The Revenge of the Mirror People
Here begins the great revenge of otherness, of all the forms which, subtly or violently deprived of their singularity, henceforth pose an insoluble problem for the social order, and for the political and biological orders.
In those days the world of mirrors and the world of men were not, as they are now, cut off from each other. They were, besides, quite different: neither beings or colours nor shapes were the same. Both kingdoms, the specular and the human, lived in harmony; you could come and go through mirrors. One night the mirror people invaded the earth. Their power was great, but in the end of bloody warfare the magic arts of the Yellow Emperor prevailed. He repulsed the invaders, imprisoned them within mirrors, and forced on them the task of repeating, as if in a dream, all the actions of man. He stripped them of their power and of their forms and reduced them to mere slavish reflections. Nevertheless, the day will come when the magic spell will be taken off…shapes will begin to stir. Little by little they will differ from us, little by little they will not imitate us. They will break through the barriers of glass and metal and this time will not be defeated.
J.L. Borges
Such is the allegory of otherness vanquished and condemned to the servile state of resemblance. Our image in the mirror is not innocent, then. Behind every reflection, every resemblance, every representation, a defeated enemy lies concealed. The Other vanquished, and condemned merely to be the Same. Thus casts a singular light on the problem of representation and with all the mirrors which reflect us ‘spontaneously’ with an objective indulgence. None of that is true, and every representation is a servile image, the ghost of a once sovereign being, whose singularity has been obliterated. But a being which will one day rebel, and then our whole system of representation and values is destined to perish in that revolt. This slavery of the same, the slavery of resemblance, will one day be smashed by the violent resurgence of otherness. We dreamed of passing through the looking-glass, but it is the mirror peoples themselves who will burst in upon our world. And this time will not be defeated. What will come of this victory? No one knows. A new existence of two equally sovereign peoples, perfectly alien to one another, but in perfect collusion? Something other, at least, than this subjection and this negative fatality. So, everywhere, objects, children, the dead, images, women everything which serves to provide a passive reflection in a world based on identity, is ready to go on to the counter offensive. Already they resemble us less and less…
“I’ll not be your mirror!”
J. Baudrillard