New interdisciplinary essays on key topics in mimetic studies, including three contributions by internationally renowned philosopher Catherine Malabou This is the third volume of a trilogy on Homo Mimeticus, yet in no way does it seek to bring mimetic studies to an end. On the contrary, the ambition of this book is to further the mimetic turn via a new beginning. In collaboration with the French philosopher Catherine Malabou, international contributors argue that plasticity—understood in its double capacity to receive form and to give form—plays a transformative role in the many lives of homo mimeticus qua homo plasticus. Ranging from philosophy to literature, sociology to semiology, the plastic arts to neurobiology, and addressing subjects as diverse as epigenetic mimesis and neuroliterature, plastic figures and the mimetic subconscious, Homo Mimeticus III shows that both new materialisms and mimetic studies are central to affirming plastic metamorphoses in the twenty-first century. In collaboration with Catherine Malabou Introduction: Morphing Mimetic Studies Nidesh Lawtoo and Willow Verkerk Prologue: The Four Metamorphoses of Plasticity: Proteus to Figura, Self-Care to the Overhuman Nidesh Lawtoo PART I — GENEALOGIES OF MIMETIC PLASTICITY Chapter 1: Epigenetic Mimesis: Natural Brains and Synaptic Chips Catherine Malabou Chapter 2: Plasticity, Mimesis, Transformativity: A Genealogy of Theories of Change Tom Boland Chapter 3: Material Mimetism: On Plastics, Plasticity and Mimesis Alice Iacobone Chapter 4: Negative Plasticity and the Indifference of the Body Kristian Schaeferling PART II — PLASTIC ENCOUNTERS AND MIMETIC STUDIES Chapter 5: Benjamin’s Great Criminal, a Plastic Mime Gabriel Wartinger Chapter 6: To Double Mimesis Bound: Mortal Plasticity between Malabou and Lacoue-Labarthe Alex Obrigewitsch Chapter 7: Eroticism, Gender and the Possibility For Transformation: With and Beyond Merleau-Ponty Ida Djursaa Chapter 8: Mimesis, Resonance and the Subject: A Critical Comparison Mathijs Peters PART III — FROM NEUROLITERATURE TO THE MIMETIC SUBCONSCIOUS Chapter 9: Semiosis and Mimesis Sergey Zenkin Chapter 10: Neuroliterature and the Example Tyler M. Williams Chapter 11: Proust, Realism and the Plasticity of Natural Signs Ian James Chapter 12: Conflicting Subliminalities: The Other Ancestors of Mimesis Catherine Malabou Coda: The Three Metamorphoses of Mimesis: Thinking with Catherine Malabou Catherine Malabou and Nidesh Lawtoo Notes on Contributors