Theorizing mimesis across social studies contexts of mimicry, imitation, and simulation

ABSTRACT

Social studies education (SSE) commonly uses copying pedagogies (e.g., simulations) to help students develop a deeper understanding of self, others, curriculum, and society. This article argues that simulations are eminently mimetic (i.e., a theoretical orientation concerned with understanding the entangled relationships between originals and copies) and abound with overlooked opportunities to engage with double logics that traverse academic disciplines. Primarily, we theorize how mimetic concepts (e.g., protean, pharmakon/Janus-faced) can be capacious in providing needed nuance and texture to simulatory approaches to SSE through the demarcation of two specific mimetic registers within simulation(s): mimicry and imitation. Through these two mimetic gestures, this article calls for a more intra-disciplinary framing of SSE, thus offering an alternative corridor for SSE educators, students, and researchers to consider how simulations are used to make sense of the more-than-human world in both historical and contemporary contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• Copying pedagogies
• intra-disciplinary
• mimesis
• simulations
• social studies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. After the allotted time to mine the cookies expired, pre-service teachers were asked to consider: What was your mining strategy? Did you experience any difficulties? How might mining companies experience the same difficulties? How did the “reclaimed land change”? And, what other questions might you ask students?

2. We deploy the category more-than-human to describe bodies and entities that are other than human. Taking a cue from Pugliese (2020), our use of more is meant to underscore that such bodies and entities exceed human characteristics yet remain relational with/to human bodies (i.e., our use of hyphens to connect the words). We acknowledge that, historically, SSE has primarily been concerned with the distinctly human world. In an effort to reorientate how teachers, students, and researchers register unfolding pastpresentfuture (Varga, 2023) phenomena that extends far beyond the actions, histories, movements, policies, and dealings of people, we view our use of more-than-human as a resistive act meant to hazard humancentric framings of SSE; it is our intention to further normalize the framing more-than-human throughout SSE (and beyond).

3. We acknowledge that mimesis has been taken up in different ways by a range of philosophical actors (e.g., Socrates, Friedrich Nietzsche, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Edgar Morin) that extend beyond those thinkers presented in this article/section.

4. For more about posthumanism and its possibilities within the context of SSE, we recommend Varga et al. (2023).

5. A concept developed by Barad (2007), intra conceptualizes relationships and relationality as being distinctively different from inter. That is, “[i]tra-actions are nonarbitrary, nondeterministic casual enactments through which matter-in-the-process-of-becoming is iteratively enfolded into its on-going differential materialization” (Barad, 2007, p. 179).

6. We want to acknowledge that our use of the category bodies encompasses human, non-human, and more-than-human entities.

7. We understand that the category of monument is unstable in the sense that it encompasses a wide range of commemorative entities that include “statues atop pedestals installed in public spaces with the authority of a government agency or civic institution; designated land formations, historical markers, or architectural sites serving as traces of the past; or transformative declarations rendered through art, poetry, projection, or protest that shift the ways we see our surroundings and ourselves” (Farber et al., 2023, p. 3). In this way, we argue that monuments are protean.

8. Although the American Psychological Association states that “white” should be capitalized, we are intentional about our decision to use a lowercase w. Considering the pervasiveness of whiteness inside and outside academic writing/publishing contexts, this decision takes a cue from critical SSE scholars seeking to promote orthographic equity (Hawkman et al., 2023). As authors, we write from the position that words—and their textual appearance—matter and believe that writing white as such is a small but necessary step toward the acknowledgment and disruption of textual flows of power couched in whiteness.

9. Before its removal in 2022 (Treisman, 2022), the Equestrian Statue of Theodore Roosevelt was covered with red paint to depict violence and bloodshed in 2017 (Marber, 2017) and 2021 (Eyewitness News, 2021).

10. Despite its accessibility, we recognize the highly problematic symbolism of teachers urging students to use sugar cubes for mission projects. Not only is the history of sugar as a commodity steeped in settler colonialism, but sugar production is inscribed with adverse implications on economical, social, and cultural contexts (Karnik, 2022; Sandiford, 2004).

11. As we see mimesis everywhere, each of these categories contains multiple mimetic gestures. Within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, RNA vaccines were specifically developed to mimic the structure of the COVID-19 virus, the natural world began to regenerate due to restricted travel and presence of people, masks were worn publicly according to people’s willingness to imitate the disposition of certain leaders and political pundits, and the virus disproportionately impacted communities of color, which simulated social, economic, and spatial injustice.