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Mimesis, Metaphors, Models, and Feet in American Dreams
Author(s) -
Mageo Jeannette
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
ethos
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.783
H-Index - 44
eISSN - 1548-1352
pISSN - 0091-2131
DOI - 10.1111/etho.12199
Subject(s) - subject (documents) , copying , dream , argument (complex analysis) , psychology , aesthetics , psychoanalysis , philosophy , computer science , law , biochemistry , chemistry , neuroscience , library science , political science
Dreamers copy images from memories, I ague in this article, to serve as metaphors for problems with a cultural model, but they change remembered images to comment on these problems. What this means is that dreaming is mimetic in nature. I define mimesis as copying with alterations, where the reproduction specifies a subject of thought and variations comment on that subject. In longer dreams, these alterations are of three types: (1) dreamers pose a question as a visually absent element of a memory; (2) dreamers re‐present the same question through a succession of different metaphors; and (3) dreamers blend images associated with a primary cultural model with images associated with a secondary cultural model. I base this argument on dream data collected from Northwestern American college students, zooming in on the dream of a young woman about her feet and about a cultural model I call “the Pinup” that is fundamental to the contemporary rating of female bodies.