CONCEPT
Mimesis (Ricoeur's Three-Fold Framework)
Ricoeur's appropriation of
Aristotle's
mimesis into a three-stage arc—
prefiguration, configuration, refiguration—that describes how narrative transforms experience into meaning, and that AI disrupts at every stage by altering the conditions of temporal understanding.
Ricoeur transformed Aristotle's
mimesis (representation, imitation) from a static concept into a dynamic three-phase process connecting the world of action, the world of narrative, and the transformed world of the reader.
Mimesis₁ (prefiguration) is the pre-narrative understanding of action embedded in ordinary experience—the implicit sense of what agents, goals, and causes are.
Mimesis₂ (configuration) is
emplotment itself—the creative act organizing events into
narrative unity.
Mimesis₃ (refiguration) is the transformation of the reader's understanding when the narrative is received. The three moments form a cycle: narratives emerge from prefigured experience, configure it into meaningful wholes, and
return to reconfigure the experience of those who encounter them. AI disrupts all three: changing the prefigurative background (what counts as meaningful work), offering to perform configuration (the machine tells the story), and attenuating refiguration (output without
appropriation). The arc remains, but its conditions must be deliberately preserved.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The framework is the architectonic structure of Time