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Muckelbauer Summary

To Imitate

            Within A Journal of the History of Rhetoric: Rhetorica, John Muckelbauer examines and deeply analyzes the points and properties of imitation. He does this by exploring many different viewpoints from many other people’s reasoning and also uses evidence of his own to identify several points within the practices of this writing exercise. One of Muckelbauer’s main points towards the topic of imitation was if the practices and exercises of imitation still existed today. He considers many other writers’ variations of the subject to help him engage into this argument.

            Muckelbauer declares that “Imitation enables the Platonic nature of reality and its distinction between surface appearances and deeper truths…It grounds contemporary theories of representational language and even representational political formations.” He speaks highly of imitation only to contradict himself; “…it is very likely that anything this essay might claim to contribute will be nothing more than an imitation of something else.” I feel that Muckelbauer’s argument on whether to use the exercises within imitation or not is a powerful argument. Considering that inside the academic discourse we are taught few practices within the aspects of imitation. Muckelbauer believes that you are able to link the practice of imitation with the ethics of invention, although they still have slight oppositions. Within A Journal of the History of Rhetoric, Rhetorica, he also discusses amongst other writer’s opinions towards the issue of the similarities between imitation and invention. Richard McKeon discusses how the practices within imitation are so overly used that it has become “vague, inadequate, primitive, and its use involves a play on words when it does not lead to self-contradiction.” Even if some writers didn’t approve of the exercises of imitation, some writers were in opposition towards them and their beliefs about the practices.

            Just as Nietzsche had explained by using the terminology of God’s death, he explains that even if God died, or did not exist any longer, wouldn’t there still be caves that communicate the time of his existence? It is almost like saying that if within the academic discourse imitation disappeared and was not practiced, then would anyone still recognize the before existence? Mimesis, the power of appearances, or in a smaller term, imitation, would be considered now. If imitation did not exist, but it’s “shadow” still lingered within the community then Mimesis would still be able to take place, therefore allowing imitation to exist within this. Making it seem like invention wasn’t very different from imitation at all.

            One of the answers that Muckelbauer had been trying to determine in the beginning of A Journal of the History of Rhetoric: Rhetorica was barely answered within the evidence that he had supplied himself with. Whether imitation’s exercises still ensue today will still be argued thoroughly by many writers to come. Are we under just a mere ‘shadow’ of imitation, or does their practices exist within the writing discourse of today?