropological black box which was then placed on display alongside cautionary tales in a manner that made it seem like a static entity easily avoidable in favor of the true subject matters of sociology.

Conclusion I-c-s, then, refers to a conceptual conflation rooted in fears of the powers of the masses. The heroic individual that from the Enlightenment onward is often counter-posed to the masses is thus also a product of this conflation. Unpacking i-c-s serves as a means to trouble the notion of the modern individual as conceived in modern social and political discourse and to delve deeper into the problems of the self. For it requires probing the meanings of i-c-s that pre-existed modern sociological and political discourse. As we have seen, i-c-s was packaged together by Enlightenment thinkers in a tendentious way aimed at supporting their theories of individual responsibility. Imitation, contagion, and suggestion were reduced to the same category of simple, natural human passions. Human passions were conceived as backward and resistant to the modern rational mindset required for individuals to rise above their ‘self-incurred immaturity’. As imitation, contagion, and suggestion work within the context of crowds, we have also added to our understanding of how the oversimplified, black-boxed conceptions of the crowd that proliferated in sociology were another consequence of the formation of the conflated figure of i-c-s.

192  David Toews As we have seen, the inner workings of this conflation are laid bare by comparing the criteria of individual responsibility of social and political theorists of the Enlightenment era such as Kant and Madison with their Renaissance humanist sources. This chapter has demonstrated that Michel de Montaigne, as much if not more than any other thinker, explored and problematized in his writings the freedom of individual subjectivity. His work goes beyond Cartesian presuppositions by revealing important differences between the presumptive flesh and blood individual and the textual and writing practices of the self. The manner in which Montaigne identifies and brings together the elements of imitation, contagion, and suggestion, discussing their risks and dangers, but also showing their necessity in the fashioning of the self, is the key to his conception of the self that he practiced in his writing.

References Blumer, H. (1976) Movies and Conduct. New York: Arno Press. Borch, C. (2012) The Politics of Crowds: An Alternative History of Sociology. ­Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Candea, M. (ed.) (2010) The Social after Gabriel Tarde: Debates and Assessments. London and New York: Routledge. Dale, P. (2016) Anyone Can Do It: Empowerment, Tradition and the Punk Underground. London and New York: Routledge. Deleuze, G., and Guattari, F. (1987) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press. Descartes, R. (1993) Meditations on First Philosophy: In Which the Existence of God and the Distinction of the Soul from the Body Are Demonstrated. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company. Durkheim, E. (1982) Rules of Sociological Method. New York: Free Press. Hamilton, A., Madison, J., and Jay, J. (2014) The Federalist Papers. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications. Hobbes, T. (2008) Leviathan. Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks. Kant, I. (1987) Critique of Judgment, trans. W. S. Pluhar. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing. ­ ambridge Kant, I. (2006) Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Cambridge: C University Press. ­ enguin Kant, I. (2009) An Answer To the Question: What Is Enlightenment? London: P University Press. Marcuse, H. (2006) One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society. London and New York: Routledge. Montaigne, M. de (1943) Selected Essays. New York: W. J. Black. Nietzsche, F. W. (2012) The Anti-Christ, trans. H. L. Mencken. New York: Cosimo Books. Rorty, A., and Schmidt, J. (eds.) (2009) Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan aim: A Critical Guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Simmel, G. (1949) ‘The Sociology of Sociability’, American Journal of Sociology 55(3): 254–61.

Unpacking i-c-s: Montaigne  193 Simmel, G. (1971) ‘The Metropolis and Mental Life’, in D. N. Levine (ed.), On Individuality and Social Forms (pp. 409–24). Chicago, IL and London: University Of Chicago Press. Simmel, G. (1972) Georg Simmel on Individuality and Social Forms. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Smith, A. (1981) An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund. Starker, S. (1989) Evil Influences: Crusades against the Mass Media. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Tarde, G. (1903) The Laws of Imitation. New York: H. Holt and company. Tarde, G. (2000) Social Laws: An Outline of Sociology. Kitchener, ON: Batoche Books. Tarde, G. (2012) Monadology and Sociology, trans. T. Lorenc. Melbourne: Re.press. Taylor, C. (1989) Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Toews, D. (2003) ‘The New Tarde: Sociology after the End of the Social’, Theory, Culture & Society 20(5): 81–98. Toews, D. (2010) ‘Tarde and Durkheim and the Non-Sociological Ground of Sociology’, in M. Candea (ed.), The Social After Gabriel Tarde: Debates and Assessments (pp. 80–93). London and New York: Routledge. Toews, D. (2013) ‘Tarde’s Sociology of Difference: Its Classical Roots and Contemporary Meanings’, Journal of Classical Sociology 13(3): 393–401. Toews, D. (2018) Social Life and Political Life in the Era of Digital Media: Higher Diversities. London and New York: Routledge. Toscano, A. (2007) ‘Powers of Pacification: State and Empire in Gabriel Tarde’, Economy and Society 36(4): 597–613.

11 The reactive Social experiences of surface and depth Andrea Mubi Brighenti

Introduction: a return on relationalism Imitation, suggestion and contagion are all diffusive phenomena that globally affect social ensembles in a dynamic way. These events typically occur inside and throughout compositions of associated members – what we may also call a social multiplicity, or an ensemble of consociates. From this perspective, diffusive phenomena are like waves that sail through such multiplicities, sometimes smoothly, at other times like sudden upsurges. In other words, we have an intuitive sense that, as a result of mimetic phenomena, something spreads around within a social multiplicity, although we don’t know how to precisely conceptualize that ‘something’ – least, how to describe the moment when it is passed on from one to another. The metaphor of the wave, in particular, points toward the intimate connection of the social parts being taken within an overall movement of diffusion. The social bond in its purest and simplest realization is at stake here; in fact, what is entailed in imitation, suggestion and contagion is a social ‘nexus’ that flows through the individuals as well as the group, inextricably joining the parts and the whole. To order to clarify this nexus, it could be interesting to probe how globally diffusive events such as for instance a specific mood spreading through a crowd, or the trivial practice of ‘liking’ or ‘retweeting’ a social media content one has just read, look like from the perspective of the parts involved. This amounts to interrogating how the individuals belonging, taking part in, or entering those ensembles get a first-hand experience of imitation, suggestion and contagion. My hypothesis is that, in order to tackle this question, we may benefit from de-familiarizing commonsensical notions of individuality and narrow psychological modeling of the individual. One way to do so – at least, the way that will be attempted in these pages – is to zoom in onto the notions of action and reaction as they intersect individual life at the moment when it joins social life – that is, the existence of social multiplicities. The verb ‘intersect’, in particular, may help to emphasize how the individual seems to feature as simultaneously a source and a point of application of action and reaction.

The reactive  195 The notion of reaction, in particular, has been quite discredited in sociology. In the introduction to this volume, Christian Borch has well reconstructed Weber’s dismissal of imitation as being ‘merely reactive’ and not quite counting as proper social action, although his thoughts on the matter seem to have never been conclusive. As suggested by the editor himself, this chapter can be read as an attempt to image how individuality, sociality, and interaction might have been conceived of if sociology had not uncritically followed Weber’s conceptual scheme with its opposition of active action and passive reaction. In twentieth-century sociology, the paradigm of interaction has asserted itself as a way to grapple with the complex loops of action and reaction that contradistinguish what happens in social ensembles. It is important to remark, however, that interaction is a way of considering such complexes of actions and reactions that abstains from deciding what is causing what, and which is a means to which end. The prism of interaction is very cautious and avoids proclaiming any causal connection, so that the distinction between the source and the point of application remains undecided. This is why anyone looking strictly for causal nexuses will find the Solomonic notion of interaction to be a very tricky tool. Certainly, once we break down interaction into connections of action and reaction, we are left with but the two halves of a single puzzle. In other words, the puzzle to be faced is actually relational, and only a thinking of relations may help to advance into it. Yet, instead of positing the relational as an article of faith – a veritable Kantian synthetic a priori judgment – it could be interesting to observe how the relational emerges from within, and establishes itself between, the social parts at stake (which are themselves in the process of being constituted by the experience). De-familiarizing commonsensical notions of individuality thus ultimately offers a way to deepen relationalism – still, through a significant detour. In this chapter, I begin with a reconstruction of the rise and fall of the notion of reaction in the social science; I then elaborate on the motives why reaction has been rejected and define the features of the ‘reactive condition’, drawing in particular from the work of Pierre Janet. This helps me to specify, in the final part of the chapter, how reaction is connected to the diffusive processes of imitation, suggestion, and contagion.

From reaction to action, and back Action and reaction constitute a model of understanding that is wide-­ranging in the physical, biological, psychological, and sociological domains. As ­Starobinski (1999) has put it, while action and reaction are generally ­i magined as opposite to each other, they in fact form an almost unbreakable ‘theoretical couple’. A curious couple indeed, with a very old term and a relatively young one: from a historical-terminological point of view, ­Starobinski explains, ‘action’ (from the Latin ago,-ere) is an ancient term that was originally related to the activity of leading the livestock in the open

196  Andrea Mubi Brighenti fields by the daylight, whereas ‘reaction’ is a term that only appears in the lower Middle Ages. The notion of reaction first features in an alchemical context, then makes its fortune in the early modern scientific lexicon – to the point of becoming ubiquitous and trivialized by the nineteenth century – and is later turned into a political category during the French revolution. Classical antiquity had only two words for, respectively, the active and the passive aspect of a deed, namely, actio and passio (in Greek, poiein and paskhein). In this respect, reaction can be said to emerge as a third, ‘modern’ pole between the two ‘classical’ poles of action and passion (one could also venture to say, using a Deleuzian terminology, that reaction embodies a specific ‘perversion’ of the action/passion dichotomy). On the one hand, reaction appears to be no less active than action; on the other, however, it lacks the freedom of initiating action, given that it only exists in response to a previously deployed action. Reaction thus appears as a special type of subordinate action, whose specificity lies in standing somehow in contrast to – or even being cast against – a previous action: action in response, a veritable ‘retro-action’.1 It is possible to observe how, in the modern period, action and reaction are interwoven with issues of imitation, suggestion and contagion. In the case of imitation, the individual is regarded as reacting to a social stimulus by replicating a gesture or act first made by its model; in the case of suggestion, the individual is seen as reacting by unconsciously complying with the received stimulation, which is thereby prolonged; then, with contagion, the individual appears as flooded by a series of acts or stimulations (conceptualized as ‘infections’), so that its reaction consists in actually being overcome by them and yet simultaneously becoming an active carrier of those same stimulations (typically, the fact of being bitten by a vampire turns one into another vampire, so that the vampiristic contagious disease may continue to be spread around). As we know, the late nineteenth-century voices infinite concerns for the fate of the ‘responsible individual’, the individual held accountable for his/her own actions vis-à-vis the threats of imitation, suggestion and contagion. A pervasive cultural narrative then sought to promote bold, assertive individuality: the individual should step out of crowd mind, be always independent in judgment (self-directed as opposed to other-­directed), immune to the suggestions and the affective contagion of surrounding opinions. In short, especially during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the liberal individual came to be projected as an ideal subject of action, capable of detaching itself from the vices of reactivity. It is well known how for instance English Victorian society was replete with anxieties about all types of phenomena imagined as grounded in an unbounded imitation – ranging from the crowd rallies to masturbation – that could take over one’s self-countenance.2 Such a condemnation of reaction is all the more curious, given that simultaneously, from a moral and political point of view, reaction seems to systematically lie on the side of innocence, as opposed to the

The reactive  197 moral and political burdens of deliberate action. Not by chance, ‘I merely reacted’ is one of the most used defensive strategies in a variety of contexts ranging from fights between schoolboys to politics among nations. Still, it is significant that the moral-political condemnation of reactivity dominated at the time of the development of the human sciences. The latter could indeed be observed as a movement towards a normalization of reaction in social life, given that they led to precisely a shrinking of the space of autonomous individual action – as the study of reflexes and the theorization of the unconscious well attest. Reaction seems omnipresent as it founds the adaptation of the organism to the environment. Of course, as first remarked by Canguilhem (2015 [1951]), the exaggeration of the paradigm of reaction leads to a vision of the living being as purely mechanical – a triumph of Cartesianism that culminated in early twentieth-century behaviorism, and was later found amply insufficient. Consequently, while it is not possible to take reaction (or, for that matter, reflex) as a self-sufficient category, this notion still represents a peculiar locus deserving analytical attention. In fact, the image of reaction is itself not unified. We may consider that, for instance, whereas in Newtonian physics action and reaction are conceptualized as simultaneous, even, and balanced (they only differ as oriented vectors, which anyway can be said to be manifestations of the same force), in the modern human sciences an intuitive understanding seems to have prevailed – or persisted – according to which reaction features as essentially subsequent to action: reaction is action in response to action, where the ratio between the two forces is not given a priori. Especially if we look at psychology, the balance between action and reaction appears as systematically unsettled. A place is created in this sense for the notion of ­abreaction – a neologism by Freud’s mentor, Joseph Breuer (Breuer and Freud, 1955 [1895]), understood as the sudden expression of the psychologically repressed. Abreaction is a reaction that draws its energy from invisible sources, and the sheer possibility of abreaction shows that in psychic life there is hardly any one-to-one correspondence between actions and reactions. This fact may help to explain why, besides the paradigm of interaction and its ‘ecumenical’ causal strategy recalled above, during the twentieth century the theories of action have likewise known a rich conceptual elaboration in the sociological tradition. It is just enough to recall the line of thought that stretches from Weber, through Parsons, to Elster. Simultaneously, however, in various areas in the social and behavioral sciences, reaction has also found a theoretical vindication. In general, we may say, reaction appears to take pride of place whenever individual action is observed from the perspective of the social ensemble – regardless of whether the latter is conceptualized as a ‘system’ or as a ‘context’ of action. For instance, despite their name, socalled agent-based models are in fact reagent-based, in that their purpose is to test each individual in terms of its specific reactions to changing circumstances or events that occur in its proximity. Each element of the system is thus observed as existing in a state of more or less activated reactivity.3

198  Andrea Mubi Brighenti To the extent that individual action is comprehended as a specific ‘activation’ vis-à-vis series of changes in the surrounding social environment, action-chains or action-nets are more of a reactive than an active nature. Reactivity is essential to create that emergent property referred to as swarm intelligence. As hinted above, the cybernetic notion of positive feedback follows from a model of reaction. Alan Turing (1952) developed a reaction-diffusion model to account for the developmental regulation of complex biological tissues. Specifically, he proposed the formalization of a morphogenetic system that, starting from simple rules, leads to the formation of wide nonlinear patterns. For instance, starting from two basic biochemical agents operating in a tissue – the one promoting cell growth at short range and the other inhibiting cell growth at long range – it is possible to reconstruct the emergence of very complex patterns via feedback operations. In Turing’s model, the capacity to react upon itself is clearly a distinctive property of the system. Feedback is self-reactivity. So, whereas prima facie action and reaction appear to be neatly distinguished, their actual separation is in many cases a matter of perspectives, as the apparently negligible difference between interaction and interreaction instills. Before Turing, Bergson (1939) in his last book had argued that the distinction between automatism and voluntary action is just a distinction of degree and not one of nature.4

Of surface and depth Before inquiring more in detail into the specifically social condition defined by reactivity, another dimension to be included in our conceptualization ­deserves attention. It is the fact that the phenomena of imitation, suggestion, and contagion concern not only the ‘horizontal’ aspect of diffusion, but also the ‘vertical’ aspect of affection. Just as these phenomena reveal the intrinsic tendency of the ‘social thing’ to spread and circulate (to reiterate a Tardean point), they also highlight how such circulations that contradistinguish the experience of social life touch deeply into the psychological and even biological constitution of the individuals. In this respect, two traditions in the conceptualization of social life may be briefly recalled. On the one side stand the theorists of surfaces, including certainly classical sociologists Simmel and Goffman, but also a zoologist like Portmann and a philosopher like Deleuze. We may say that, for all these authors, the famous saying by Valéry, ‘what is most deep is the skin’, applies. In this view, social life is entirely played out in the domain of the visible. Social life happens in a dimension of ‘publicness’, of inter-visibility. And indeed, visibility is a superficial thing: it concerns that very thin layer of the body that is going to be presented to the other. Yet, this thin layer is crucial to the whole living being: surfaces represent the sensible locus of discontinuity between the domains of the intra- and the inter-individual. It is thus the place where social meaning is generated and all operations with

The reactive  199 meaning  – such as stating, claiming, lying, hiding … – are enacted. Social animals are so constituted that their ‘inside’, their ‘inwardness’ or ‘interiority’, is precisely created at the interface with another animal. In other words, the interface is the domain of communication. As Portmann (1990: 26) put it, the more powerful inwardness, possessing as it does a consciousness, is ever more and more able to sense the appearance-aspect of the organism. The boundary of the organism becomes the organ of this inwardness; the very outermost speaks quite particularly of the very inmost. Portmann makes the case that biological depths are mobilized toward the production and the performance of the surface: so, for instance, blushing is not a collateral effect of having certain capillary veins on the cheeks; on the contrary, those very capillaries have phylogenetically developed and evolved in order to make blushing possible, given that blushing possesses a significant communicative value. For his part, Deleuze recalled how Stoic philosophers first asserted the idea that language and bodies can only be connected ‘at the surface’ – why not, on the cheeks. On the opposite side stand the theorists of depths, epitomized by the geological understanding of the psyche in Freudian theory. In psychoanalysis, not only is the unconscious figuratively imagined as lying ‘beneath’ the conscious (covered or screened by it) but in fact, agency is made possible by the depth of the psyche as the latter engages more or less therapeutically the process of reconstructing its own composition. In this case, the margins of maneuver possessed by any subjectivity appear to be vertical rather than horizontal. Psychic depth tends to be configured as a dynamic and continuous process. The various schemes of repression, removal, condensation (Verdichtung), and displacement (Verschiebung) elaborated by Freud in the foundational years of psychoanalysis at the end of the nineteenth century well attest this. Because the verticality of the psychic dynamic allows for the circulation and elaboration of psychic contents, the veritable space of maneuver for the existence of something like a ‘subject’ necessarily stretches in depth. The reactivity of subjectivity, in this case, becomes visible in the psychic dynamics of trauma and symptom as well as, a fortiori, in the dialogical constitution of therapeutic practice itself. At first, one may be tempted to associate surfaces with the ‘reactive’ dimension at large, as opposed to depths associated with the properly ‘active’ dimension of existence. However, things are not so clear-cut. If one considers a curious phenomenon such as camouflage, for instance, one finds that surfaces and depths may form complex circuits where surface operations cannot be carried on without a passage through psycho-biological depth, and vice versa. Camouflage is a surface strategy, but there is always something deeply affective that goes on through it, to the point that, during this process, even the smoothest surface gets almost unmistakably thwarted

200  Andrea Mubi Brighenti (Brighenti and Castelli, 2016). In terms of visibility, we might perhaps say that depth represents a latent phase of the psychosocial process. No less than surface, however, depth is a matter of inscription in the domain of the visible. In this sense, rather than as a variation on the intuitive dichotomy ‘visible/invisible’, surface and depth may be better explored as two different registers of the visible (Brighenti, 2017). The hypothesis advanced here is that action and reaction designate two different regimes of social existence that are often copresent. Such regimes in fact offer different points of view on the same social process. More precisely, from a logical as well as ontological point of view, it is possible to claim that reaction represents a genealogy of action and its original blueprint – despite the fact that, as seen above, historically speaking, reaction is a modern notion and action an ancient one.

The reactive condition Which mode of existence is defined by the reactive condition? How can we observe action emerge and detach itself from reaction? Under which conditions does action rejoin reaction? To delve into these complex questions, it is possible to draw inspiration from the systematization offered by Pierre Janet in The psychological evolution of personality (2005 [1929]). Delivered as a course at the Collège de France in the later part of his career, Evolution is arguably one of the greatest works in twentieth-century psychology.5 It is also an unfortunately neglected classic both in psychology and social theory. More specifically, as far as action and reaction are concerned, Janet begins by describing the biological rooting of personality in reflexes and reflex complexes.6 According to Janet, personhood largely exceeds the domain of irreflexive action. Instead, Janet drew a complex map including many different degrees of psychic activity superimposed and interacting with each other: ‘Only slowly have conducts been organized […] everything has been constructed slowly and bits by bits it has been superimposed’ (2005: 69).7 The assumption is that personhood is a cultural, historical, and social construction. It is a phylogenetically complex construction that has developed over thousands and thousands of years. This also explains why the individual can incur in many ‘mistakes of individuation’ – such mistakes being of course forms of psychic illness (e.g., people believing they are someone else, or believing someone else is speaking from inside them etc.). Yet ­Janet constantly invokes the proximity and even continuity between ‘normal’ and ‘pathological’ states, showing how several of these mistakes of individuation are incurred by psychically normal people too. In Evolution, the articulation of individuality is explored as an enterprise of ‘unification’ that unfolds at three distinct levels, including a spatial level (the body), a social level ( feelings), and a temporal level (memory, self-narration). At the first level, we find organic-anatomic-physiological performances, at

The reactive  201 the second interactive performances, and at the third fictional-memorial performances. Janet contends that ‘all social conduct is reactive conduct’ (2005: 173), insofar as we initially find ourselves targeted by the action of others. However, not all reaction is similar; in fact, there is a multifaceted domain of multiple connections between the many figures of personal reactivity, activity, and thought. Exploring the bodily level of personality, Janet draws three figures. They can be presented as follows in a slightly elaborated form in order to make Janet’s original insight even clearer: Figure 11.1a represents the classic, Pavlovian view on reflexes. The reflex is based on a simple association between a Stimulation S and a Response R. The response may also be called (as Janet precisely designates it) a ­Movement – in any case, its nature is clearly reactive. The reflex occurs as a single bloc of conduct: it is enacted ‘all at once’. This means that the notion of reflex is based upon a spatial imagination which specifically calls into existence a special point, the unnamed apex joining the two segments, endowed with the capacity of welding the two moments of stimulation and movement, of trigger and reaction. The apex, so to speak, folds together two moments in the life of the individual and brings psychophysical energy from the former moment to the latter one. Figure 11.1b designates an interesting situation in which more reflexes are combined together. The reaction to a given stimulation now provides the basis for further stimulations, each eliciting corresponding reactions. So, the first reaction simultaneously functions as a stimulation for a second reaction, and so on. This is what Janet calls a ‘reflex cascade’. It is quite common

S

R (a)

s1

r1 s2

r2 s3

r3 s4 (b)

r4 s5

r5

P

A (c)

Figure 11.1  E  laboration from Janet on reflex, reflex complex, and perception.

202  Andrea Mubi Brighenti in biological life that reactions follow in sequences and blocs. Janet takes the example of a dog hunting the game: The dog strolling in the countryside smells in a ditch the scent of a hare, or some other wild animal; such excitation of the mucosa in the nose determines a certain reflex. It is the reflex of the search, of pointing towards the prey. Smell thus leads to marching. Now, the march creates an accident: the dog now sees the hare. The vision of the hare in turn acts as a new stimulation that comes to be added to the first one. The march is transformed into a run and a series of further specific reflexes follow. The chase causes the dog to snatch the hare and bite it. The taste of the flesh on the tongue makes an impression that breeds the reflex of mastication; the dog now masticates the hare. As pieces of meat start filling the mouth of the dog, the reflex of swallowing is activated, and the dog actually eats the hare. (Janet, 2005: 43) This hunting scene is a nice illustration of the second figure. The third ­Figure (11.1c) does not differ visually much from the previous one, yet it conveys an important conceptual difference. Indeed, 11.1c constitutes not simply a sequence of reflexes, but a ‘reflex complex’. What in Figure 11.1b was virtual has now become actual in 11.1c. All intermediary reactions can be put in parenthesis and suspended – hence, dotted and continuous lines are inverted in the two pictures. In this new situation, the original reflex is delayed or bracketed. The beginning and the end of the arc can now be joined together in a novel way. It is a less rigid way, a less mechanic one, as the absence of any sharp apex highlights. The small step between Figures 11.1b and 11.1c is not only quantitative, but crucially qualitative. In fact, we no longer have a simple reaction, but a veritable perception. A simple reflex can be imagined as an arc that connects a stimulation and a movement; both moments are visible, what is invisible is just the apex itself that, so to speak, bounces the stimulus back toward its corresponding movement. On the contrary, reflex complexes can engender qualitatively distinct perceptions, contradistinguished by the existence of a gap between stimulus and response. The whole sequence of moments becomes invisible. In the first and second picture, the arc is only virtual, whereas in the third picture it has become actual. In this condition, immediate reaction – or, the irreflexive transformation of stimulation into movement – can be interrupted, better – bracketed. As Janet (2005: 44) explains: One character of the perceptual act upon which we have placed much importance is the fact that the perceptual act is a type of act which could be called suspensive […] These suspensive acts are global and have a peculiar property that has evolved over the centuries – namely, the fact that they can be slowed down.

The reactive  203 The inception of perception thus affords a type of action that is no longer narrowly reactive in nature. Perception creates something that is not simply an engendered reaction – they give way to actual action. Whereas stimulation and reaction are continuous, perception and action are discontinuous. This distinction corresponds quite neatly to the one introduced in biology by Von Uexküll (1926) between the sphere of perception (Merkwelt) and the sphere of action (Wirkwelt) in animal life. Therefore, reaction appears as a peculiar bio-psychosocial terrain that prolongs into other domains and provides a number of further psychosocial operations with a kind of raw matter to be articulated. It is as if reaction is placed between, on the one hand, an asocial immediacy and, on the other, a social mediation. In terms of C.S. Peirce’s (1931: §§302–49) three cenopythagorean categories, we may also call the reflex a secondness (due to the direct, causal-effectual junction of stimulation and reaction) that exists between a firstness (the unqualified immediacy of the absolute ‘happening’, such as the shock of the firing neuron) and a thirdness (the eminently social mediation between a percipiens and a perceptum – the third as a middle reality between a beginning and an end). As we shall see below, these three categories are not necessarily to be thought of as discontinuous; so that reactive secondness – under its respect of causation and constraint – could be seen as incessantly prolonging toward an absolute first world of pure feeling and a third world of signs and continuous mediations. It should also be considered that the gap between perception and action has a meaningful span, beyond which another change of nature occurs. In this sense, the catatonic described by Janet offers an extreme instance of an individual who pushes the gap between perception and action to a limit where one becomes completely motionless and utterly incapable of an action whatsoever. Janet (2005, lecture of 10 December 1928) naturalizes such a state – ‘we are all catatonics’ he wittingly observes, given that we spend several stretches of our time without either perceiving or acting. The only difference is that the clinically catatonic patient cannot interrupt his or her own catatonia at will, whereas the healthy subject has developed the skill to master its own catatonic states and can decide to reenter the game of reaction and perception. The ‘complexity’ of perception refers to the literal folding of reflexes one upon another. It is a complexus that, as we have said, enables the temporary suppression of elementary, molecular, partial reactive movements to the advantage of accumulation and transformation of the basic elements in view of the deployment of a proper action. Elaborating on Janet, it is perhaps possible to suggest that perception entails a passage through an enlarged domain of invisibility: actually, perception entails an amplification of the invisible, which covers the compass of all enveloped reflexes. Observed through the lenses of Figure 11.1, action appears a special type of reaction, one which, through a mastered temporal décalage and a strategy of envelopment, acquires a certain complexity. In the moment of action,

204  Andrea Mubi Brighenti the triggering element has already become invisible: the stimulus is left behind and a more complex intermediate element appears. It is what Janet calls sentiment or feeling; for his part, Portmann (1990) called it the ‘mood of the animal’. This mood is revelatory of the temporal depth of life. In his previous course on memory, Janet (2006 [1928]: 8) had stated that the faculty of memory develops initially as a form of ‘differed action’: What is memory at the beginning? It is a differed action. It is an action of which only the first part – the verbal part – is executed whereas the second part [the physical act] is to be executed later. We begin with a part of an action and we’ll complete the second part later. This means that, by contrast, reaction is without memory: it exists in a state of immediacy, it must be played out all at once. In this sense, action and reaction exist in a different temporal horizon, and the time of reaction is instantaneous or, at least, much more contracted than the time of action. That is why, for instance, Janet, interprets the phenomenon of double personalities as a trouble with memory and a consequent narrowing of the field of consciousness (rétrécissement). Similarly, the psychiatrist Eugene Minkowski (1968 [1933]) would later describe schizophrenia as a psychic condition where the ‘fullness of life’ – better, the breath of life – gets shrunk. As a result of psychic disease, the ‘sphere of ease in which my life can unfold’ (1968 [1933]: 403) is compromised, with the individual being flattened into the register of reactivity. Since existential distance is compromised, if not thoroughly abolished, for the schizophrenic subject people and events become cluttered, heaped together, no longer understandable. In this sense, the reactive individual is a relentless individual, one perpetually in a state of neural vibrancy. The social brain does not let him (her) sleep, or maybe, he never manages to fully wake up, but cannot stop going – which gives an approximate portrait of the phenomenon of somnambulism.

Reaction in interaction On the basis of what has been said, it becomes possible to distinguish two circuits, namely, the continuist circuit ‘stimulation –> reaction’ and the discontinuist circuit ‘perception –> action’. If reaction is causally produced by stimulation, perception is finalistically developed for action.8 But the field of reactivity can be further refined. In Evolution, Janet captures two crucial evolutionary transformations in the genealogical constitution of the reactive regime. The first transformation is from generalized to localized reaction, the second from primary to secondary reaction. It should be remarked that, far from proposing linear and univocal evolution, this model allows for constant returns to previous forms of reaction. In particular, it is when the individual is put under pressure or strain that ‘lower’, coarser forms of reaction will be resorted to. In phylogenesis, Janet (2005, lecture of 20 December

The reactive  205 1928) explains, early reactions are of the panic type. A panic reaction is a convulsion, contraction, or spasm of all the organism. Janet has several clinical cases where we see people reacting for instance to a shocking news with a convulsion crisis. Generalized reaction forms the primitive stratum of reaction from which localized reactions have slowly emerged. A localized reaction is also a specialized one, one in which only a single part of the body is activated in response to the excitation. Localized reactions are more precise and may serve to mount larger reflex complexes. The specification of reaction, in other words, makes it possible to attain something which is more difficult to produce, namely organized movement. Yet even the most primitive reaction is already the result of selection, and thus the result of something like a specialization, albeit a very broad and coarse one. In this sense, the important lesson that derives from classic ecological biologists such as von Uexküll and Goldstein is that reaction is constitutively selective – if not, we may even say, elective. The animal, argued von Uexküll (1926), only reacts to selected stimulations. Such stimulations are elective in that they represent to the animal ‘remarked signals’ or ‘distinguishing marks’ (Merkmale). Selectivity is thus no less than reactivity an intrinsic feature of the animal. Later, Canguilhem (2015 [1951: 187) commented that ‘reaction is always a function of an opening of meaning vis-àvis given excitations, and a function of its orientation in relation to them’. In one organism, in other words, there exists a specific ‘orientation’ of reaction toward the range of possible ‘meaningful’ excitations. Perhaps, it is even possible to advance the hypothesis that it is only thanks to this preliminary selectivity that the refinement of reaction toward greater specificity and localization becomes possible. The process of specification of reaction described by Janet can perhaps be encapsulated in the idea that reaction progresses and evolves toward the within. From this perspective the first transformation is inherently related to the second. For this second transformation – the one from primary to secondary reaction – highlights another crucial fact. Primary reactions are simple, first-order, they react to some external stimulations. But in higher animals a second-order type of reaction develops – a reaction which reacts to one’s own reactions. At this point, reactions become reflexive. Now the reactive also becomes adaptive: the aim of secondary reactions is to maintain the organism in equilibrium, to prevent it from being destabilized by primary reactions. Janet (2005: 64) thus distinguishes ‘two branches of human conduct, the first departing from primary reactions to external excitations, the second departing from secondary reactions that keep the body in balance’. The notion of feedback may be said to derive from this idea of secondary reaction. However, secondary reactions are not just any type of feedback; as conceived by Janet, secondary reactions are only stabilizing ones  – what cybernetics call ‘negative feedback’. For his part, Janet speaks of the ‘stubbornness’ of the living being (2005: 258). The peculiarity of conducts

206  Andrea Mubi Brighenti deriving from second-order reactions is that they are attached to not only action but also feeling. Secondary reactions are ‘sentimental’, and as such they give way to the elaboration of consciousness. One of the leading motifs in Janet’s work is precisely the idea that consciousness is a ‘late comer’ in the human psyche, something that is added a fortiori to primary conduct. Not simply that, but consciousness remains a process that is discontinuous and selective: ‘Consciousness is not made at all time, and not about everything’ (2005: 94). It is as secondary reactions, or introverted reactions, that feelings form the ‘inner life’ of the individual (as seen above, Portmann would have later spoken of the ‘mood’ of the animal). In the passage from a few large reactions to many small reactions, the individual becomes a faceted creature, capable of refining and specializing its conduct. Similarly, in the passage from a-sentimental to sentimental reaction, that is, reaction accompanied by feelings, the individual acquires a new dimension. Interestingly, feelings appear initially as grounded in ­bodily existence, but they flourish especially in the form of social feelings. For ­Janet, and contrary to much previous psychology, social feelings are ‘very simple’ and even include ‘primitive’ things such as love and hate (2005: 103) which are nonetheless fundamental to the life of the individual as a whole. A fortiori, it is indeed possible to document that the lack of social feelings is always the mark of deeply pathological states, such as depression, ataraxia, and dementia. Understood this way, feelings constitute the whole of the inner life of the individual. While, at first, they appear as an addition to the original reflex act, their presence transforms the whole coloration of the act itself: they accompany it so that it may become regulated, and eventually acquire meaning – something which the original conduct does not necessarily have. In short, this is how reaction – to the extent that it is more specific than general, and more thick than flat – matters to interaction. Now, it is possible to attempt some elaboration of these ideas. Actually, I think that Janet’s theses can be used to understand the reactive regime even beyond a narrowly psychological perspective, that is, from the perspective of a theory of society. In fact, the emotional space also corresponds to an eccentric position where the individual is brought ‘out of itself’, and not only metaphorically. In other words, the space where reactions deepen spiraling into further degrees of self-referentiality is not necessarily to be imagined as depth psychology depicted it. Instead, here we might need to combine the insights of the theorists of depths with the theorists of surfaces to recognize that the deepening dynamic of secondary reactivity is also the space of interaction itself. In other words, the proposed way out of the quandary of surfaces and depths is the idea that depth is not only a psychological phenomenon, it is not a private thing invisibly located somewhere in interiore homine; rather, no less than surface, depth is itself part of the social intercourse. The hypothesis advanced here is that, insofar as the reactive regime is concerned, society can in a way be said to constitute a special force that

The reactive  207 pulls the individual up from the depths of biology, anatomy, physiology, and psychology, and projects it onto a special surface of heterogeneity and encounter. Such is the surface of meaning as it is interactively – or ­interreactively – ­constituted. Inter(r)eaction – but let’s say interaction for ­simplicity  – is a discontinuous process not completely unlike consciousness, or eye movements, which – as, respectively, psychology and physiology ­recognize – occur in discontinuous moments: respectively, ‘conscientisation’ and saccades.9 This amounts to saying that interaction is akin to a small gap or even a glitch, and that the reactive exists in this gap. Figure 11.2 provides a sketchy summary of this situation: The picture can be explained as describing a continuous surface of visibility where superficial SR reactions occur. The very occurrence of reactions opens up gaps and glitches which introduce discontinuities in the medium. The deepening possibility offered by self-reflexive secondary reactions is exploited in depth by the creation of feelings. The medium in which the represented space should be thought might be called ‘the visible’. In other words, the picture does not describe a psychological space, nor for that matter any external purely physical space. Instead, the location where the picture can be imagined is the limit or threshold between the psychological, the sociological, and the physical. We are located, if ever, in the Simondonian domain of the transindividual – we are, in other words, looking at the phenomenon from the perspective of the social ensembles or social multiplicities involved. As we have observed above, the reactive individual presents itself as a ‘superficial’ individual whereas the active individual always wants to be taken for a ‘deep’ individual. But, society – that is, social life – pulls individuals up from the depths of biology, physiology, and psychology and projects them onto a peculiar surface of encounter: for only along this surface can meaning occur. Depth, in this sense, is nothing else but the ‘passage at the limit’ in the move from surface to surface.10 S

surface

R the gap

secondary reaction, feeling

F

depth

Figure 11.2  T  he space of reaction in interaction.

primary reaction

208  Andrea Mubi Brighenti

Conclusion: on reaction, affection, and diffusion What the purely reactive individual does is devolve immediately – or, as soon as possible – the burden of social interaction. As we have noted above, for instance, presenting oneself as ‘merely reactive’ to someone else’s deeds is a key defensive strategy to disburden oneself – at least partially – from moral, political, and legal responsibility. This is also what we do, more mundanely, in our new media life whenever we ‘just’ react by liking, forwarding, retweeting a received content. For their part, new media platforms have perfectly understood that the measure of the importance of a post or entry is not its actual content, but the reaction it has elicited in the network – which is many cases an affective reaction. Similarly, as studied by anthropology, for a ‘person of honor’ everything that matters (that is everything that can touch him/her, everything that can prove to ‘affect’ or even ‘sting’) must be instantly played out on the visible surface – hence, the obsession for ‘saving the face’ in public, at all cost and at each instant (in other words, honor could not survive if reaction was absent).11 Of course, however, since it is impossible to discharge all the burdens of social interaction, what individuals mostly do is negotiate their share. Indeed, to stay in the example, many are persons of honor part-time. But apart from this example, and well beyond it, what is clear is that the reactive regime tends to produce its own complications, its own envelopment, its special convolutions. So, only apparently does reactive existence stand at the polar opposite of what Sloterdijk (2013: 110), after Nietzsche, has called ‘General Ascetology’ – that is, a form of existence whereby humans are taken in a constant vertical tension toward self-transcendence. In fact, the ‘exaggeration procedures’ described by Sloterdijk (2013: 209) seem to characterize not only explicit and conscious self-improvement practices, but also the reactive regime of social existence. Not only action, but reaction too faces an issue of measure: it contemplates qualitatively distinct triggering and intensifying points. What the previous analysis has led to conclude is that the reactive regime is never thoroughly flat, but rather consists in specific arrangements of transindividual surfaces and depths. This may have some implications for the study of propagative dynamics. The reactive regime is located in limine of the diffusive picture of the social, as drawn for instance by Tarde (1890). For Tarde, the social thing wants to spread, and it is by devices such as teaching (imitation of beliefs ) and command (imitation of desires) that it succeeds in doing so. As observed at the outset, not only imitation, but also contagion and suggestion point to diffusiveness as something essential in the social equation. Imitation, contagion and suggestion place individuals within chains and flows of forces and forms. But, as we have also seen, diffusion and affection cannot be thought of in separation from each other. Each social propagation, more than simply joining together the parts involved, actually brings them away. The visible glitches. The space of ­interaction – of interreaction – lies at the intersection between surfaces and depths.

The reactive  209

Notes 1 In this sense, as Starobinski himself recalls, the cybernetic notion of feedback clearly stems from the notion of reaction. We return to this below. 2 Similarly, for instance, the late Nietzsche (1888: ‘What the Germans lack’, §6, original emphasis) castigated the Germans for being (or having become) a reactive people, that is – for him – a people quintessentially lacking spirituality: That is the first preliminary schooling for spirituality: not to react at once to a stimulus, but to gain control of all the inhibiting, excluding instincts […] All unspirituality, all vulgar commonness, depends on the inability to resist a stimulus: one must react, one follows every impulse. 3 See the extended discussion by Sebastian Vehlken’s chapter in this book. 4 ‘As soon as we compare the structure of the spinal cord with that of the brain, we are bound to infer that there is merely a difference of complication, and not a difference in kind, between the functions of the brain and the reflex activity of the medullary system’ (Bergson, 1939: 19). 5 It should be noted, however, that this course is not a stand-alone; instead, it is organically integrated with the previous and subsequent courses by Janet. For instance, many ideas developed in it represent a continuation of the 1928 course The evolution of memory and the notion of time, many of these are, in turn, expanded in De l’angoisse à l’extase (2009 [1928]). 6 The study of psychic automatisms is certainly the most renown part of Janet’s work, but his famous 1889 book on the ‘lower forms of human activity’ is far from exhausting Janet’s rounded theory of personality or, as we may perhaps better say, personhood. Personhood thus inherently relates to the question ‘What is an individual?’. In his philosophy of individuation, Simondon (2005) argues that psychic individuation descends from a specific slowing down of biological individuation. Simondon thus distinguishes between individuation and individualization. The latter he interprets as the ongoing individuation living forms can subject themselves to. If individualization is a process, individuality or personality is one of its achievements. As we shall see shortly, the notion of ‘delay’ plays an important role in Janet’s theorization, too. 7 A similar thesis can also be found in the anthropologist Giuseppe Sergi, who had spoken of the ‘stratification of character’ (Sergi, 1882). The developmental perspective is later summarized by Laborit (1971) in terms of the stratification and superposition of three cerebral systems in humans: the hypothalamic-­ reptilian (automated reflexes), the limbic (affection and memory), and the frontal-­orbital or neocortical (imagination and rationality). The reptilian brain is an essentially reactive brain, one that works with a stimulation-­ reaction circuit. 8 This idea is discussed particularly by Bergson in Matter and Memory: ‘As a whole, perception finds its real reason to exist in the body’s tendency to move’ (Bergson, 1939: 44). 9 A saccade is the rapid eye movement between two subsequent fixation points. While vision may be seamless for the viewer, eyes are in fact constantly engaged in discrete jumps. I have reconstructed this phenomenon in Brighenti (2010: 14–17). 10 What is really difficult to image, and yet needs to be imagined, is that the movement is discontinuous while the surface is continuous. Further elaboration will be called to this point. 11 A poignant example comes for instance from the study of honor contests that degenerate in violence and homicide, usually in bar brawls and similar contexts. In research on homicides resulting from such situations, Polk (1999) has reconstructed events that are usually reported in the news as instances of ‘senseless

210  Andrea Mubi Brighenti violence’. In fact, these are public situations that are quite structured and where even sudden escalation needs to be constructed move by move by the actors themselves. As Polk (1994: 14) notes, for violence to occur, it is necessary that ‘the person challenged […] interpret the behavior as a provocation that cannot be ignored’. Of course, one could still argue that reactivity is very much linked to stupidity; nonetheless, one should not underestimate how reactivity proves capable to span the most superficial and the deepest strata in the individual.

References Bergson, H. (1939) Matière et mémoire. Paris: Puf. Breuer, J., and Freud, S. (1955 [1895]) Studies on Hysteria. New York: Basic Books. Brighenti, A. M. (2010) Visibility in Social Theory and Social Research. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Brighenti, A. M., and Castelli, A. (2016) ‘Social Camouflage: Functions, Logic, Paradoxes’, Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory 17(2): 228–49. Brighenti, A. M. (2017) ‘The Visible: Element of the Social’, Frontiers in Sociology 2: 1–17. Canguilhem, G. (2015 [1951]) La connaissance de la vie. Paris: Vrin. Janet, P. (2005 [1929]) L’évolution psychologique de la personnalité. Paris: L’Harmattan. Janet, P. (2006 [1928]) L’évolution de la mémoire et de la notion du temps. Paris: L’Harmattan. Janet, P. (2009 [1928]) De l’angoisse à l’extase, 2 vols. Paris: L’Harmattan. Laborit, H. (1971) L’homme et la ville. Paris: Flammarion. Minkowski, E. (1968 [1933]) Le temps vécu. Paris: Puf. Nietzsche, F. W. (1888) ‘Götzen-Dämmerung’, in W. Kauffman (ed.), The Portable Nietzsche. New York: Penguin. Peirce, C. S. (1931 [1857–66]) The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. ­Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Polk, K. (1999) ‘Males and Honor Contest Violence’, Homicide Studies 3(1): 6–29. Portmann, A. (1990) Essays in Philosophical Zoology. The Living Form and the Seeing Eye, trans. R. Carter. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press. Sergi, G. (1882) ‘La stratificazione del carattere e la delinquenza’, Rivista di filosofia scientifica 2(5): 537–49. Simondon, G. (2005 [1964–89]) L’individuation à la lumière des notions de formes et d’information. Paris: Jérôme Millon. Sloterdijk, P. (2013) You Must Change Your Life, trans. W. Hoban. Cambridge: Polity Press. Starobinski, J. (1999) Action et Réaction. Vie et aventures d’un couple. Paris: Seuil. Tarde, G. (1890) Le lois de l’imitation. Etude sociologique. Paris: Alcan. Turing, A. M. (1952) ‘The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 237(641): 37–72. Von Uexküll, J. (1926) Theoretical Biology. London: Kegan, Trench, Trubner & Co.

12 Suggestion, affect, and speculative science Lisa Blackman

Introduction The question of what suggestion is, could be or, more interestingly might become, has puzzled and perplexed me throughout my academic career. It has also intruded into my life when as a young child my mother suggested to me, while she was in the throes of a psychotic breakdown, that I didn’t need to wear shoes to school. This suggestion was communicated with energy and enthusiasm. She linked shoes to conformity and stifling claustrophobia, and bare feet, which my mother was advocating by example, to freedom, expansion, hope, and optimism. Off I went to school at the age of nine in bare feet. The school wasn’t far, perhaps 500 meters from the house, but it was a typical British summer day – chilly and gray. I didn’t learn much about suggestion that day, but I did learn a lot about shame, humiliation, surveillance, concern, and the stigma of growing up with a mother who has been hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital for regular intervals throughout her life. Experiences such as this are often subsumed as examples of suggestion, contagion, and imitative processes that are primarily experienced and communicated through an ‘alien phenomenology’. Alien phenomenologies are those, which in different ways, people might experience as feeling that they are being moved to action by someone or something else. Within the psychological and cognitive sciences this is usually referred to as automatism or automaticity. My own mother while unwell, communicated such feelings of ‘alien control’, possession, thought insertion, and altered bodily experiences that shaped unusual patterns of sense-making and sensation. For anybody who has grown up with similar experiences, the ­normative expectation within western psychology that unitary control and self-­ determination are what define subjectivity might be difficult to stomach. This is part of the individual-social dualism that although subjected to ­extensive critique, both within and outside of psychology, has come to dominate how suggestion, contagion, and imitation have taken hold within the psychological sciences and popular imaginaries. The question of what suggestion is, might be, or could become has become an interesting focus

212  Lisa Blackman of recent research within the field of affect studies and is one that will be explored in the next section. The overall focus of the chapter will be on exploring the implications of some of these debates, including some of my own research, that open up to more speculative, innovative propositions to take forward at the intersection of sociology, cultural theory, art, and what I am calling a speculative science, or ‘Future Psychology’.

Affect and suggestion My research over many decades has been concerned with a lexicon of terms, concepts, strategies, and phenomena that blur the borders and boundaries between self and other, inside and outside, human and technical, body and society, individual and collective. This includes suggestion, contagion, and imitative processes, as well as voice hearing and other phenomena that often appear as signs of psychopathology, as examples of abnormal perceptions, or even as curious anomalies and puzzles. They are primarily the subject of the psy sciences (psychology and psychiatry), while often registering as examples of weird science.1 In different ways they have also provided heuristics for theorizing collective phenomena or experiences that point toward the fundamental connectivity and relationality of self-other relations. These phenomena in different ways disrupt or trouble the presumption that what defines the human is self-control, self-determination, individualization, and strict borders and boundaries between self and other, human and nonhuman. This is a cultural belief or invitation that has come to pass as a ­‘fiction-which-functions-in-truth’ primarily structuring neoliberal forms of governance and regulation. In Immaterial Bodies: Affect, Embodiment, Mediation (2012), these phenomena are brought together as examples of ‘threshold phenomena’ disrupting notions of psychological individualism. I argue that the genealogies of these phenomena open up some interesting speculative propositions about the nature of mind, body, self, and other, especially when we foreground the epistemic uncertainties, foreclosures, and what has become displaced, disavowed or denied in the explanations and discourses that have come to pass as historical truths or facts. I refer to these epistemic uncertainties or foreclosures as part of the historialities of science that can be mined for critical thought and innovative experimental practice. Historialities is a term I have borrowed from the scientist and philosopher Hans-Jorg Rheinberger (1994). The term draws attention to science as a storytelling practice governed primarily by an excess of stories, primarily existing as fragments comingling from the past, present, and the not-yet-told that become displaced, submerged, and even disavowed. The traces to such an excess are revealed through paying attention to the historicity and dynamics of such storytelling practices as I develop in my book, Haunted Data: Transmedia, Affect, Weird Science. Rheinberger’s contribution to this project will be developed later in the chapter.

Suggestion, affect, and speculative science  213 My research into suggestion, contagion, and imitative processes is also connected to the field of affect studies, and the renewed focus on registers and modalities of attending to the world that exceeds conscious rational thought or that exists at the edges of consciousness. Some of the distinctive markers of the field include a critical reappraisal of the sciences (and particularly the psychological and neurosciences) by the humanities; a critical and creative reengagement with ontological as opposed to epistemological concerns; a grounding of what might have passed as immaterial within a neo-materialist reading of what a body is capable of doing, and to that end a radical reconceptualization of embodiment. This is often framed beyond a distinctly singular, phenomenologically experiencing human subject. Of course, these concerns have prehistories that affect acts as an attractor for and pick up on more long-standing debates surrounding power, agency, subjectivity, and biopolitics; and how to invent methodological and conceptual apparatuses that allow a purchase on the question of power, subjectification, and the complex problematic of subjectivity. This is often but not always set within a destabilization of what it means to communicate beyond the context of (human) talk, discourse, and conversation. This includes an exploration of theories that are sensitive to nonhuman agencies, entanglements, and thresholds, which confound and unsettle humanist and sometimes post-humanist beliefs and sentiments (see Clough, 2008; Gregg and Seigworth, 2010). Affect theories and the field of affect studies have been a very influential interdisciplinary focus of research and thought, which can be found across a range of disciplines, including literature, philosophy, cultural theory, media studies, film studies, art and curatorial study, queer theory, feminism, and critical race studies. One assumption made within some affect theories is that there is a half-second delay between affect and cognition. This statement is sometimes referred to, following the work of Brian Massumi (2002), as evidence of the autonomy of affect. There is a growing edifice being assembled on the basis of this assumption, which has become something of a ‘black box’ across affect theories (Latour, 1987). The statement itself might be considered part of a surface of emergence, which has led to critique and counter-critique, and the mobilization of certain theories and theorists (such as Silvan Tomkins), for example, to authorize and extend its reach. It also opens affect theories to the cognitive and neurosciences and relates to an area of scholarship within cognitive science known as automaticity research. Automaticity research is broadly speaking concerned with processes that exist below the threshold of conscious awareness and attention. In the more conventional sense of the term automaticity explores processes that feel automatic, that might become habitual and that do not demand our attention. However, automaticity research also focuses on experiences that explore how we can be made to do things without being consciously aware (socalled unwilled action), and to that extent has a much more controversial

214  Lisa Blackman side. Automaticity research brings together all kinds of enigmatic behaviors and puzzling phenomena facing modern psychology and often falls under the rubric of weird science. This includes hypnotic suggestion, trance states, voice hearing, motor automatisms (including involuntary muscular movements), various contagious phenomena and ‘actions that are so remarkably divorced from a feeling of doing’ (Ansfield and Wegner, 1996: 483), that they are often attributed to supernatural forces. The field of affect study includes an important recognition that normative conceptions of self-determination and psychological autonomy occlude questions of how power works in registers that are never simply conscious or rational. As many scholars across the social sciences and humanities have argued, ‘philosophers and critics have largely neglected the important role our corporeal-affective dispositions play in thinking, reasoning and reflection, then it seems to follow that an account of affect and its place in our lives and institutions is called for’ (Leys, 2011: 436).2 We encounter affect in descriptions of architecture (as atmosphere, immersive, immaterial), in discussions of objects as enchanted and captivating, in discussions of social media and networked affect and the question of what gains a reach and traction and why, and in relation to political and governmental practices and policies. This includes the relationship between post-truth politics and the registers of emotion and feeling. Across a broad rubric of disciplines, which cross the arts, humanities, social, human, and natural sciences, there is a renewed interest in how our experiences might be understood, targeted, and modulated via processes understood to exist below the threshold of conscious attention. These processes open the subject to modalities of power and mediation understood to be suggestive, or operating with the potential for contagion or imitation, for example. They invite consideration of what it might mean to govern through affect or what I term processes and practices of ‘psychomediation’ (see Blackman, 2019). The logics underpinning these strategies of governance draw from the psychological sciences and particularly theories, concepts, and understandings, which have attempted to understand the suggestive capacities of human subjects; turning attention to processes that are assumed to not be accessible to conscious awareness or control.

Suggestion and the discourse of the vulnerable mind But above all, what do we really know about this suggestion that we are supposed to avoid? (Stengers, 1997: 103) it is logical, in particular to ask oneself what hypnosis would be if it was rid of the illusion whereby the hypnotist is situated as an external observer of his patient; what is more, it is logical to again raise the question of knowing what suggestion can do in its many diverse modalities from the

Suggestion, affect, and speculative science  215 moment it is stripped of the illusion that the one who suggests knows what he is doing and can control the meaning and consequences of his suggestions with regard to the one he is addressing. (1997: 105, emphasis added) These deliberations are also the subject of Isabelle Stengers’ engagement with scientific understandings of suggestion, particularly within the context of hypnotic suggestion. Stengers’ arguments raise the important question of how our understandings of suggestion and contagious phenomena have been framed by historical discourses, which have primarily associated suggestion, contagion, and imitation with a lack of will or loss of self-control, as the intrusion of the irrational, or evidence that the primitive and animal have not been successfully renounced. She argues that our understandings of suggestive phenomena have been closed down, due in part to suggestion’s close association with Hitlerism, propaganda, fascism, dictatorships, crowd psychology, and the image of an evil Svengali figure manipulating others (see Blackman, 2012; Borch, 2012; Stengers, 1997). Suggestion primarily registers as lack, deficit, or abnormality, part of a set of assumptions and a prioris within the psychological sciences that have long histories. It is assumed that the normative psychological subject is aware and has ownership of their thoughts and movements and importantly is in control of them. This produces suggestion as an aberrant phenomenon, providing evidence that the person has renounced self-control and submitted to the will of an Other. However, this historical a priori does not stand up, even within scientific studies exploring suggestion within the context of automatism as we will go on to explore. As an example, I am going to discuss a neuroscientific experiment that was designed to explore suggestion and automatism. It used a technique of hypnotic induction in order to induce a sense of motor automaticity. In this case, hypnotic induction was used to hypnotize subjects such that they would experience their own arm moving as if it were being moved by an extra-personal entity. In order to do this, they constructed an experimental apparatus, which included a mock MRI scanner, and a writing apparatus that drew inspiration from devices, such as the planchette, which has been used in techniques of automatic writing. The participant was required to lie in the mock scanner with a paper roll that was part of a constructed writing frame. The participant was asked to close their eyes while the experiment took place (Walsh et al., 2014). The referencing to earlier experiments into automatic writing within psychic research was one reason why this experiment was deemed controversial. It was discussed, for example, by the broadcast media in a special issue of the BBC Radio 4 series, All in the Mind with the attention-grabbing title: Hypnotism, Automatic Writing, Magic and Memory.3 The analytics of the experiment was a typically positivist empirical analytics framed within an ­individual-social dualism or subject-object bifurcation. It was assumed by

216  Lisa Blackman the researchers that suggestion is a capacity that is measurable by a set of personal traits based on what is known as the ‘highly suggestible personality’. These people are then considered more open to suggestion and the possibility of a particular experimental apparatus producing altered experiences of movement, sensation, and thought. In this case the experimental apparatus is presumed to simulate what is described as dissociative and passivity phenomena. These ‘analogues’ (Walsh et al., 2014: 35) are taken to correspond to the phenomenological experience of automaticity – the feeling of being moved or directed by someone or something else. Within this study automaticism is viewed as a common experience which links dissociative phenomena (the experience of doubleness or dividedness); with experiences of trance that might be found in shamanic cultures; and with what is considered as psychopathological symptoms such as thought control that might be found within schizophrenia. However, and this is what is much more controversial from a sociological or anthropological perspective, there is an interesting anomaly that is highlighted in the study but left going nowhere, opening to alternative conceptions of suggestion, which are displaced, foreclosed, and submerged. On the one hand the experimenters assume that the normative psychological subject is aware and has ownership and control of their thoughts and movements. However, the authors also highlight an important tension in the experiment that challenges and exceeds the a priori they are working with. They are unable to engage this anomaly due to the assumptions they bring about the capacity to enter into suggestive relations with another. They assume that ‘hypnotic phenomena must be experienced as involuntary and effortless’ by hypnotized subjects (Walsh et al., 2014: 33) while recognizing that this actually relates to a set of cultural beliefs or ‘expectancy effects’ about hypnotic suggestion, which is tied to ‘explicit learning’. Within the social sciences and humanities these processes of constitution are more likely to be framed by the concept of mediation (see Blackman, 2012). The paradox of mediation has been captured by the term ‘cultural invitation’, developed by the anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann (2011) within the context of both voice hearing and suggestion. Cultural invitation identifies how local theories of mind shape perception, sensation, and attention (what is sometimes referred to as ‘folk psychology’). Similarly, anthropologists such as Thomas Csordas (1994), who work within the tradition of cultural phenomenology, have called this the cultural basis of ‘somatic modes of attending to the world’. This is an interesting area and one that raises important questions about how experiences deemed raw, automatic, visceral, or even outside or at the fringes of consciousness, are cultural and historical all the way down, right to the bottom. Another assumption embedded within the experiment is that suggestibility is itself a trait that identifies those who are more susceptible or vulnerable to influence. This bifurcation between the individual and the social has a long history within the psychological sciences and is one that draws

Suggestion, affect, and speculative science  217 its inspiration from evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychology has provided and shaped a set of assumptions about the nature of suggestion that are difficult to shake. This includes that suggestion is primarily a capacity found within people who are considered inferior and closer to the animal and primitive.4 In previous writing with Valerie Walkerdine, we termed this assumption the ‘discourse of the vulnerable mind’ arguing that its intractability within the psychological sciences prevents researchers from considering alternative propositions. Within the context of media psychology, for example, one of the places it regularly appears is in discussions of media practices and technologies and the supposed effects media have on particular groups considered more suggestible and susceptible to media influence. In a book Mass Hysteria: Critical Psychology and Media studies (Blackman and Walkerdine, 2001), we explored the significant influence that the crowd psychologist, Gustave Le Bon (1922) had on the discipline, and the way his theories articulated and reproduced classed, raced, sexed, and gendered understandings and connotations to be found at the intersection of group psychology and evolutionary biology. We explored how this ‘discourse of the vulnerable mind’ was challenged by understandings of crowd behavior, which came to the foreground following the death of Princess Diana in 1997, and the media coverage, which surrounded this. As we argued at the time, the media discourse swung between mass hysteria and people power allowing the surfacing of arguments that challenged this ‘theory of the social’.5 We explored the place of Princess ­Diana and her death in the psychological and political project of the so-called ‘civilization of the masses’ opening to alternative ways to understand the actions of ‘ordinary people’ following her death that were framed initially by the press and broadcast media as examples of mindless ‘mass hysteria’. This commentary demonstrated how the spontaneous actions of so-called ‘ordinary people’ lay beyond the comprehension of many of the broadsheet and intellectual commentators. As we argued, many commentators had failed to engage with what the lives of ordinary people had been like except to comment on the new media communities of soaps or the absence of sociality. Indeed, the problem goes further than this. The form assumed by any revolution, uprising or mass movement from below is always a surprise and cannot be contained within pre-existing discourses. Psychological and sociological discourse cannot contemplate ordinary people as agents of transformation, expect in and through a theory of government and hierarchical leadership that privileges political action and whose inverse is the hysterical mob that does not know what it is doing. In these traditions discourses, social change is always described as political transformation. These theories of the social in which the state has a central place contain an implicit notion of hierarchically ordered sociality, a notion of ordinary people

218  Lisa Blackman as disempowered, and a notion of ordinary people as irrational. Hence crowd emotions, unorthodox spirituality and the spontaneous actions of ordinary people are forever pathologised. (2001: 188–9) If the civilizing project of liberal democracy was to produce a rational subject capable of accepting the moral and political order, a self-governing citizen, we argued that the production of a rational autonomous subject was central to that project. What has been practiced since at least the nineteenth century is a project through which the animal, instinctual subject, the subject of the masses, is to be remade as a subject capable of understanding, judging, and amending his or her own psychology, one indeed who can understand the need for self-transformation as a key issue in both self-­i mprovement and managing the exigencies of daily life. Becoming a psychological subject is not a simple human accomplishment but a struggle in which the push to become an autonomous being is managed and regulated, pathologizing other characteristics, such as the capacity for suggestion, contagion, and imitation, through which difficult lives are lived but which exist in the margins of modern life. That these characteristics mix together to produce a rebellion of the damned is hardly surprising when we read the capacity for what I have called ‘ordinary suggestibility’ in this way (see Blackman, 2007).

Cultural invitation With this in mind I want to return to the main aim of this chapter, which is to open up a question raised by Stengers; ‘But above all, what do we really know about this suggestion that we are supposed to avoid’? I want to consider her invitation to change the question; not to ask what suggestion is, as though there is some preexisting transcultural and transhistorical object which we can uncover, disclose, reveal and so forth. Rather she invites us to ask what suggestion can do in all its diverse modalities? This is a more relevant and interesting proposition, which points toward the need for more speculative science within this area. In my book, Haunted Data: Transmedia, Affect, Weird Science, I explore the need for such a science and the important unification that could be drawn from existing genealogical work exploring suggestion, contagion, and imitation (see Leys, Borch, Orr, for example), as well as work on suggestion, contagion, and imitation that is more explicitly situated within the field of affect studies. I argue that this research helps to point toward the foreclosures, anomalies, epistemic uncertainties, gaps, absences, and silences in relation to suggestion and what suggestion might become. This work is extended through focusing specifically on two science controversies that deal with suggestive phenomena, including priming and precognition that return or re-move earlier historical controversies that are far from settled. The first controversy, ‘the John Bargh priming controversy’ is taken to demonstrate how people

Suggestion, affect, and speculative science  219 can be made to move by experimental apparatuses, which are consolidations, subtractions, and intensifications of the supposed everyday ways in which we are open to being affected and affecting others. Priming techniques are seen to operate within registers below the threshold of conscious attention and awareness and to bring about change in thought, feeling, belief, action, and perception, for example. The second controversy, which has come to be known as the ‘Feeling the Future controversy’ concerns precognition; the capacity of the future to retroactively shape the past and present. It is associated with a series of beguiling experiments carried out by the Cornell cognitive scientist Daryl Bem exploring phenomena associated with extrasensory perception. Through a novel analysis of the data that are shaped as both controversies move across different digital platforms, including blogs, twitter, websites, google+ documents, and related mediums, I explore the value of this data for providing leads to what became historically submerged, displaced, and disqualified. The analysis is made possible by the digital disruption of science publishing, and the emergence of what has become known as post-­ publication-peer-review (also see Blackman, 2016b).6 The book draws inspiration from the work of the German microbiologist and philosopher, Hans Jorg Rheinberger who until his retirement was based at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin. His work, like many feminist science studies scholars (Haraway, Barad, Franklin, for example) has produced new objects, entities, methods, and ways of thinking at the intersection of science and philosophy. His work was highly influenced by Derrida, Haraway, Bachelard, Foucault, and Canguilhem, for example. His philosophy of experimental practice is one that has many shared ontologies with those taken up within anthropology, sociology, and literary studies (those which foreground process, enaction, and relationality, for example) and is what Lenoir (2010: xii) refers to as an ‘exercise in historical epistemology’. His approach and historical method present a critique of scientific positivism and explore the entanglement of science, the technical and cultural in the production of scientific objects and entities or what we might term, following Karen Barad (2007), phenomena. Phenomena are akin to what Rheinberger terms ‘epistemic things’. Rheinberger’s approach foregrounds recursion or patterns of repetition and difference that underpin both the invention of new scientific objects and the epistemological foreclosure of specific materialized interpretations. Scientific objects are always mediated and become an agent in ‘the process of making knowledge’ (Lenoir, 2010: xiii). They are part of ‘experimental systems’ or apparatuses that are performative; they invent rather than discover. However, the processes of what becomes stabilized are always haunted for Rheinberger in terms of displaced and suppressed narratives, which always threaten to surface and come back; they exist as traces or deferrals in the Derridean sense (see Derrida, 1995). Although science controversies might be considered settled at particular times, Rheinberger (1994) shows how they have the tendency to resurface

220  Lisa Blackman in new ways and forms. This is something he cogently shows when following the controversies surrounding chicken tumor agents within oncology across time. This is what Rheinberger (1994) following Derrida refers to as the historical movement of a trace (its haunting perhaps), the tension between persistence and transformation. He argues this process is not captured by Kuhn’s (1962) more totalizing notion of a paradigm and a paradigm shift to understand change and transformation within science. Experimental systems are haunted by traces of the past, and these traces, those ‘half-private, half public conjurations’ (Derrida, 1995: 57) also open to what Derrida termed ‘archives of the future’; those lost-futures of science or science-yet-to-come. Rheinberger’s Derridarian influence is most telling in the neologisms that he constructs as heuristics, which shape his approach to science and scientific forms of experimentation. This includes the concept of historiality, which draws attention to the multiplicity of times that intrude within experimental systems. The concept also draws attention to science as a storytelling machine where he argues; ‘an experimental system has more stories to tell than the experimenter at any given moment is trying to tell with it’ (Rheinberger, 1994: 77). He equates this dynamic potential to older narratives that persist in the future, as well as ‘fragments of narratives that have not yet been told’ (1994: 77). His argument shows how there are many more stories to be told about what it might mean to enter into suggestive relations that can be mined and put into circulation. They are currently foreclosed by some of the historical beliefs and assumptions we have inherited, particularly from the psychological sciences, as I have illustrated. I would argue that this approach invites a more inventive approach to experimentation and suggestion, the precursors of which can be found in earlier psychological experiments into suggestion, which have largely been discarded and consigned to history.

Suggestion and future psychology In my previous writing I have explored such an archive of experimentation arguing that it reveals what suggestion might do or become in some of its diverse modalities. It also reveals the contingency of the historical a priori that structure contemporary psychological and neuroscientific experiments into suggestion and automaticity. As we have seen the assumption made is that suggestion should be involuntary and effortless (see Blackman, 2014a). The problematic of suggestion and what suggestion could and might become within different modalities of experimentation requires the shaping of a post-psychological project that takes ‘psychological processes’ out of a distinctly human sensory apparatus; that is, suggestion is not merely a personality trait that can be indexed and measured. The approaches I have been influenced by all assume what Bernard Stiegler, has called the fundamental technicity of the human (Stiegler, 1998). Within studies of such fundamental

Suggestion, affect, and speculative science  221 technicity it is assumed that the human and technics are co-constituent processes entering into co-enactive and coevolving relationships. These relationships always-already involve technical mediation. Important to the approach I am trying to develop is an engagement with inventive experimentation as a creative and critical practice that enacts, rather than discloses, entities which preexist technical and historical processes. One fundamental rethinking of suggestion as a generative principle of mediation made possible by this work is that suggestion is always technical. We cannot talk about general psychical influences as suggestive unless we can also take into account the technical practices and processes that allow suggestive processes to take form. Suggestion is therefore not a noun, referring to some abstract process, but rather suggestion is always technical, and part of an associated milieu (Venn, 2010). We can find these insights in the past of psychology and psychoanalysis, as well as in process philosophy and vitalism. These are all areas, which provide important ways of recasting the question of what it might and could mean to ‘pay attention’ differently and to enter into suggestive relations with another – human and nonhuman. If my argument convinces, then any discussion on the inventiveness of experimental or aesthetic devices, objects, entities, and technologies requires attention to what and how subjects become available to be articulated by and through practices. This might require working with and against particular ‘habits of attention’, thus repositioning inventive practices as forms of experimental stagecraft requiring ingenuity, hard work, training, discipline, and attention to the creative process. Let me outline some examples to illustrate what might be at stake. My argument can be best illustrated by a series of experiments carried out at William James’s Harvard Psychological Laboratory by Leon Solomons and Gertrude Stein in the late nineteenth century (1896). I have written about these experiments in other contexts (see Blackman, 2014a, 2014b), and how they act as an interesting precursor to contemporary discussions of the performativity, efficacy and potential of devices, technologies, and settings to bring about change and transformation. In this last section I will focus specifically on the experiments with automatic reading, rather than writing (which I have focused on elsewhere; see Blackman, 2014a, 2014b). Solomons and Stein experimented with the phenomena of automatic writing and automatic reading. In their experiments with automatic writing, which I have discussed in an article published in the journal Subjectivity, they experimented with a specific device known as a planchette. This device is associated more with psychic research and the phenomena of automatic writing and with spiritualist settings and mediumship, although it has also caught the attention and imaginations of many artists, including Susan Hiller, for example. Part of the milieu or background to these experiments was hysteria and the experiences of secondary or double personality experienced by many women that had been documented usually by those men who were studying them. Hysteria at that time was considered a peculiar form

222  Lisa Blackman of distinctly female psychopathology. Solomons and Stein did not start with the presumption of psychopathology but wanted to see if they could model what were taken to be the ‘secondary personalities’ of hysterics through the use of the planchette. They were interested in what they termed capacities and habits of attention and how these might be done and undone within particular experimental settings. Experimentation in this context was organized through more creative analytics based on process philosophy and particularly radical empiricism (see Blackman, 2014a). It was more proto-performative and speculative rather than designed to confirm or disclose truths. The social technology and a priori of the setting was oriented to the capacity of the experimental apparatus to attune to such habits and capacities and produce transformations. In Immaterial Bodies (Blackman, 2012) I have argued that attention was approached as a threshold experience that could be actualized in different ways depending on the efficacy of the setting – this included various devices and the training, discipline, and perhaps the ‘interest’ of the experimental subject. They were working against what Solomons and Stein called habits of attention; those local theories of mind, consciousness, matter etc. which shape perception, sensation, and attention; what anthropologists would later call ‘cultural invitation’. The main assumption that remains throughout science, and particularly the psychological sciences today as we have seen, is that suggestion should be experienced as involuntary and e­ ffortless – that is, it does not require work, training, ingenuity, discipline etc. What can we learn by returning to Solomons and Stein’s experiments with automaticity framed as doing and undoing particular habits of attention? I will focus on one of the series of experiments, which explored what they termed ‘automatic reading’. Automatic reading was actualized via an apparatus, which consisted of the experimental subject reading a novel aloud to herself (in a low voice) while an operator reads another story. It is important that the first story or novel is uninteresting and the second that the operator reads is more interesting or exciting (this is usually discussed by Solomons and Stein as being due to the emotional intensity and valence of the stories). After a number of trials, they suggest that it becomes possible for the subject to read aloud while focusing on and listening to the second story. They argue that ‘the reading becomes completely unconscious for periods of as much as a page’ (Solomons and Stein, 1896: 503). At best the subject’s own voice will be experienced as a confused murmur. This is experienced as a background of meaningless sound or as a blank; as moments of unconsciousness. The reading is also usually rather monotonous. At certain thresholds the subject would experience their own voice as an extra-personality, where their own voice was experienced as ‘not-me’; ‘his [sic] voice seemed as if that of another person’ (Solomons and Stein, 1896: 504). These experiments were working with and against particular habits of attention (the absorption of reading a novel for example) in order to see what it might be possible to actualize within particular settings.

Suggestion, affect, and speculative science  223 It would seem to me that these experiments with their focus on particular devices, in this case the novel, voices, and different thresholds of sound, foreground the importance of the embodied capacities of the subject to enter into and transform the setting. Stein with the help of a particular apparatus was able to pay attention in different ways such that she could experience her own voice as extra-personal. How she paid attention was a technical matter and one that challenged concepts of will and conscious rationality. This was about creating the settings through which a process might ‘become available’ as the basis of transformative experience. Solomons and Stein worked with subjectivity as a transitive process (never distinctly human), which disrupted boundaries between consciousness and unconsciousness, mind and body, attention and distraction, material and immaterial, and will and habit. The concept of ‘availability’ has also been developed in work inspired by the writings of Gabriel Tarde (see Candea, 2010). I develop this concept within an article published in the Journal of Curatorial Studies – in a special issue on Affect and Relationality (see Blackman, 2016a). I have used the concept of ‘availability’ to explore my own embodied responses to an exhibition at the Foundling Museum in London. I argue that this concept is useful for thinking about how exhibitions, museums, or gallery spaces might operate affectively. On that basis I explore why foregrounding those experiences and phenomena that have historically been sidelined within understandings of sense-making, including suggestion, automaticity, and voice hearing, might open the arts up to inventive practices that extend how we approach perception, attention, and meaning-making within and through art practices. I develop arguments put forward by Helene Ratner (2009) published in the journal Distinktion. She argues following the work of Gabriel Tarde, that suggestion is the basic mechanism of social-psychological life. Engaging with the ontology of subjectivity presumed within Tarde’s work, what is seen to define subjectivity is the capacity to affect and be affected. As I have argued elsewhere, for this reason, Tarde’s psychology has been considered an inter- rather than intra-psychology (Blackman, 2007). Tarde also argued that ‘suggested ideas, beliefs and desires form the basis for often non-conscious but also voluntary action’ (Ratner, 2009: 106). However, ­Ratner argues it is not that suggestive processes operate merely between human subjects, but that objects can also be suggestive. However, she also argues that not all objects are suggestive. The ‘suggestive object facilitates an emotional transformation. Suggestive objects evoke emotions, passions, beliefs and attachments’ (2009: 112). As she goes on to argue, ‘we do not know in advance which objects are suggestive or which subjects experience their suggestion’ (2009: 114). In understanding what becomes suggestive Ratner also seeks to break down or dissolve the distinction between object and subject and cognition and affect. It is a process she argues of understanding and investigating how ‘objects become suggestive while subjects learn to become affected by the

224  Lisa Blackman suggestive objects’ (2009: 114). Ratner also draws on Vincianne Despret’s notion of ‘availability’ (2008), where availability refers to the way in which subjects and objects become reassembled in an emotional articulation. Objects can only be suggestive if there are bodies that are more or less available to objects. Thus, availability importantly has to include some kind of emotional transformation and can take on a conscious and non-conscious form. This takes our methodological inquiry beyond the ‘speaking subject’ and requires the innovation and development of experimental and aesthetic practices that can disclose, shape, actualize, and experiment inventively with these potentialities. When we consider the body’s potential for mediation within this context, we need to consider the ‘total participation’ of the body’s potential for mediation which cannot be reduced to the affective, cognitive, neurological, physiological, or somatic; this is what I call transsubjectivities; processes that are never contained or defined by the singular distinctly human body. The traces in these experiments reveal what suggestion could be or might become and open up to what I am calling a ‘Future Psychology’ based on a more speculative approach to science.

Conclusion As a family member it was always difficult to separate my own thoughts and feelings from the complex relational dynamics I grew up with. As I often say, I felt I got to know much more about my mother and father and their own lives and unspoken autobiographies when we were living shared dynamics that brought us to the attention of the school, legal system, welfare, and hospital. I became fascinated by the kinds of experiences and phenomena that psychiatry and psychology refer to as ‘passivity or dissociative phenomena’ or as signs and symptoms of disease and illness. I read everything in the local library on psychiatry and psychology in relation to suggestion and voice hearing (and the relations articulated between them) and the deficit model left me frightened, cold, anxious, and fearful. There had to be other explanations and I comforted myself with a search that has continued throughout my academic career. This search has taken in the psychological sciences and the openings made possible by critical, discursive, and feminist psychologies in the late eighties and early nineties; philosophy and critical historiographies of science, and latterly the field of body studies, sociology, affect studies, and media and cultural theory. I was and have never been willing or ready to accept that suggestion, contagion, and imitation should be understood primarily as a loss of self-control, as a sign that the primitive and animal have not been successfully renounced, as the intrusion of the irrational, or many of the other associations that have been acquired within and outside the psychological sciences. My own response to this has been to try and shape, invent and search for what I am calling a Future Psychology; a psychology that is attentive and oriented to psychological processes as fundamentally relational,

Suggestion, affect, and speculative science  225 indeterminate, and entangled in complex ways with material, immaterial, symbolic, technical, historical, cultural and political practices, objects, and entities. It is an approach that can be found in traces of psychology’s many pasts that resurface and return within science controversies when followed across time. In conclusion I am of the strong belief, that despite everything, modernity does not have the measure of the subject. In this context it is apposite to finish with a quote from Stengers to remind us of the historical legacies we are confronting: ‘isn’t it ridiculous that with respect to the phenomenon of hypnosis, whose enigmatic character Freud has always recognised, we are still at the level of invoking Hitler, drugs or the music hall’ (1997: 106).

Notes 1 ‘Weird science’ is a broad term, which captures all manner of sciences of oddities, exceptions, and anomalies. It is a term often used to refer to phenomena, practices, experiences, and entities, which have been associated or linked with the paranormal or supernatural. As a field it refers to science, which concerns itself with unexplained mysteries, oddities, ‘strange stuff’ or challenges to established thinking. This might include the area of anomalous psychology, or the ‘psychology of anomalous experience’, formerly known as parapsychology. This subdiscipline of psychology aligns a diverse range of phenomena and experiences, including mediumship, electronic voice phenomena, magical beliefs, lucid dreaming, deathbed visions, miracle cures, paranormal beliefs, false memory, telepathy, near-death states, haunted experiences, suggestion, hypnosis, the placebo effect, and so forth. It is framed as a study of extraordinary or exceptional phenomena, but is not restricted to those experiences, which might be delineated as paranormal. 2 This quote is taken from Ruth Leys’ (2011) important critique of affect theory that was published in Critical Inquiry. Although she is sympathetic to such a move she is also critical of the current assumption that affect is independent or autonomous from meaning and signification. Also see her book The Ascent of Affect: Genealogy and Critique (2017). 3 www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04vf36p (accessed 1 May 2018). 4 See for example the writings of Stanley Hall (1904) the evolutionary psychologist famous for inventing the concept of adolescence. He drew on evolutionary psychology, including the work of the French Royalist Gustave Le Bon (1922) to make the argument that certain people were closer to the animal and primitive and less able to renounce suggestion on what he conceived as a developmental path to autonomy and self-control. In his writings he positioned women, children, and colonial subjects as closer to the animal and more susceptible to what he conceived as dangerous rhythms of modern industrial life (including the factory and particular forms of music, such as swing and jazz). His work was symptomatic of the racist colonial imaginary that psychology as a knowledge practice became part of and helped to inscribe within strategies of population management. However, the vestiges of this thinking still haunt contemporary psychology and the way it attempts to understand collective behavior and mass psychology (see Blackman, 2013). 5 Examples of behavior and practices which were specified as example of ‘mass hysteria’ included the widespread mourning and collective rituals such as leaving flowers at the gates of Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace, which

226  Lisa Blackman followed Princess Diana’s death. As many people commented: ‘I didn’t believe in her, so why do I feel this grief?’ People talked about Diana as if they had lost a friend, inaugurating the title, the ‘People’s Princess’. The invocation of mass hysteria, understood as the renouncement of rationality and control, became one way in which the press and broadcast media attempted to find an explanation for the unmagnified expressions of sorrow (see Blackman, 1999). 6 Post-publication-peer-review is a distributed form of commentary made possible by social and digital media, which allow different publics to add their own commentary to published academic journal articles as they circulate across websites, blogs and weblogs, twitter, Google+ posts, in Reddit communities, in comments attached to Wikipedia, online science journalism articles, newspaper articles, and so on. For some scientists, the digital disruption of the publishing industry is opening scientific conversation up to new publics and can help contribute to the impact of the article. For others it is dangerous and might damage the integrity of science and the concepts used to adjudicate truth-claims.

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Index

#illridewithyou 114–24 #jesuischarlie 133–4 #sydneysiege 114, 116–22 9/11 133, 149–51, 157 actor-network theory (ANT) 30, 42, 110, 116 affect 8, 39, 43, 49, 63, 92, 159–60, 180, 198, 208; transmission of 5–6, 143 affect theory 5–6, 25–6, 29, 37, 92, 136–7, 212–14, 223 agency 199, 213 agent-based models (ABMs) 29, 158–61, 164–7, 169–72, 197 Al Qaeda 133, 149 algorithms 151, 159 animal magnetism 9–10, 37, 46 animal spirits 98–99 anthropology 11, 126, 128, 188, 208, 216, 219, 222 anti-mimesis 14, 26–7, 102–3 authority 56, 58–9, 64, 189–90; see also moral authority automatism, automaticity 37, 39–41, 44–5, 59–62, 66, 211, 213–16, 220, 223 automatic reading 221–2 automatic writing 215 autonomy 57, 83, 128, 190, 213–14 autosuggestion 28, 74, 76, 79, 84 beliefs 19–21, 23–4, 44, 97, 102, 157, 213, 216, 220, 223 Bernheim, Hippolyte 6–7, 10–21, 25–6, 39, 42–5, 76, 103 big data 107, 110, 146, 150 biosurveillance 150, 163–4; see also disease surveillance body-culture movement 77–8, 84

broadcast media 113–14, 118, 121, 215, 217; see also news media Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 142, 144–6, 163, 166 Charcot, Jean-Martin 11–13, 15, 27, 39, 45 Charlie Hebdo 28, 126–7, 129, 132–4 cinema, cinematic 79–80, 190 cities 4, 21–2, 29, 49, 59, 97, 114–5, 121, 129, 148, 163, 167 civilization 74–5, 111, 217 class 4, 12–13, 59, 82–3, 135, 165, 185–6, 217 cloud computing 141, 143 cognition 48, 126, 213, 223 cognitive sciences 211, 213, 219 collective behavior 55, 80, 107–8, 121 collective emotions 57 collective energies 12, 63, 66–7 collective sentiment 63–4 collectivity 9, 27, 29, 58, 63, 67, 186 communication 29, 38, 41, 43, 46–8, 146–8, 150, 158, 162, 164, 199; and contagion 29, 142–4, 169 communication studies 109–111, 117, 121 communication technologies 97, 143, 147 complex networks 109, 111 complexity 19, 92, 121, 144, 152, 203 computational media 157–8; computer science 7, 109, 157, 161–2 computer simulation 157–9, 161, 171 computer viruses 110, 157, 161 conflict 27, 59, 77, 79, 126, 129, 131, 138, 149, 182

230 Index consciousness 14, 23, 63, 66, 102, 108, 126, 162, 164, 186, 188, 204, 206–8, 213–4, 216; and liability 12; and social action 23–4; and unconsciousness 39–41, 44–7, 49, 58–9, 199, 223–4 consent 15–16, 62, 103, 110 contagion 37–8, 58, 107–13, 116, 118–22, 134, 141–3, 152, 185–6, 214; affective 5–6, 39, 49, 50, 92, 115, 127, 137; and communication 22, 29; and crowd theory 13–14; and epidemiology 7, 22, 29, 143, 157–73, 196; and magnetism 9–10; and violence 129, 131–32; emotional 37, 107, 109–10; financial 97–103; of crime 3–4; of imitation 17, 21, 25, 44, 60–61, 66, 95; social 21–22, 107–12; see also financial bubbles; imitation, contagion, suggestion links (ICS/i-c-s); mimesis Contagion (movie) 142, 144 control 5, 40, 79–80, 131, 144, 150, 161, 163–5, 187–9, 211, 214–16; see also self-control controversy 10, 218–9 copy, copying 60, 62, 66, 99, 102, 108–9, 184, 186 crimes, criminology 3–4, 12, 17, 152, 160 crises 9, 81, 95, 97, 100, 114, 129, 132, 134, 137, 205 crowds 11, 37, 57, 61–3, 65–6, 74, 129, 131–4, 170–1, 183–6, 194, 196, 218; and cities 21, 115; and publics 115–16, 121–22, 191; psychology of 7, 13–14, 29, 39–40, 50, 96, 98, 107, 157–61, 215, 217; leader of 17, 50, 62, 96, 132 customs 17, 44 Delbœuf, Joseph 15–19 democracies 50, 121, 127, 131, 218; see also liberal democracies depth 194, 198–200, 204, 206–8 Derrida, Jacques, 128, 219–20 Descartes, René 180–1 desires 14, 17, 19, 20–1, 23–4, 44, 80, 97, 126–31, 134–6, 182, 188, 208, 223 digital: analytics 141; disruption 219, 226; media, 28, 110, 179; networks 107, 111, 148–51, 163; studies 37; technologies 29, 141, 143–144; traces 108, 112, 121, 158 disease 9, 22, 29, 74–5, 108, 142–5, 149, 151–2, 158–9, 161–71, 196, 204, 224

disease surveillance 143, 145, 163–4; see also biosurvelliance Durkheim, Emile 5, 27–8, 30, 54–68, 108, 182 early forecasting, warning systems 144–5 Ebola 144, 163 economics 7, 17, 27–8, 59, 73, 75, 91–101, 104, 127, 171 economic actors 97–9 education 74, 76–7, 84, 187; see also self-education Eisenstein, Sergei 78–9 emotions 40–1, 44–7, 49, 57, 92, 94, 97, 132, 137, 157, 160, 188, 214, 218, 223 empathy 41, 43, 50 Enlightenment 91, 180, 183, 188–92 entrainment 5–6, 63, 66–8 epidemics 9, 22, 29, 96, 100, 109, 143–4, 147–9, 152, 157–72 Epstein, J. M. 161, 166–7, 169–70 evolution 60, 102, 107, 115, 145, 152, 190, 200, 204, 217; coevolution 172 expectancy effects 15, 216 experimental: apparatuses 215–6, 219, 222; practices 165, 212, 224; psychology 46, 80; subjects 15, 222; systems 219–220 expressive movement 78–9, 83 extrasensory perception 219 Facebook 107, 109–11, 113–4, 121 fake news 121–2, 142 fashions 44, 57, 91, 99, 128, 185 feminism 213, 219, 224 Féré, Charles 8, 17–18, 27, 39, 45–7, 49–50 financial: bubbles 91; economics 7, 28, 93, 99–101, 103; markets 28, 91–104; see also stock markets Foucault, Michel 25, 45, 163, 171–2, 219 Freud, Sigmund 5, 8, 13–16, 19, 23, 37–8, 131–2, 197, 199, 225 future psychology 30, 212, 220, 224 Gallese, Vittorio 41, 126–7 Geographical Information Systems (GIS) 143, 146, 167 Gerling, Reinhold 75–6 gestures 25, 40–1, 43, 45–6, 48, 55, 104, 146, 196 Girard, René 5, 7, 28, 102, 126, 128–32, 136–8 globalization 6, 26, 137, 157

Index  231 Global Viral Forecasting Initiative (GVFI) 144, 146, 151 Google 143, 146, 219, 226 gymnastics 74–9, 83–4 habits 40, 44, 109, 213, 223; of attention 221–2 hashtags 107, 112, 114–22, 133–4; as viral artifact 107, 112, 115–16; hashtag communities 112, 116; see also #illridewithyou, #jesuischarlie, #sydneysiege, racial hashtags herding 49, 91, 100–1 hyper-mimetic age 127, 138 hypnosis 4, 8, 42–5, 48, 50, 76, 83–4, 214–6, 225; and films 79–80; and financial markets 97–98; Friedrich Nietzsche on 38–9, 44–5; Hippolyte Bernheim on 11–15, 17–18, 42, 44, 103; Jean-Martin Charcot on 11–13; Gabriel Tarde on 3, 17–19, 43; Sigmund Freud on 13–16, 131–2 hypnotic crimes 12, 17 hysteria 11, 39, 42, 74, 108, 217, 221 hysterics 11, 13, 37, 42–3, 45, 74, 217, 222 Iacoboni, Marco 41, 47–8, 50 imitation 3–4, 17–30, 37–40, 42–4, 46–50, 73–4, 94–104, 107–11, 121–2, 126–32, 134–8, 157, 214–5; and selfdevelopment 77–84; Emile Durkheim on 54–68; Max Weber on 22–4 imitation, contagion, and suggestion links (ICS/i-c-s) 4–10, 17–22, 24–30, 48, 91, 93–4, 96, 98, 103–4, 127, 130–3, 135, 138, 158–61, 172 179–92, 194–6, 198, 208, 211, 216, 218, 224 individuality 4, 7, 25–30, 194–6, 200 infection 108, 142–7, 151, 157, 160, 164, 166, 171, 196 informatics 148, 161–2, 164; see also bioinformatics instincts 20, 42, 60–1, 82, 98–9, 160–1, 218 intelligence 146, 149, 198 intersubjectivity 38, 48, 126, 137 intuition 185, 194, 197, 200 inventions 9, 17, 84, 110, 220–1, 223–4 investment decisions 91, 100–1 invisibility 79, 157, 197, 202–4 irrationality 49–50, 60, 91, 93, 97–8, 100, 102, 104, 127, 138, 189, 215, 218, 224

Islamic State (ISIS) 113, 133 issue publics 115–16, 120–1 Janet, Pierre, 29, 39–40, 42, 47, 195, 200–6 Jones, Edward David 96–8 Kant, Immanuel 56, 188–90, 192, 195 Latour, Bruno 27, 42, 56, 95, 107, 110, 112, 213 Le Bon, Gustave 6, 13–14, 29, 40, 50, 96, 108, 143, 157–8, 160, 217 leadership 10, 17, 47, 50, 62, 64, 66, 96, 132–4, 136 Lewin, Kurt 73–4, 79–83 liberal: autonomous self 14, 25, 131; individual 196; democracies 131, 218 loss 99, 137; of autonomy 83; of selfcontrol 215, 224; of self 4, 25, 73, 83, 103, 131–2 Madison, James 189–92 magnetism 10, 19, 21, 38, 94 management 74, 79, 82, 84, 164 markets 54, 91–98, 100–2, 137; see also financial markets market actors 91, 95, 97–9, 101–2 market imitation 103–4 mass: hysteria 217; shootings 3; see also crowds Massumi, Brian, 25, 92, 136, 213 mathematical models, methods 101–2, 107, 110, 161–2, 164–5 Maudsley, Henry 20, 42 Maynard Keynes, John 98–100, 102 meaning, 22–4, 81, 134, 137, 141–2, 147, 198–9, 203, 205–7 media 3, 26, 66, 74, 79–80, 110–8, 120–122, 135, 141–2, 144, 161, 163–4, 179, 191, 208, 226; media discourse 6, 217; media theory 28, 157, 224; see also broadcast media, computational media, cross-media flows, digital media, new media, news media, social media mediation 129, 131, 171, 203, 214–6, 221, 224 meme, memes 111, 115, 134, 185 meme theory 5, 7 Mesmer, Franz Anton 9–10, 13, 38 mesmerism 9–10, 12 microsociology 110, 116–7 mimesis 3–8, 14, 26–9, 37–44, 46–50, 73–5, 78, 79, 81–3, 91–5, 99–104,

232 Index 116, 126–32, 134–8, 194; see also anti-mimesis mirror neurons 6, 8, 27, 37, 41, 45, 46–50, 126 mobs 49, 96–7, 131, 217; see also crowds modern: economics 27, 91; experiences 4, 8, 12, 25; predicament 9, 14; personality 185–6; psychology 50, 188, 214; self 73, 136, 180; sociality 6, 190; society 4, 8, 13, 19, 21, 96, 171, 191; technology 142–3 modernity 21, 157, 183, 225 Montaigne, Michel de 29, 179–88, 190, 192 morality 184– 6, 190 moral authority 55–6 moral order 10, 12, 219 moral philosophy 142 multiplicities 48, 115, 151, 194, 207, 220 Nancy School 10, 12–13, 16, 20, 39, 43–5, 76; Nancy–Salpêtrière debate 11 nerves 11, 43, 80, 83 nervousness 28, 42–3, 74–5, 77–8, 83–4 networks 43, 115–22, 136, 141–52, 159, 161–8, 172, 208, 214; see also social networks, viral networks network theory 7, 28, 108–112, 121 neurasthenia 28, 74–7 neuroscience 27, 37, 38, 42–3, 46–8, 50, 126, 137, 213 new media 153, 191, 208, 217; see also digital media, social media news media 26, 113–14, 118, 120, 141; see also broadcast media Nietzsche, Friedrich 4, 8, 12, 27, 37–47, 49–50, 130, 189, 208 nonhumans 141, 160, 212–13, 221 norms 55–6, 58–62, 64–5, 67–8, 79, 83–4, 108 objects 28, 30, 58–68, 111, 128, 152, 214, 221, 223–5 Orléan, André 101–4 outbreaks 141–3, 145, 151, 158, 162–3, 165, 168–9, 171 pandemics 142–5, 149–50, 169 panic 142, 158, 159 Paris terror attacks – see Charlie Hebdo passivity 19, 68, 179–80, 216, 224 passions 40, 92, 94, 99, 188–9, 191, 196, 223 pathogens 142–6, 150–2, 157–8, 166, 168

patients 9–10, 43–6, 74, 76–8, 83, 121, 163, 203, 214 Payot, Jules 76 perceptions 40, 46, 78, 166, 190, 201–4, 212, 216, 219, 222–3 personality 8, 28, 73, 78, 80, 184–6, 200–1, 222 philosophy 3–4, 12, 37, 39, 64, 181, 188, 213, 219, 221–2, 224; see also moral philosophy physical proximity 97–8, 121, 160 physiological 39, 43–6, 79, 200, 224 physio-psychology 8, 38–40, 42–45 Pigou, Arthur Cecil 98 Public policy, Individual behavior, and interaction Network (PIN) problem 172–3 plastic, plasticity of selves 5, 12, 14, 25–6 Plato 49–50 police 113, 118, 133, 135 political order 132, 134, 218 possession 186, 188, 211 poststructuralism 25–6, 182 posts (Twitter) 113–14, 118, 208 precognition 218–9 premediation 159, 165, 171–2 prestige 19–20, 59–60, 62, 64, 94, 115 primary reactions 204–5, 207 priming 218–19 Princess Diana death 217, 226 propaganda 190, 215 psychiatry 74, 77, 131, 204, 212, 224 psychology 4–5, 7–9, 12–14, 16–17, 23, 29–30, 37, 66, 73–4, 84, 188, 197, 200, 206–7, 211–12, 213–18, 223–5; and financial markets 94–100; applied 66, 73–4, 79–82; crowd and mass 13–14, 17, 39–40, 50, 91, 96, 98, 107, 158–61, 215; of imitation 58, 62; social 50, 80, 184; see also future psychology, physio-psychology psychoanalysis 8, 13–14, 37, 199, 221 psychotherapy 4–5, 14, 16, 18 public opinion 96, 121, 148 public sphere 116, 198, 121 pure imitation 59, 61–4, 67 pure reaction 23, 208 racial hashtags 112, 116; see also #illridewithyou, hashtags rational, rationalization 10, 19, 39, 44, 49, 81–2, 91, 93, 95, 97, 99–104, 121– 2, 136–7, 179, 189, 191, 213–14, 218; rationality 62, 91, 93, 102, 223, 226

Index  233 reaction 22–23, 29, 40, 84, 98, 159, 161, 194–209, 210 reason 23–4, 62, 94, 97, 99, 137, 189, 214 reflexes 4, 37–8, 40–3, 46–9, 61–2, 160, 197, 200–3, 205–7 religion 11, 55, 65, 130, 135–6, 189 retweet 114; see liking, forwarding, retweeting Ribot, Théodule 39–40, 43 Richet, Charles 18, 39–40 ritual 54–5, 63–5, 67, 129–30, 134 rivalry 11, 28, 44–5, 127–31, 134, 137; rivals 12, 129 rules 21, 54–62, 67, 84, 147, 167, 171, 198 sacred, sacrality 54–5, 60, 66, 68, 129 Salpêtrière School 11–12, 16, 29, 43–5 scapegoat 128–9, 132, 135 schizophrenia 204, 216 secondary reactions 204–7 security 114, 133, 142, 145, 149, 151, 158, 161, 163 self 4, 14, 25–6, 38, 46, 48, 128–9, 131–2, 136, 179–88, 191–2; self-conscious 24; self-control 82, 215, 224; selfdetermination 211–12, 214; selfdiscipline 67, 77; self-education 73–4, 76–8, 83; self-help 28; self-hypnosis 15; self-improvement 208, 218; selfinterest, self-love 91–4, 104; selforganization 161, 166; self-perception 74; self-reactivity 198; self-regulation 73, 80, 83–4, 186–7; self-sacrifice 189 senses 11, 40, 43, 199 sense-making, 111, 211, 223 sentiment 55, 57, 60–1, 63–5, 92, 94, 98, 114, 129, 184, 188, 204, 206, 213 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) 142, 145, 151, 163 Shiller, Robert J. 91, 93, 99–101 Sidis, Boris 12, 96–7 siege in Sydney café –see Sydney Siege Sighele, Scipio 12, 158, 160 Simmel, Georg 12, 179, 182, 185, 198 simulation 29, 37, 47, 126, 157–62, 164–72 sleepwalking 18; see also somnambulism smart devices 141–3 Smith, Adam 73, 91–4, 104, 189 social: action 22–4, 179, 195; bonds 4, 28, 57, 61, 66, 93–5, 179, 194; facts 54–5, 57–9, 179; hierarchies 10, 12; life 38, 40, 42, 44, 95, 179, 194, 197–8,

207; media 7, 26, 28, 107, 109–15, 114, 118, 121–2, 133–4, 143, 151, 194, 214; norms 108; movements 108; networks 29, 107–9, 112, 115–16, 121, 149, 158, 168, 172, 179; order 12, 27, 68, 134–5; practices 83–4; processes 74, 80, 141, 158, 200; psychology 50, 80, 184; regulation 73; sciences 4, 37, 39, 42–3, 60, 80, 161, 166, 182, 190, 195, 197, 214, 216; suggestion 18, 49; theory 3, 5–8, 16, 19, 21, 25, 27, 38–9, 44, 50, 172, 179, 192 sociality 4, 18, 83, 126–7, 136, 138, 190, 217; and individualization 6–7, 24–9, 127; market 95; vector of 21, 127 socialization 187 sociology 5, 7, 27, 37, 61, 63, 68, 79, 96, 157–8, 181–2, 190–1, 195, 212, 219; and psychology 9, 11–12, 39, 55, 59, 99, 130; Gabriel Tarde’s understanding of 3–4, 17–18, 22–4, 73, 110–12, 117; of religion 54–5, 65–6 socius 40, 47–48 solidarity 133–5, 185 solitude 179, 181–2, 186, 188, 190 somnambulism 4, 6, 10–11, 17–18, 39, 44, 121, 204 spectators, spectatorship 79, 92, 102 speculation 95, 98, 99–102, 114 speculative science 211–12, 218 state of emergency, exception 133, 135, 142, 171 statistics 57, 159, 162, 164, 169, 171 Stein, Gertrude 221–3 stimulations 196, 201–5 stock markets 94–8, 104 subjectification 73, 83–4; subjective meaning 22, 24; subjectivity 15, 25, 47, 84, 126, 128, 134, 180, 189, 192, 199, 211, 213, 221, 223 substance 43, 180–1 Sugarscape 166–7, 172 suggestibility 3, 5, 11, 13–15, 44–5, 49, 74, 83, 96, 127, 179, 216–8; see also autosuggestible suggestion 6, 29–30, 43–50, 58–61, 66, 79, 96, 98, 103, 107–8, 121, 130–1, 134, 136, 138,186–8, 196, 211–8, 220–4; and power 13, 15–16, 19–20, 43–9, 131, 136, 138, 214; Bernheim, Hippolyte on 10–16, 26, 39, 43–5; Gabriel Tarde on 4, 17–21, 23–4, 43–4, 58, 66, 180; Sigmund Freud on 5, 8, 13–15, 23, 37–8; suggestion theory

234 Index 29; see also imitation, contagion, and suggestion links (ICS/i-c-s) suggestionné 10, 14–16, 20, 23–4, 26 suggestionneur 10, 13–16, 19–20, 23–4, 26 suggestive 5, 21, 43, 77, 83, 214; suggestive forces 13, 46; suggestive imitation 17, 160; suggestive objects 223–4; suggestive patterns 20; suggestive phenomena 215, 218; suggestive relations 216, 220–1; suggestive therapies 42, 74, 76 suicide 54, 57, 59, 61–3, 67 surfaces 184, 188, 194, 198–200, 206–8, 213, 219, 225 surveillance 133, 143–5, 147, 150–1, 163–4, 211 susceptibility 43, 47, 48, 91, 95–6, 98, 131, 165–6, 170, 216–7 Sydney Siege 28, 107, 113–21 sympathy 92–4, 97–8 Tarde, Gabriel 6–9, 16–28, 30, 39–44, 46, 50, 73, 93–9, 103–4, 107–8, 110–12, 115, 117, 121–2, 127, 130, 132, 148, 158, 160, 179–82, 185, 190, 198, 208, 223; and Emile Durkheim 54–61, 63–8; on crime 3–4, 17 tension between mimesis and antimimesis 14, 26–7, 103–4 terrorism 3, 19, 26–9, 114, 127, 132–6, 138, 149–50, 152, 157, 159 therapy, therapeutics 10, 11, 13–14, 50, 74–8, 83, 199 Thrift, Nigel 6, 25, 110–11, 136 traces 5, 49, 109, 127, 130, 135, 142, 157, 212, 219–20, 224–5; see also digital traces tracking 113, 116, 122, 146, 150, 161 traffic 147–8, 165, 168–9 trance 48, 214, 216 transmissions 5, 59, 141, 143, 146, 148, 151, 157–70; transmitting 17, 44, 159, 164, 169, 171 trauma 8, 14, 26, 172, 199 truth 37, 39, 102, 137, 182–3, 212, 222, 226

turn to affect 5, 136 tweets 120; see also posts (Twitter) Twitter 28, 107, 109–17, 119, 121, 133, 143, 219 two sides of imitation, mimesis 28, 126, 132, 135, 138 unconscious, 14, 20, 23–4, 37–50, 59–60, 62, 79–80, 196–7, 199, 222–3 urban, urbanized 4, 21, 115, 168–9, 183; urban society 143; urban theory 7 vector of sociality 21, 26, 127 vices 186, 196 victims 20, 129, 134–5, 162 violence 5, 13, 19, 126–30, 132, 134, 137, 152 viral, virality 107, 109, 110–11, 115–16, 118–21, 142, 144, 146–50, 152; viral artifact 112, 115; viral chatter 141, 145–52; viral networks 148, 150; viral network theory 110–1 virtual 30, 150, 158, 165, 168, 172, 202; virtual global immune system 144, 150; virtual networks 148; virtual world 43, 74 viruses 29, 110, 141–2, 144–52 visibility 5–6, 37, 54, 79, 95, 116, 120, 157, 198–9, 200, 202, 207–8 voice hearing and suggestion 212, 214, 222–4 voluntary action 198, 223 vulnerability 42, 163, 187–8, 214, 217 Weber, Max 5, 22–4, 29, 195, 197 weird science 212, 214, 218 will to power 39, 43, 46 willpower 15, 76, 79, 184, 186; willpower training 75–6, 78 Wolfe, Nathan 144–6, 148–52 World Health Organization (WHO) 145, 163 World War Z (movie) 159 YouTube 113 zombies 159, 173