The imitation of nature. Both Plato and Aristotle wrote extensively about mimesis, and both were worried about its capacity to present the truth in contrast to the more reliable form of philosophy. In classical literature, mimesis is the opposite of diegesis in that it refers to the attempt by an author to speak in a voice other than their own, specifically a characterâs. In more recent critical discourse mimesis has become a code phrase for realism, or more precisely works of art that attempt to present reality in its most everyday life and mundane sense. The famous debate in the 1930s between Brecht, Bertolt and LukĂĄcs, György, two of the twentieth centuryâs most important Marxist Criticism, centred on the relative artistic value of mimesis, with LukĂĄcs arguing in favour of it, saying it was necessary to get away from the tales of aristocracy if the truth of society was to be told, and Brecht arguing against it by saying that the imitation of reality dulled the audienceâs mind and instead what they needed was to be shocked (the so-called estrangement-effect). In the immediate aftermath of World War II, and perhaps in response to the shock of the war itself, mimesis was foregrounded as the pinnacle of artistic achievement, especially in literature, by Eric Auerbachâs magisterial book Mimesis (1953), which showed that the goal of art since the earliest times had been to represent nature just as it is. In critical theory, mimesis has been important to a range of scholars, but most notably French psychoanalysis Lacan, Jacques, and after him (adapting his ideas), the collocation critics Bhabha, Homi and Taussig, Michael, who see in it the origins for a theory of resistance. Bhabha, in particular, plays on the idea that the subaltern, by imitating the hegemony other, i.e. the colonial master, escapes scrutiny and thereby creates the conditions necessary for political subversion. By the same token, inasmuch as the subaltern looks like their master in manner and dress, they compel the master to recognize that the Other looks like them. Further Reading: M. Potolsky Mimesis (2006).