Twenty-first International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

«Those poems by Giordano Bruno are a gift for which I am grateful with all my heart. I have ‘taken’ them… as invigorating drops». In this way Nietzsche expressed, in May 1883, his enthusiasm for the writings of the Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno (1548-1600). It is not difficult to discern the reasons why those poems turned out to be so stimulating for Nietzsche since, long before the ideas of individualistic self-sufficiency managed to impose themselves, Bruno characterized the human and more-than-human condition as an inevitable play of affective contagions. In this communication we will not only place Bruno within the genealogy of mimetic precursors, but we also explore some of those mimetic bonds and the affects they elicit. To do this, we will focus on his general theory of bonds (De vinculis in genere), which is a whole catalog of images – both visual and sonic – and mimetic movements and affects, and we will put it in relation to his Italian poems (especially De gli eroici furori). Thinking about these links, which are nothing but vital forces that operate below, through and beyond human, lead us to reflect on the relevance that these non-modern conceptions could have today.