1,602 definitions
Acquisitive mimesis (n.) is imitation of the reaching hand: when one ape sees another reach for an object, it is at once tempted to reach too.
Blood feud (n.) contains only one act — murder — repeated for the same reasons in the same way, each a vengeful copy of the last.
Conflict (n.) looks to archaic eyes not like victory against defeat but like resemblance: the same aims, the same tactics, the same gestures on both sides.
Imitation (n.) underlies all learning: if human beings suddenly stopped imitating, every form of culture would vanish.
Imitation (n.) is the subject modern thought avoids, from romanticism on, for fear that stressing it would make us accomplices of the herd and of uniformity.
Man (n.) is, for Lévi-Strauss, the animal that builds systems of signs and then mistakes them for reality itself.
Mimesis (n.) was cut short by Plato for the whole West: he spoke of copying manners and words, never of copying the hand that grabs — and so tore imitation from conflict.
Mimetic rivalry (n.) needs no scarcity: put as many identical toys as there are children in a room and the toys will still not be shared without quarrels.
Mimetic rivalry (n.) does not fade with age; adults, like apes, have merely learned to fear it and to hide its crudest forms.
Mirror (n.) is feared and linked to the devil in many traditional societies because it doubles whatever stands before it.
Oedipus complex (n.) is a needless hypothesis for repressed desire: apes hold back when two reach for one object, and no ethologist speaks of an ape's Oedipus.
The Potlatch (n.) is acquisitive mimesis turned inside out: a rivalry in giving away that can grow as ruinous as any rivalry in grabbing.