Human Chameleon

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In “Mimicry and Legendary Psychaesthenia,” Roger Caillois observes how the process of mimicry amongst animals and insects is not so much a defensive measure as an overwhelming drive. The Phyllia, for example, looks like a leaf so much that it is prone to eating its own kind. Mimicry is not necessary for many insects, who have other defenses or are otherwise inedible. Instead, Caillois observes what he calls an “instinct of renunciation” that leads creatures to a reduced form of existence in which the organism can lose its distinction from the world and consciousness and feeling can cease. Caillois points out that in our contemporary world space is far more complex. The subject is undermined within these spaces from the start.

With the Stimulus Progression abandoned for Atmospherics, and the plan replaced by the background, the individual becomes a human chameleon, lacking either strong sense of self or a guiding plan, but instead constantly looking outward for social cues, seeking an appropriate background condition to settle upon so as to comfortably lose distinction from the world.

Today, difference itself has attained its own level of banality and acceptance. The media machine ritualistically admonishes us to "Be Different," to "Be Yourself" to the point that we cannot understand what is genuine difference and what is contrived for the sake of appearance. Such difference for its own sake is akin to Internet porn: a random repetition of images, each meant to arouse and titillate more than the others. Although, in the early twentieth century the individual still feared reification, or being turned into a thing by the Fordist system, the human chameleon finds that identifying with the system of objects or images is easy. The human chameleon seeks cues from things as well as from other beings. If not a Mies chair or Karim Rashid, then perhaps Pier 1 imports will do.

Unable to find progress or direction, the human chameleon follows Freud’s Pleasure Principle, seeking to blend in to its surroundings but, when that gets to be too much, breaks with them and seeks out a new environment to identify with. This can happen at various scales. We can choose our citizenship, our religion, our career, our sexual practices, even our gender. We can identify with our diverse friends, family members, ad models, television actors, serial killers, cartoon characters such as Dilbert, and Internet avatars at will. We find pleasure in the process of identification as we see others with the same desires we have. We are less and less distinct individuals and more and more surfers on a wave of mass subjectivities held by many people all at once. In order to function within the contemporary city, we have all become human chameleons without a sense of home. Beyond merely moving from place to place, we moves from self to self according to the social conditions we find ourselves in.

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