Mimetic innervation

![CDATA[In film studies, 'mimetic innervation' refers to the potential of film to awaken a quality of sensory experience and memory that is capable of undoing the numbing effects of mass mediated modernity on the human sensorium. The concept was proposed by Walter Benjamin to theorize the possibility of an 'antidote' to the alienation of the senses caused by the encounter with technology. Miriam Hansen's essay 'Benjamin and Cinema: Not a One-Way Street' (1999) argues that mimetic innervation is a pivotal concept in Benjamin's theorization of cinema, but one• that has been sidelined in many contemporary understandings of Benjamin's thinking. Benjamin's 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' (1969), which has become a canonical text in contemporary film and media studies, is commonly read as an attempt to seek a positive, redemptive reading of the new forms of perception and reception brought about by mechanical reproduction, characterized by shock and distraction. Hansen argues that other texts of Benjamin's are far more important and productive for film studies, citing 'One-Way Street', his essays on surrealism, Proust and Kafka, and his reflections on the mimetic faculty, among others. In these texts, he attempts 'to imagine an alternative reception of technology' (Hansen 1999, 328) - one that is empowering and enabling, and has the capacity to 'pierce the scar tissue formed to protect the human senses in the adaptation to the regime of capitalist technology' (308) and to recover sensory affect.]]