Mimetic Resentment’s Violent Somatechnics in Permacrisis Times: Critical Cartographical Contours and Coordinates

Our current era of crisis and neo-fascist revanches (see Lawtoo 2019) is rife with desires-driven mimesis, and more specifically, mimetic resentment or conflictual copycat behaviour. Traditionally conceptualised in relation to ressentiment, mimetic resentment (see Nietzsche [1887]2006; Girard [1961]1965, [1977]1992, and [1978] 1987) is seldom analysed as a somatechnical phenomenon that meshes the corporeal and the technological (Sullivan 2005; Pugliese and Stryker 2009; Sullivan and Murray 2011), involving pre-personal and affective micropolitics, as well as social and environmental macropolitical characteristics. This article therefore seeks to map out resentment’s contemporary somatechnics by attending to its violence-engendering micropolitics in addition to the macrolevels of the permacrisis times it is said to be operating in. The burgeoning environmental crisis that is currently unfolding against the backdrop of these permacrisis times furthermore indicates that such a mapping exercise must consider both the micro-and macropolitical nuances of how zoē/bios classifications and resultant gaps between non/human actors are created and sustained. Finding such a nuanced eco-focused framework in Deleuzoguattarian philosophy (see Deleuze [1969]1990; Deleuze and Guattari [1980]2005; Guattari [1989]2000 and [1992]2002), as well as contemporary critical new materialist thought (see Cooper 2008; Braidotti 2013; Haraway 2016; and Yusoff 2018), we first examine these permacrisis times before presenting a critical cartography (Braidotti [1994]2011; Deleuze and Guattari [1980]2005) of the contours of mimetic resentment’s violent micro-and macropolitical somatechnics, to then explore several eco-focused Deleuzoguattarian and critical new materialist pathways that could lead us out of the spiralling vortex of violence that characterises this time of planetary trouble.