Conrad's Mimetic Turn

For some time, a mimetic turn has been haunting Conrad studies, but it is only recently that mimetic phantoms we thought we had long left behind have returned to haunt the political scene. This essay situates Conrad's reflections on the homo duplex in a philosophical tradition—from Plato to Aristotle, Nietzsche to Lacoue-Labarthe, among others—attentive to the all-too-human tendency to mimic models characteristic of homo mimeticus. It argues that Conrad's mimetic turn encourages critics to return to his diagnostic of mass-media, crowd psychology, and identification with authoritarian leaders who are "hollow at the core" to account for the rise of fascism, old and new, both in Europe and in the US.