René Girard
Encyclopedia
René Girard is a French historian
, literary critic, and philosopher of social science. His work belongs to the tradition of anthropological philosophy. He is the author of several books (see below), in which he developed the following ideas:
René Girard's writings cover many areas. Although the reception of his work is different in each of these areas, there is a growing body of secondary literature that uses his hypotheses and ideas in the areas of literary criticism
, critical theory
, anthropology
, theology
, psychology
, mythology
, sociology
, economics
, cultural studies
, and philosophy
.
In 1947, Girard went to Indiana University
on a one-year fellowship, but eventually pursued most of his career in the United States.
The subject of his PhD
at Indiana University was "American Opinion of France, 1940-1943". Although his research was in history, he was also assigned to teach French literature
, the field in which he would first make his reputation as a literary critic by publishing influential essays on such authors as Albert Camus
and Marcel Proust
. He received his PhD in 1950 and stayed at Indiana University until 1953.
He occupied positions at Duke University
and Bryn Mawr College
from 1953 to 1957, after which he moved to Johns Hopkins University
, Baltimore, where he became a full professor in 1961. In that year, he also published his first book: (Deceit, Desire and the Novel, 1966).
For several years, he moved back and forth between the State University of New York at Buffalo
and Johns Hopkins University. The two most important books published in this period are (1972; Violence and the Sacred, 1977) and (1978; Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World, 1987).
In 1981 he became Andrew B. Hammond Professor of French Language, Literature, and Civilization at Stanford University
, where he stayed until his retirement in 1995. During this period, he published (1982), (1985), A Theatre of Envy: William Shakespeare (1991) and (1994). In 1990, a group of scholars founded the Colloquium on Violence and Religion (COV&R) with a goal to "explore, criticize, and develop the mimetic model of the relationship between violence and religion in the genesis and maintenance of culture". This organization also organizes a yearly conference devoted to topics related to mimetic theory, scapegoating, violence, and religion. René Girard is Honorary Chair of COV&R. Cofounder and first president of the COV&R was the Roman Catholic theologian Raymund Schwager
.
In 1985, he received his first honorary degree at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands; several others followed later. On March 17, 2005, René Girard was elected to the Académie française
. He continues publishing articles and books.
His work has inspired interdisciplinary research projects and experimental research such as the Mimetic Theory project sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation.
A more detailed biographical sketch is available in The Girard Reader, edited by James G. Williams.
in the United States, Girard began to develop a new way of speaking about literary texts. Beyond the "uniqueness" of individual works, he tried to discover their common structural properties after noticing that characters in great fiction evolved in a system of relationships otherwise common to the wider generality of novels. But there was a distinction to be made:
So there did indeed exist "psychological laws" as Marcel Proust
calls them. These laws and this system are the consequences of a fundamental reality grasped by the novelists, which Girard called the mimetic character of desire. This is the content of his first book, Deceit, Desire and the Novel (1961). We borrow our desires from others. Far from being autonomous, our desire for a certain object is always provoked by the desire of another person — the model — for this same object. This means that the relationship between the subject and the object is not direct: there is always a triangular relationship of subject, model, and object. Through the object, one is drawn to the model, whom Girard calls the mediator: it is in fact the model who is sought. René Girard calls desire "metaphysical" in the measure that, as soon as a desire is something more than a simple need or appetite, "all desire is a desire to be", it is an aspiration, the dream of a fullness attributed to the mediator.
Mediation is external when the mediator of the desire is socially beyond the reach of the subject or, for example, a fictional character, as in the case of Amadis de Gaula
and Don Quixote. The hero
lives a kind of folly that nonetheless remains optimistic. Mediation is internal when the mediator is at the same level as the subject. The mediator then transforms into a rival and an obstacle to the acquisition of the object, whose value increases as the rivalry grows. This is the universe of the novels of Stendhal
, Flaubert
, Proust
and Dostoevsky
, which are particularly studied in this book.
Through their characters, our own behaviour is displayed. Everyone holds firmly to the illusion of the authenticity of one's own desires; the novelists implacably expose all the diversity of lies, dissimulations, maneuvers, and the snobbery of the Proustian heroes; these are all but "tricks of desire", which prevent one from facing the truth: envy and jealousy. These characters, desiring the being of the mediator, project upon him superhuman virtues while at the same time depreciating themselves, making him a god while making themselves slaves, in the measure that the mediator is an obstacle to them. Some, pursuing this logic, come to seek the failures that are the signs of the proximity of the ideal to which they aspire. This is masochism, which can turn into sadism.
This fundamental focus on mimetic desire would be pursued by René Girard throughout the rest of his career. It is interesting to note that the stress on imitation in humans was not a popular subject when Girard developed his theories, but today there is independent support for his claims coming from empirical research in psychology and neuroscience (see below).
If two individuals desire the same thing, there will soon be a third, then a fourth. This process quickly snowballs. Since from the beginning the desire is aroused by the other (and not by the object) the object is soon forgotten and the mimetic conflict transforms into a general antagonism. At this stage of the crisis the antagonists will no longer imitate each other's desires for an object, but each other's antagonism. They wanted to share the same object, but now they want to destroy the same enemy. So, a paroxysm of violence would tend to focus on an arbitrary victim and a unanimous antipathy would, mimetically, grow against him. The brutal elimination of the victim would reduce the appetite for violence that possessed everyone a moment before, and leaves the group suddenly appeased and calm. The victim lies before the group, appearing simultaneously as the origin of the crisis and as the one responsible for this miracle of renewed peace. He becomes sacred, that is to say the bearer of the prodigious power of defusing the crisis and bringing peace back. believes this to be the genesis of archaic religion, of ritual sacrifice as the repetition of the original event, of myth as an account of this event, of the taboos that forbid access to all the objects at the origin of the rivalries that degenerated into this absolutely traumatizing crisis. This religious elaboration takes place gradually over the course of the repetition of the mimetic crises whose resolution brings only a temporary peace. The elaboration of the rites and of the taboos constitutes a kind of empirical knowledge about violence.
Although explorers and anthropologists have not been able to witness events similar to these, which go back to the earliest times, indirect evidence for them abounds, such as the universality of ritual sacrifice and the innumerable myths that have been collected from the most varied peoples. If Girard's theory is true, then we will find in myths the culpability of the victim-god, depictions of the selection of the victim, and his power to beget the order that governs the group. And found these elements in numerous myths, beginning with that of Oedipus
, which he analyzed in this and later books. On this question he opposes .
The phrase "scapegoat mechanism" was not coined by Girard himself; it had been used earlier by Kenneth Burke
in Permanence and Change (1935) and A Grammar of Motives (1940). However, Girard took this concept from Burke and developed it much more extensively as an interpretation of human culture.
In Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (1978), Girard develops the implications of this discovery. The victimary process is the missing link between the animal world and the human world, the principle that explains the humanization of primates. It allows us to understand the need for sacrificial victims, which in turn explains the hunt which is primitively ritual, and the domestication of animals as a fortuitous result of the acclimatization of a reserve of victims, or agriculture. It shows that at the beginning of all culture is archaic religion, which Durkheim had sensed. The elaboration of the rites and taboos by proto-human or human groups would take infinitely varied forms while obeying a rigorous practical sense that we can detect: the prevention of the return of the mimetic crisis. So we can find in archaic religion the origin of all political or cultural institutions.
According to Girard, just as the theory of Natural selection
of species is the rational principle that explains the immense diversity of forms of life, the victimization process is the rational principle that explains the origin of the infinite diversity of cultural forms. The analogy with Darwin
also extends to the scientific status of the theory, as each of these presents itself as a hypothesis that is not capable of being proven experimentally, given the extreme amounts of time necessary to the production of the phenomena in question, but which imposes itself by its great explanatory power.
is also related to scapegoating. After the first victim, after the murder of the first scapegoat, there were the first prohibitions and rituals, but these came into being before representation and language, hence before culture. And that means that "people" (perhaps not human beings) "will not start fighting again". René Girard says:
According to Girard, the substitution of an immolated victim for the first, is "the very first symbolic sign created by the hominids". Girard also says this is the first time that one thing represents another thing, standing in the place of this (absent) one. This substitution is the beginning of representation and language, but also the beginning of sacrifice and ritual. The genesis of language and ritual is very slow and we must imagine that there are also kinds of rituals among the animals: "It is the originary scapegoating which prolongs itself in a process which can be infinitely long in moving from, how should I say, from instinctive ritualization, instinctive prohibition, instinctive separation of the antagonists, which you already find to a certain extent in animals, towards representation."
Unlike Eric Gans
, Girard does not think that there is an original scene during which there is "a sudden shift from non-representation to representation", or a sudden shift from animality to humanity. According to the French sociologist , it is hard to understand how the process of representation (symbolicity, language...) actually occurs and he has called this a black box in 's theory.
René Girard also says:
. The Gospels ostensibly present themselves as a typical mythical account, with a victim-god lynched by a unanimous crowd, an event that is then commemorated by Christians through ritual sacrifice — a material re-presentation in this case — in the Eucharist
. The parallel is perfect except for one detail: the truth of the innocence of the victim is proclaimed by the text and the writer. The mythical account is usually built on the lie of the guilt of the victim inasmuch as it is an account of the event seen from the viewpoint of the anonymous lynchers. This ignorance is indispensable to the efficacy of the sacrificial violence.
The evangelical "good news" clearly affirms the innocence of the victim, thus becoming, by attacking ignorance, the germ of the destruction of the sacrificial order on which rests the equilibrium of societies. Already the Old Testament
shows this turning inside-out of the mythic accounts with regard to the innocence of the victims (Abel, Joseph
, Job
, ...), and the Hebrews were conscious of the uniqueness of their religious tradition. With the Gospels, it is with full clarity that are unveiled these "things hidden since the foundation of the world" (Matthew 13:35), the foundation of social order on murder, described in all its repulsive ugliness in the account of the Passion
.
This revelation is even clearer because the text is a work on desire and violence, from the serpent setting alight the desire of Eve
in paradise to the prodigious strength of the mimetism that brings about the denial of Peter
during the Passion (Mark 14: 66-72; Luke 22:54-62). Girard reinterprets certain biblical expressions in light of his theories; for instance, he sees "scandal" (skandalon, literally, a "snare", or an "impediment placed in the way and causing one to stumble or fall") as signifying mimetic rivalry, for example Peter's denial of Jesus. No one escapes responsibility, neither the envious nor the envied: "Woe to the man through whom scandal comes" (Matthew 18:7).
Does the retreat of the sacrificial order mean less violence? Not at all; rather, it deprives modern societies of most of the capacity of sacrificial violence to establish temporary order. The "innocence" of the time of the ignorance is no more. On the other hand, Christianity, following the example of Judaism
, has desacralized the world, making possible a utilitarian relationship with nature. Increasingly threatened by the resurgence of mimetic crises on a grand scale, the contemporary world is on one hand more quickly caught up by its guilt, and on the other hand has developed such a great technical power of destruction that it is condemned to both more and more responsibility and less and less innocence. So, for example, while empathy for victims manifests progress in the moral conscience of society, it nonetheless also takes the form of a competition among victims that threatens an escalation of violence.
in his Ethics (Part. III Prop. XXVII):
Vinolo also quotes Thomas Hobbes
's Leviathan
: "From this equality of ability, arose equality of hope in the attaining of our ends. And therefore if any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless cannot both enjoy, they become enemies..."
Wolfgang Palaver wrote about Alexis de Tocqueville
: "Two hundred years after Hobbes, the French historian Alexis de Tocqueville mentioned the dangers coming along with equality, too. Like Hobbes, he refers to the increase of mimetic desire coming along with equality. And he quoted Tocqueville's Democracy in America
:
In this case René Girard is absolutely aware of his intellectual debt to Tocqueville. Taking the Montréal Massacre as a starting point, Palaver questions the origin of contemporary human violence:
This explanation leads back to literature and to Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov
as Girard interpreted it.
's Don Quixote. In this last case, it is not a "good" imitation, but some "Girardians" point out the positive aspects of external mediation. Jean-Michel Oughourlian takes the example of the imitation of a politician: "The imitation can be totally peaceful and beneficial; I don't believe that I am the other, I don't want to take his place [...] This imitation can lead me to become sensitive to the social and political problems..." It is also possible to quote this sentence from a short presentation of Girard's theory: "(...) Young children imitate their teachers as closely as possible and are even encouraged to do so, but within an educational frame that maintains a certain distance between subject and model, prohibiting confusion. If many little girls want to become schoolmistress, it is later, and all is in this 'later'."
, reacted violently in Le Monde
with an article entitled "" ("The Gospel according to Saint Girard"). De Heusch, who is an agnostic, stated that Girard's thought was not anthropology but metaphysics. In (1994) René Girard wrote: "Jean-Marie Domenach
thinks that I am trying to give a scientific demonstration of faith. I know that a demonstration of faith is impossible, but faith is not alone. There is also the understanding, and the great Christian tradition had always been saying that there is a deep agreement between faith and understanding. That's this agreement I am trying to define."
According to Charles K. Bellinger, Girard provides a "secular account of the origin of religion among primitive people."
In (2004), Pierpaolo Antonello and Joao Cezar de Castro Rocha say: "Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World is a theory of the hominisation and of the origin of culture in a naturalistic framework, firstly in combining ethnology and anthropology", and Girard answers immediately without rejecting this presentation of his thought.
In 2008, Camille Tarot wrote: "Girard's Christian faith affects theology and the social sciences in different ways. François Lagarde spoke of a 'christianisation' of the social sciences. People might have expected that the theologians would denounce the 'anthropologisation' of the theology and thus a 'humanisation' of Christianity. It is astonishing that nobody has done this." In fact, Tarot is wrong: Father Valandier, the Director of the review Etudes (a journal started by Jesuits), is very critical of Girard because of this confusion between science and Christianity or between science and faith. According to Jean Greisch (with many nuances), Girard's thought is more or less a kind of Gnosis
.
In an article published in September 2008 claimed that René Girard's work finds its place in the tradition of great anthropologists such as , Arthur Maurice Hocart
, Henri Hubert
, Marcel Mauss
, and Robertson Smith, who all pointed out the importance of sacrifice at the origin of humanity. Girard also works in the tradition of Émile Durkheim
, who pointed out the absolute link between religion and society. For Scubla, Girard gathered many elements of all these authors and combined them into an original synthesis based on the scapegoating phenomenon. Scubla states that Girard's thought is the "first radically agnostic theory of religion" and "includes all these theories into a simpler and broader system [which] overtakes the domain of religion".
René Girard is a Catholic, but the epistemological status of his theory is disputed both by atheist or agnostic people (in favour or not) and by Catholic or Christian people (in favour or not).
Out of this eschatological perspective on history and on the role of the church, Girard is scathingly critical of secular humanism and liberal values, which he describes as cheap attempts to expand a cultural freedom no longer threatened by any institutions, least of all by the churches, and a dangerous over-confidence in the ability of mankind to save herself through (mimetic) effort.
One of the main sources of criticism of Girard's work comes from intellectuals who claim that his comparison of Judeo-Christian texts vis-a-vis other religions leaves something to be desired.
(among them Andrew Meltzoff and Vittorio Gallese). Girard's views on imitation (developed decades before empirical research prompted a resurgence of interest in the matter) resonate with the most recent findings . Recently, empirical studies into the mechanism of desire have suggested some intriguing correlations with Girard's theory on the subject. For instance, clinical psychologist Scott R. Garrels wrote:
and André Orléan. Orléan was also a contributor to the volume René Girard in Les cahiers de l'Herne (""). According to the philosopher of technology Andrew Feenberg
:
In an interview with the Unesco Courier, anthropologist and social theorist Mark Anspach (editor of the René Girard issue of Les Cahiers de l'Herne) explains that Aglietta and Orléan (who were very critical about the economic rationality) argue that the classical theory of economics as a myth:
According to Anspach, the actual justification of exchange is in reality ... exchange, the desire of a relationship with other men and women. In order to reach the peaceful reciprocity on which humanity is based as against the reciprocity of what Girard calls mimetic rivalry, the latter is overtaken by the sacrifice - representing the end of the vicious circle of violence and vengeance and the beginning of gift economy
: "Instead of waiting for your neighbour to come steal your yams, you offer them to him today, and it is up to him to do the same for you tomorrow. Once you have made a gift, he is obliged to make a return gift. Now you have set in motion a positive circularity." But the gift may be dangerous; it may be a so huge gift (as in potlach) that it humiliates the other: you may want, firstly, to display your prestige, to present yourself as better, richer, or stronger. The "economic rationality", however, tends to liberate the seller and the buyer of any other obligations than to give money. Reciprocal violence is eliminated by the sacrifice, obligations of vengeance by the gift, and finally the possibly dangerous gift by "economic rationality". This rationality, however, creates new victims, as for instance so many children dying of hunger every day. When a plane crashes and several hundred people are killed, there is an inquiry. But there is no inquiry about hunger: the market is guilty:
Anspach also quotes Ahmet İnsel's estimation of the gift economy (families, non-profit organisations etcetera) as approximately three-quarters of the French GDP. He makes an interesting comparison between Adam Smith's
"invisible hand
" and the gods behind the ejected violence into the rituals. A similar comparison has been made by the economist John Grahl
in the paper Money as Sovereignty: the Economics of Michel Aglietta:
Grahl Aglietta and Orléan's interpretation of Girard presents analogies with Hobbesian politics
, as sovereignty (a recognised monetary system) emerges to regulate unlimited struggle to seize wealth (accaparement). By diverting desire onto an object excluded from everyday production and consumption, the monetary order permits the embrace of a host of lesser, profane objects shielded from acute rivalry.
The key difference with Hobbes is that the idea of a social covenant is seen from a Girardian point of view as a typical obfuscation of the true, violent origins of social order - peace and stability emerging from the bellum omnium contra omnes - through the coalescence of enmity onto a sacralised victim.
.
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...
, literary critic, and philosopher of social science. His work belongs to the tradition of anthropological philosophy. He is the author of several books (see below), in which he developed the following ideas:
- mimetic desire: imitation is an aspect of behaviour that not only affects learning but also desire, and imitated desire is a cause of conflict,
- the scapegoat mechanism is the origin of sacrifice and the foundation of human cultureCultureCulture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
, and religion was necessary in human evolution to control the violence that can come from mimetic rivalry, - the BibleBibleThe Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
reveals the two previous ideas and denounces the scapegoat mechanism.
René Girard's writings cover many areas. Although the reception of his work is different in each of these areas, there is a growing body of secondary literature that uses his hypotheses and ideas in the areas of literary criticism
Literary criticism
Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals...
, critical theory
Critical theory
Critical theory is an examination and critique of society and culture, drawing from knowledge across the social sciences and humanities. The term has two different meanings with different origins and histories: one originating in sociology and the other in literary criticism...
, anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
, theology
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
, psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
, mythology
Mythology
The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...
, sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
, economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
, cultural studies
Cultural studies
Cultural studies is an academic field grounded in critical theory and literary criticism. It generally concerns the political nature of contemporary culture, as well as its historical foundations, conflicts, and defining traits. It is, to this extent, largely distinguished from cultural...
, and philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
.
Life and career
was born in Avignon on December 25, 1923. Between 1943 and 1947, he studied medieval history at the École des Chartes, Paris. The subject of his thesis was "Private life in Avignon in the second half of the fifteenth century" ("").In 1947, Girard went to Indiana University
Indiana University
Indiana University is a multi-campus public university system in the state of Indiana, United States. Indiana University has a combined student body of more than 100,000 students, including approximately 42,000 students enrolled at the Indiana University Bloomington campus and approximately 37,000...
on a one-year fellowship, but eventually pursued most of his career in the United States.
The subject of his PhD
PHD
PHD may refer to:*Ph.D., a doctorate of philosophy*Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*PHD finger, a protein sequence*PHD Mountain Software, an outdoor clothing and equipment company*PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
at Indiana University was "American Opinion of France, 1940-1943". Although his research was in history, he was also assigned to teach French literature
French literature
French literature is, generally speaking, literature written in the French language, particularly by citizens of France; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak traditional languages of France other than French. Literature written in French language, by citizens...
, the field in which he would first make his reputation as a literary critic by publishing influential essays on such authors as Albert Camus
Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
and Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...
. He received his PhD in 1950 and stayed at Indiana University until 1953.
He occupied positions at Duke University
Duke University
Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...
and Bryn Mawr College
Bryn Mawr College
Bryn Mawr College is a women's liberal arts college located in Bryn Mawr, a community in Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania, ten miles west of Philadelphia. The name "Bryn Mawr" means "big hill" in Welsh....
from 1953 to 1957, after which he moved to Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins University
The Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins, is a private research university based in Baltimore, Maryland, United States...
, Baltimore, where he became a full professor in 1961. In that year, he also published his first book: (Deceit, Desire and the Novel, 1966).
For several years, he moved back and forth between the State University of New York at Buffalo
University at Buffalo, The State University of New York
University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, also commonly known as the University at Buffalo or UB, is a public research university and a "University Center" in the State University of New York system. The university was founded by Millard Fillmore in 1846. UB has multiple campuses...
and Johns Hopkins University. The two most important books published in this period are (1972; Violence and the Sacred, 1977) and (1978; Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World, 1987).
In 1981 he became Andrew B. Hammond Professor of French Language, Literature, and Civilization at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
, where he stayed until his retirement in 1995. During this period, he published (1982), (1985), A Theatre of Envy: William Shakespeare (1991) and (1994). In 1990, a group of scholars founded the Colloquium on Violence and Religion (COV&R) with a goal to "explore, criticize, and develop the mimetic model of the relationship between violence and religion in the genesis and maintenance of culture". This organization also organizes a yearly conference devoted to topics related to mimetic theory, scapegoating, violence, and religion. René Girard is Honorary Chair of COV&R. Cofounder and first president of the COV&R was the Roman Catholic theologian Raymund Schwager
Raymund Schwager
Raymund Schwager was a Swiss Roman Catholic theologian.-Life:He was born in Balterswil into a Swiss farming family as the second of seven children. After primary and secondary school he joined the Society of Jesus in 1955...
.
In 1985, he received his first honorary degree at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands; several others followed later. On March 17, 2005, René Girard was elected to the Académie française
Académie française
L'Académie française , also called the French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. The Académie was officially established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII. Suppressed in 1793 during the French Revolution,...
. He continues publishing articles and books.
His work has inspired interdisciplinary research projects and experimental research such as the Mimetic Theory project sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation.
A more detailed biographical sketch is available in The Girard Reader, edited by James G. Williams.
Mimetic desire
After almost a decade of teaching French literatureFrench literature
French literature is, generally speaking, literature written in the French language, particularly by citizens of France; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak traditional languages of France other than French. Literature written in French language, by citizens...
in the United States, Girard began to develop a new way of speaking about literary texts. Beyond the "uniqueness" of individual works, he tried to discover their common structural properties after noticing that characters in great fiction evolved in a system of relationships otherwise common to the wider generality of novels. But there was a distinction to be made:
Only the great writers succeed in painting these mechanisms faithfully, without falsifying them: we have here a system of relationships that paradoxically, or rather not paradoxically at all, has less variability the greater a writer is.
So there did indeed exist "psychological laws" as Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...
calls them. These laws and this system are the consequences of a fundamental reality grasped by the novelists, which Girard called the mimetic character of desire. This is the content of his first book, Deceit, Desire and the Novel (1961). We borrow our desires from others. Far from being autonomous, our desire for a certain object is always provoked by the desire of another person — the model — for this same object. This means that the relationship between the subject and the object is not direct: there is always a triangular relationship of subject, model, and object. Through the object, one is drawn to the model, whom Girard calls the mediator: it is in fact the model who is sought. René Girard calls desire "metaphysical" in the measure that, as soon as a desire is something more than a simple need or appetite, "all desire is a desire to be", it is an aspiration, the dream of a fullness attributed to the mediator.
Mediation is external when the mediator of the desire is socially beyond the reach of the subject or, for example, a fictional character, as in the case of Amadis de Gaula
Amadis de Gaula
Amadis de Gaula is a landmark work among the knight-errantry tales which were in vogue in 16th century Iberian Peninsula, and formed the earliest reading of many Renaissance and Baroque writers, although it was written at the onset of the 14th century.The first known printed edition was published...
and Don Quixote. The hero
Hero
A hero , in Greek mythology and folklore, was originally a demigod, their cult being one of the most distinctive features of ancient Greek religion...
lives a kind of folly that nonetheless remains optimistic. Mediation is internal when the mediator is at the same level as the subject. The mediator then transforms into a rival and an obstacle to the acquisition of the object, whose value increases as the rivalry grows. This is the universe of the novels of Stendhal
Stendhal
Marie-Henri Beyle , better known by his pen name Stendhal, was a 19th-century French writer. Known for his acute analysis of his characters' psychology, he is considered one of the earliest and foremost practitioners of realism in his two novels Le Rouge et le Noir and La Chartreuse de Parme...
, Flaubert
Gustave Flaubert
Gustave Flaubert was a French writer who is counted among the greatest Western novelists. He is known especially for his first published novel, Madame Bovary , and for his scrupulous devotion to his art and style.-Early life and education:Flaubert was born on December 12, 1821, in Rouen,...
, Proust
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...
and Dostoevsky
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky was a Russian writer of novels, short stories and essays. He is best known for his novels Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov....
, which are particularly studied in this book.
Through their characters, our own behaviour is displayed. Everyone holds firmly to the illusion of the authenticity of one's own desires; the novelists implacably expose all the diversity of lies, dissimulations, maneuvers, and the snobbery of the Proustian heroes; these are all but "tricks of desire", which prevent one from facing the truth: envy and jealousy. These characters, desiring the being of the mediator, project upon him superhuman virtues while at the same time depreciating themselves, making him a god while making themselves slaves, in the measure that the mediator is an obstacle to them. Some, pursuing this logic, come to seek the failures that are the signs of the proximity of the ideal to which they aspire. This is masochism, which can turn into sadism.
This fundamental focus on mimetic desire would be pursued by René Girard throughout the rest of his career. It is interesting to note that the stress on imitation in humans was not a popular subject when Girard developed his theories, but today there is independent support for his claims coming from empirical research in psychology and neuroscience (see below).
Violence and the sacred
Since the mimetic rivalry that develops from the struggle for the possession of the objects is contagious, it leads to the threat of violence. René Girard himself says, "If there is a normal order in societies, it must be the fruit of an anterior crisis." Turning his interest towards the anthropological domain, began to study anthropological literature and proposed his second great hypothesis: the victimization process, which is at the origin of archaic religion and which he sets forth in his second book Violence and the Sacred (1972).If two individuals desire the same thing, there will soon be a third, then a fourth. This process quickly snowballs. Since from the beginning the desire is aroused by the other (and not by the object) the object is soon forgotten and the mimetic conflict transforms into a general antagonism. At this stage of the crisis the antagonists will no longer imitate each other's desires for an object, but each other's antagonism. They wanted to share the same object, but now they want to destroy the same enemy. So, a paroxysm of violence would tend to focus on an arbitrary victim and a unanimous antipathy would, mimetically, grow against him. The brutal elimination of the victim would reduce the appetite for violence that possessed everyone a moment before, and leaves the group suddenly appeased and calm. The victim lies before the group, appearing simultaneously as the origin of the crisis and as the one responsible for this miracle of renewed peace. He becomes sacred, that is to say the bearer of the prodigious power of defusing the crisis and bringing peace back. believes this to be the genesis of archaic religion, of ritual sacrifice as the repetition of the original event, of myth as an account of this event, of the taboos that forbid access to all the objects at the origin of the rivalries that degenerated into this absolutely traumatizing crisis. This religious elaboration takes place gradually over the course of the repetition of the mimetic crises whose resolution brings only a temporary peace. The elaboration of the rites and of the taboos constitutes a kind of empirical knowledge about violence.
Although explorers and anthropologists have not been able to witness events similar to these, which go back to the earliest times, indirect evidence for them abounds, such as the universality of ritual sacrifice and the innumerable myths that have been collected from the most varied peoples. If Girard's theory is true, then we will find in myths the culpability of the victim-god, depictions of the selection of the victim, and his power to beget the order that governs the group. And found these elements in numerous myths, beginning with that of Oedipus
Oedipus
Oedipus was a mythical Greek king of Thebes. He fulfilled a prophecy that said he would kill his father and marry his mother, and thus brought disaster on his city and family...
, which he analyzed in this and later books. On this question he opposes .
The phrase "scapegoat mechanism" was not coined by Girard himself; it had been used earlier by Kenneth Burke
Kenneth Burke
Kenneth Duva Burke was a major American literary theorist and philosopher. Burke's primary interests were in rhetoric and aesthetics.-Personal history:...
in Permanence and Change (1935) and A Grammar of Motives (1940). However, Girard took this concept from Burke and developed it much more extensively as an interpretation of human culture.
In Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (1978), Girard develops the implications of this discovery. The victimary process is the missing link between the animal world and the human world, the principle that explains the humanization of primates. It allows us to understand the need for sacrificial victims, which in turn explains the hunt which is primitively ritual, and the domestication of animals as a fortuitous result of the acclimatization of a reserve of victims, or agriculture. It shows that at the beginning of all culture is archaic religion, which Durkheim had sensed. The elaboration of the rites and taboos by proto-human or human groups would take infinitely varied forms while obeying a rigorous practical sense that we can detect: the prevention of the return of the mimetic crisis. So we can find in archaic religion the origin of all political or cultural institutions.
According to Girard, just as the theory of Natural selection
Natural selection
Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....
of species is the rational principle that explains the immense diversity of forms of life, the victimization process is the rational principle that explains the origin of the infinite diversity of cultural forms. The analogy with Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
also extends to the scientific status of the theory, as each of these presents itself as a hypothesis that is not capable of being proven experimentally, given the extreme amounts of time necessary to the production of the phenomena in question, but which imposes itself by its great explanatory power.
Origin of language
According to Girard, the origin of languageOrigin of language
The origin of language is the emergence of language in the human species. This is a highly controversial topic. Empirical evidence is so limited that many regard it as unsuitable for serious scholars. In 1866, the Linguistic Society of Paris went so far as to ban debates on the subject...
is also related to scapegoating. After the first victim, after the murder of the first scapegoat, there were the first prohibitions and rituals, but these came into being before representation and language, hence before culture. And that means that "people" (perhaps not human beings) "will not start fighting again". René Girard says:
If mimetic disruption comes back, our instinct will tell us to do again what the sacred has done to save us, which is to kill the scapegoat. Therefore it would be the force of substitution of immolating another victim instead of the first. But the relationship of this process with representation is not one that can be defined in a clear-cut way. This process would be one that moves towards representation of the sacred, towards definition of the ritual as ritual and prohibition as prohibition. But this process would already begin prior the representation, you see, because it is directly produced by the experience of the misunderstood scapegoat.
According to Girard, the substitution of an immolated victim for the first, is "the very first symbolic sign created by the hominids". Girard also says this is the first time that one thing represents another thing, standing in the place of this (absent) one. This substitution is the beginning of representation and language, but also the beginning of sacrifice and ritual. The genesis of language and ritual is very slow and we must imagine that there are also kinds of rituals among the animals: "It is the originary scapegoating which prolongs itself in a process which can be infinitely long in moving from, how should I say, from instinctive ritualization, instinctive prohibition, instinctive separation of the antagonists, which you already find to a certain extent in animals, towards representation."
Unlike Eric Gans
Eric Gans
Eric Lawrence Gans is an American literary scholar, philosopher of language, and cultural anthropologist. Since 1969, he has taught 19th century literature, critical theory, and film in the UCLA Department of French and Francophone studies.Gans invented a new science of human culture and origins...
, Girard does not think that there is an original scene during which there is "a sudden shift from non-representation to representation", or a sudden shift from animality to humanity. According to the French sociologist , it is hard to understand how the process of representation (symbolicity, language...) actually occurs and he has called this a black box in 's theory.
René Girard also says:
One great characteristic of man is what they [the authors of the modern theory of evolution] call neoteny, the fact that the human infant is born premature, with an open skull, no hair and a total inability to fend for himself. To keep it alive, therefore, there must be some form of cultural protection, because in the world of mammals, such infants would not survive, they would be destroyed. Therefore there is a reason to believe that in the later stages of human evolution, culture and nature are in constant interaction. The first stages of this interaction must occur prior to language, but they must include forms of sacrifice and prohibition that create a space of non-violence around the mother and the children which make it possible to reach still higher stages of human development. You can postulate as many such stages as are needed. Thus, you can have a transition between ethology and anthropology which removes, I think, all philosophical postulates. The discontinuities would never be of such a nature as to demand some kind of sudden intellectual illumination.
Biblical text as a science of man
In Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, René Girard discusses for the first time Christianity and the BibleBible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
. The Gospels ostensibly present themselves as a typical mythical account, with a victim-god lynched by a unanimous crowd, an event that is then commemorated by Christians through ritual sacrifice — a material re-presentation in this case — in the Eucharist
Eucharist
The Eucharist , also called Holy Communion, the Sacrament of the Altar, the Blessed Sacrament, the Lord's Supper, and other names, is a Christian sacrament or ordinance...
. The parallel is perfect except for one detail: the truth of the innocence of the victim is proclaimed by the text and the writer. The mythical account is usually built on the lie of the guilt of the victim inasmuch as it is an account of the event seen from the viewpoint of the anonymous lynchers. This ignorance is indispensable to the efficacy of the sacrificial violence.
The evangelical "good news" clearly affirms the innocence of the victim, thus becoming, by attacking ignorance, the germ of the destruction of the sacrificial order on which rests the equilibrium of societies. Already the Old Testament
Old Testament
The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...
shows this turning inside-out of the mythic accounts with regard to the innocence of the victims (Abel, Joseph
Joseph (Hebrew Bible)
Joseph is an important character in the Hebrew bible, where he connects the story of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in Canaan to the subsequent story of the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt....
, Job
Job (Biblical figure)
Job is the central character of the Book of Job in the Hebrew Bible. Job is listed as a prophet of God in the Qur'an.- Book of Job :The Book of Job begins with an introduction to Job's character — he is described as a blessed man who lives righteously...
, ...), and the Hebrews were conscious of the uniqueness of their religious tradition. With the Gospels, it is with full clarity that are unveiled these "things hidden since the foundation of the world" (Matthew 13:35), the foundation of social order on murder, described in all its repulsive ugliness in the account of the Passion
Passion (Christianity)
The Passion is the Christian theological term used for the events and suffering – physical, spiritual, and mental – of Jesus in the hours before and including his trial and execution by crucifixion...
.
This revelation is even clearer because the text is a work on desire and violence, from the serpent setting alight the desire of Eve
Eve (Bible)
Eve was, according to the creation of Abrahamic religions, the first woman created by God...
in paradise to the prodigious strength of the mimetism that brings about the denial of Peter
Saint Peter
Saint Peter or Simon Peter was an early Christian leader, who is featured prominently in the New Testament Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. The son of John or of Jonah and from the village of Bethsaida in the province of Galilee, his brother Andrew was also an apostle...
during the Passion (Mark 14: 66-72; Luke 22:54-62). Girard reinterprets certain biblical expressions in light of his theories; for instance, he sees "scandal" (skandalon, literally, a "snare", or an "impediment placed in the way and causing one to stumble or fall") as signifying mimetic rivalry, for example Peter's denial of Jesus. No one escapes responsibility, neither the envious nor the envied: "Woe to the man through whom scandal comes" (Matthew 18:7).
Christian society
The evangelical revelation contains the truth on the violence, available for two thousand years, René Girard tells us. Has it put an end to the sacrificial order based on violence in the society that has claimed the gospel text as its own religious text? No, he replies, since in order for a truth to have an impact it must find a receptive listener, and people do not change that quickly. The gospel text has instead acted as a ferment that brings about the decomposition of the sacrificial order. While medieval Europe showed the face of a sacrificial society that still knew very well how to despise and ignore its victims, nonetheless the efficacy of sacrificial violence has never stopped decreasing, in the measure that ignorance receded. Here René Girard sees the principle of the uniqueness and of the transformations of the Western society whose destiny today is one with that of human society as a whole.Does the retreat of the sacrificial order mean less violence? Not at all; rather, it deprives modern societies of most of the capacity of sacrificial violence to establish temporary order. The "innocence" of the time of the ignorance is no more. On the other hand, Christianity, following the example of Judaism
Judaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
, has desacralized the world, making possible a utilitarian relationship with nature. Increasingly threatened by the resurgence of mimetic crises on a grand scale, the contemporary world is on one hand more quickly caught up by its guilt, and on the other hand has developed such a great technical power of destruction that it is condemned to both more and more responsibility and less and less innocence. So, for example, while empathy for victims manifests progress in the moral conscience of society, it nonetheless also takes the form of a competition among victims that threatens an escalation of violence.
Older discussions of mimetic desire
René Girard often wrote that writers were the first to articulate the concept of mimetic desire. Stéphane Vinolo writes that some philosophers also expressed the concept. He quotes Baruch SpinozaBaruch Spinoza
Baruch de Spinoza and later Benedict de Spinoza was a Dutch Jewish philosopher. Revealing considerable scientific aptitude, the breadth and importance of Spinoza's work was not fully realized until years after his death...
in his Ethics (Part. III Prop. XXVII):
By the very fact that we conceive a thing, which is like ourselves, and which we have not regarded with any emotion, to be affected with any emotion, we are ourselves affected with a like emotion. [And the "proof"] If we conceive anyone similar to ourselves as affected by any emotion, this conception will express of our body similar to that emotion.
Vinolo also quotes Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury , in some older texts Thomas Hobbs of Malmsbury, was an English philosopher, best known today for his work on political philosophy...
's Leviathan
Leviathan (book)
Leviathan or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil — commonly called simply Leviathan — is a book written by Thomas Hobbes and published in 1651. Its name derives from the biblical Leviathan...
: "From this equality of ability, arose equality of hope in the attaining of our ends. And therefore if any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless cannot both enjoy, they become enemies..."
Wolfgang Palaver wrote about Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville was a French political thinker and historian best known for his Democracy in America and The Old Regime and the Revolution . In both of these works, he explored the effects of the rising equality of social conditions on the individual and the state in...
: "Two hundred years after Hobbes, the French historian Alexis de Tocqueville mentioned the dangers coming along with equality, too. Like Hobbes, he refers to the increase of mimetic desire coming along with equality. And he quoted Tocqueville's Democracy in America
Democracy in America
De la démocratie en Amérique is a classic French text by Alexis de Tocqueville. A "literal" translation of its title is Of Democracy in America, but the usual translation of the title is simply Democracy in America...
:
When all the privileges of birth and fortune are abolished, when all professions are accessible to all, and a man's own energies may place him at the top of any one of them, an easy and unbound career seems open to his ambition and he will readily persuade himself that he is borne to no common destinies. But this is an erroneous notion, which is corrected by daily experience. The same equality that allows every citizen to conceive these lofty hopes renders all the citizens less able to realize them; it circumscribes their powers on every side, while it gives freer scope to their desires. Not only are they themselves powerless, but they are met at every step by immense obstacles, which they did not first perceive. They have swept away the privileges of some of their fellow creatures which stood in their way, but they have opened the door to universal competition; the barrier has changed its shape rather than its position.
In this case René Girard is absolutely aware of his intellectual debt to Tocqueville. Taking the Montréal Massacre as a starting point, Palaver questions the origin of contemporary human violence:
Girard's mimetic theory helps us to explain the rise of violence in egalitarian and competitive societies. The more our pride and ambition forces us to be foremost the more likely it becomes that we will be defeated. Trying to be ahead of all the others forces us to turn them all into our rivals. We are never satisfied as long as there is anyone in front of us. Mimetic rivalry leads us to run those races which we cannot win and directs us towards insurmountable obstacles. The more we try to succeed the more we will increase the resistance against our claim. Resistance soon becomes the object of our quest itself and will lead to an idolization of violence. If only those objects are worth to fight for which we cannot get, we are easily led to the fatal conclusion that violence is the true God of the world. We seek defeat because it brings us closer to this God and we will also use violence ourselves because by imitating this God we hope we soon can become his equal. Mimetic desire has a tendency to fetishize violence and it would not be wrong to conclude that all anthropological and philosophical theories that result in an ontology of violence - like Hegel dialectics - are in fact worshiping this false God.
This explanation leads back to literature and to Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov
The Brothers Karamazov
The Brothers Karamazov is the final novel by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Dostoyevsky spent nearly two years writing The Brothers Karamazov, which was published as a serial in The Russian Messenger and completed in November 1880...
as Girard interpreted it.
Beneficial imitation
Another source of contention is Girard's seeming to have left no role for beneficial imitation. Rebecca Adams argues that because Girard's theories fixate on violence, he creates a 'scapegoat' himself with his own theory: the scapegoat of positive mimesis. Adams proposes a reassessment of Girard's theory that includes an account of loving mimesis or, as she prefers to call it, creative mimesis. Some say there is also a good mimesis in the thought of Girard, for instance the imitation of Jesus. Another possible instance is the imitation of the "external mediation" when the model is "far" from me as, for instance, Amadis in CervantesMiguel de Cervantes
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was a Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright. His magnum opus, Don Quixote, considered the first modern novel, is a classic of Western literature, and is regarded amongst the best works of fiction ever written...
's Don Quixote. In this last case, it is not a "good" imitation, but some "Girardians" point out the positive aspects of external mediation. Jean-Michel Oughourlian takes the example of the imitation of a politician: "The imitation can be totally peaceful and beneficial; I don't believe that I am the other, I don't want to take his place [...] This imitation can lead me to become sensitive to the social and political problems..." It is also possible to quote this sentence from a short presentation of Girard's theory: "(...) Young children imitate their teachers as closely as possible and are even encouraged to do so, but within an educational frame that maintains a certain distance between subject and model, prohibiting confusion. If many little girls want to become schoolmistress, it is later, and all is in this 'later'."
Place in the anthropological tradition
The relationship of Girard's thought with both Christian faith and science is hard to explain. In Girard wrote: "The authentic knowledge about violence and all its works to be found in the Gospels cannot be the result of human action alone." A few years later, Belgian anthropologist Luc de HeuschLuc de Heusch
Luc de Heusch is a Belgian filmmaker, writer, and anthropologist, professor emeritus at the Free University of Brussels.- Life :...
, reacted violently in Le Monde
Le Monde
Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...
with an article entitled "" ("The Gospel according to Saint Girard"). De Heusch, who is an agnostic, stated that Girard's thought was not anthropology but metaphysics. In (1994) René Girard wrote: "Jean-Marie Domenach
Jean-Marie Domenach
Jean-Marie Domenach was a French writer and intellectual. He was noted as a left-wing and Catholic thinker.He took over in 1957 the editorship of Esprit, the literary and political journal of personalism founded in 1945 by Emmanuel Mounier and continued from 1950 to 1957 by Albert Béguin...
thinks that I am trying to give a scientific demonstration of faith. I know that a demonstration of faith is impossible, but faith is not alone. There is also the understanding, and the great Christian tradition had always been saying that there is a deep agreement between faith and understanding. That's this agreement I am trying to define."
According to Charles K. Bellinger, Girard provides a "secular account of the origin of religion among primitive people."
In (2004), Pierpaolo Antonello and Joao Cezar de Castro Rocha say: "Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World is a theory of the hominisation and of the origin of culture in a naturalistic framework, firstly in combining ethnology and anthropology", and Girard answers immediately without rejecting this presentation of his thought.
In 2008, Camille Tarot wrote: "Girard's Christian faith affects theology and the social sciences in different ways. François Lagarde spoke of a 'christianisation' of the social sciences. People might have expected that the theologians would denounce the 'anthropologisation' of the theology and thus a 'humanisation' of Christianity. It is astonishing that nobody has done this." In fact, Tarot is wrong: Father Valandier, the Director of the review Etudes (a journal started by Jesuits), is very critical of Girard because of this confusion between science and Christianity or between science and faith. According to Jean Greisch (with many nuances), Girard's thought is more or less a kind of Gnosis
Gnosis
Gnosis is the common Greek noun for knowledge . In the context of the English language gnosis generally refers to the word's meaning within the spheres of Christian mysticism, Mystery religions and Gnosticism where it signifies 'spiritual knowledge' in the sense of mystical enlightenment.-Related...
.
In an article published in September 2008 claimed that René Girard's work finds its place in the tradition of great anthropologists such as , Arthur Maurice Hocart
Arthur Maurice Hocart
Arthur Maurice Hocart was an anthropologist best known for his eccentric and often far-seeing works on Polynesia, Melanesia and Sri Lanka.-About the Man:...
, Henri Hubert
Henri Hubert
Henri Hubert was an archaeologist and sociologist of comparative religion who is best known for his work on the Celts and his collaboration with Marcel Mauss and other members of the Annee Sociologique....
, Marcel Mauss
Marcel Mauss
Marcel Mauss was a French sociologist. The nephew of Émile Durkheim, Mauss' academic work traversed the boundaries between sociology and anthropology...
, and Robertson Smith, who all pointed out the importance of sacrifice at the origin of humanity. Girard also works in the tradition of Émile Durkheim
Émile Durkheim
David Émile Durkheim was a French sociologist. He formally established the academic discipline and, with Karl Marx and Max Weber, is commonly cited as the principal architect of modern social science and father of sociology.Much of Durkheim's work was concerned with how societies could maintain...
, who pointed out the absolute link between religion and society. For Scubla, Girard gathered many elements of all these authors and combined them into an original synthesis based on the scapegoating phenomenon. Scubla states that Girard's thought is the "first radically agnostic theory of religion" and "includes all these theories into a simpler and broader system [which] overtakes the domain of religion".
René Girard is a Catholic, but the epistemological status of his theory is disputed both by atheist or agnostic people (in favour or not) and by Catholic or Christian people (in favour or not).
Bible and myth
In Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World Girard states that he is not ashamed of Old Testament texts that mystify violence and analyzes many of the more important books of the Old Testament. The Old Testament is very important for his theory. One should also add that Girard does not disregard the non-violent aspects of non-Christian religions. His defence of Christianity has nothing to do with the idea of "non-violence". Girard stresses that Christianity does not promise peace but promises truth. According to Girard, it de-mystifies the "peace of the world". All religions, he says, even the most violent ones, are aimed toward peace. Archaic societies ritually repeat the scapegoat solution to make peace. When discussing the established historical structures of Christianity in Things Hidden though, he presents it as a struggle between the ingrained sacrificial order inherent in human culture as we know it and the repudiation of mimetic fighting and indeed of cultural endeavour presented in the New Testament. The churches and historical Christianity and their teaching, according to this reasoning, have partly disarmed the insight of the gospels for nearly two thousand years, but at the same time, by spreading the Word to the ends of the earth and undoing earlier sacrificial religions the churches have paved the way for a final wave of revelation and of the coming together of humanity.Out of this eschatological perspective on history and on the role of the church, Girard is scathingly critical of secular humanism and liberal values, which he describes as cheap attempts to expand a cultural freedom no longer threatened by any institutions, least of all by the churches, and a dangerous over-confidence in the ability of mankind to save herself through (mimetic) effort.
One of the main sources of criticism of Girard's work comes from intellectuals who claim that his comparison of Judeo-Christian texts vis-a-vis other religions leaves something to be desired.
Psychology and neuroscience
René Girard's work is also attracting increasing interest from empirical researchers investigating human imitationImitation
Imitation is an advanced behavior whereby an individual observes and replicates another's. The word can be applied in many contexts, ranging from animal training to international politics.-Anthropology and social sciences:...
(among them Andrew Meltzoff and Vittorio Gallese). Girard's views on imitation (developed decades before empirical research prompted a resurgence of interest in the matter) resonate with the most recent findings . Recently, empirical studies into the mechanism of desire have suggested some intriguing correlations with Girard's theory on the subject. For instance, clinical psychologist Scott R. Garrels wrote:
What makes Girard's insights so remarkable is that he not only discovered and developed the primordial role of psychological mimesis (...) during a time when imitation was quite out of fashion, but he did so through investigation in literature, cultural anthropology, history, and ultimately returning to religious texts for further evidence of mimetic phenomena. The parallels between Girard's insights and the only recent conclusions made by empirical researchers concerning imitation (in both development and the evolution of species) are extraordinary (...).
Economics and globalization
The mimetic theory has also been applied in the study of economics, most notably in (1982) by Michel AgliettaMichel Aglietta
Michel Aglietta is a French economist, currently Professor of Economics at the University of Paris X: Nanterre. Michel Aglietta is a scientific counsellor at CEPII, a member of the University Institute of France, and a consultant to Groupama. An alumnus of the École Polytechnique, from 1998 to...
and André Orléan. Orléan was also a contributor to the volume René Girard in Les cahiers de l'Herne (""). According to the philosopher of technology Andrew Feenberg
Andrew Feenberg
Andrew Feenberg holds the Canada Research Chair in the Philosophy of Technology in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. His main interests are philosophy of technology, continental philosophy, critique of technology and science and technology studies...
:
In , Aglietta and Orléan follow Girard in suggesting that the basic relation of exchange can be interpreted as a conflict of 'doubles', each mediating the desire of the Other. Like Lucien Goldmann, they see a connection between Girard's theory of mimetic desire and the Marxian theory of commodity fetishismCommodity fetishismIn Marx's critique of political economy, commodity fetishism denotes the mystification of human relations said to arise out of the growth of market trade, when social relationships between people are expressed as, mediated by and transformed into, objectified relationships between things .The...
. In their theory, the market takes the place of the sacred in modern life as the chief institutional mechanism stabilizing the otherwise explosive conflicts of desiring subjects.
In an interview with the Unesco Courier, anthropologist and social theorist Mark Anspach (editor of the René Girard issue of Les Cahiers de l'Herne) explains that Aglietta and Orléan (who were very critical about the economic rationality) argue that the classical theory of economics as a myth:
The economists' myth tells us that exchange fulfills a simple instrumental function. You live in a community that produces yams and I live in a community that raises pigs, so we [...] invent a system of equivalence between our products - money - and there you have it. But, as anthropologists have shown us, Marcel MaussMarcel MaussMarcel Mauss was a French sociologist. The nephew of Émile Durkheim, Mauss' academic work traversed the boundaries between sociology and anthropology...
in particular, the main form of exchange in so-called 'primitive' societies is the gift, which cannot be reduced to economic rationality.
According to Anspach, the actual justification of exchange is in reality ... exchange, the desire of a relationship with other men and women. In order to reach the peaceful reciprocity on which humanity is based as against the reciprocity of what Girard calls mimetic rivalry, the latter is overtaken by the sacrifice - representing the end of the vicious circle of violence and vengeance and the beginning of gift economy
Gift economy
In the social sciences, a gift economy is a society where valuable goods and services are regularly given without any explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards . Ideally, simultaneous or recurring giving serves to circulate and redistribute valuables within the community...
: "Instead of waiting for your neighbour to come steal your yams, you offer them to him today, and it is up to him to do the same for you tomorrow. Once you have made a gift, he is obliged to make a return gift. Now you have set in motion a positive circularity." But the gift may be dangerous; it may be a so huge gift (as in potlach) that it humiliates the other: you may want, firstly, to display your prestige, to present yourself as better, richer, or stronger. The "economic rationality", however, tends to liberate the seller and the buyer of any other obligations than to give money. Reciprocal violence is eliminated by the sacrifice, obligations of vengeance by the gift, and finally the possibly dangerous gift by "economic rationality". This rationality, however, creates new victims, as for instance so many children dying of hunger every day. When a plane crashes and several hundred people are killed, there is an inquiry. But there is no inquiry about hunger: the market is guilty:
Nobody is individually responsible for a violence which is collectively accepted, just as the violence of sacrifice is collectively accepted [...] Globalization means the development of market exchange among the nations. Now, despite the existence of the United Nations, the international arena still displays one of the essential features of primitive society: the absence of State [...] I am skeptical about the idea that an expansion of international trade leads to peace. The same idea was expressed the last time a comparable level of economic integration between countries was reached, early in the last century. And then the First World War came along and dispelled the illusion.
Anspach also quotes Ahmet İnsel's estimation of the gift economy (families, non-profit organisations etcetera) as approximately three-quarters of the French GDP. He makes an interesting comparison between Adam Smith's
Adam Smith
Adam Smith was a Scottish social philosopher and a pioneer of political economy. One of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith is the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations...
"invisible hand
Invisible hand
In economics, invisible hand or invisible hand of the market is the term economists use to describe the self-regulating nature of the marketplace. This is a metaphor first coined by the economist Adam Smith...
" and the gods behind the ejected violence into the rituals. A similar comparison has been made by the economist John Grahl
John Grahl
John Grahl is a British academic and professor.Grahl was brought-up in Burntisland, Fife, and was educated at Kirkcaldy High School between 1957 and 1964...
in the paper Money as Sovereignty: the Economics of Michel Aglietta:
In primitive society, institutionalised by ritual and sacrifice, there is no real money because desires for being are focused not on things but directly on other persons and their conduct. In a second era the monarch or sovereign emerges as a more stable institutionalised representative of the sacred excluded/elected victim: here money has a secondary status as reflecting the monarch and his sacred prerogatives. Finally in mercantile society, with the kind of long-distance exchange relations explored by BraudelFernand BraudelFernand Braudel was a French historian and a leader of the Annales School. His scholarship focused on three main projects, each representing several decades of intense study: The Mediterranean , Civilization and Capitalism , and the unfinished Identity of France...
(1979), money escapes the control of the sovereign and becomes in itself the primary embodiment of wealth.
Grahl Aglietta and Orléan's interpretation of Girard presents analogies with Hobbesian politics
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury , in some older texts Thomas Hobbs of Malmsbury, was an English philosopher, best known today for his work on political philosophy...
, as sovereignty (a recognised monetary system) emerges to regulate unlimited struggle to seize wealth (accaparement). By diverting desire onto an object excluded from everyday production and consumption, the monetary order permits the embrace of a host of lesser, profane objects shielded from acute rivalry.
The analogy is clear: speculation, as uncontrolled imitative rivalry in the search for authentic wealth, is the violence which menaces modern economies; but it is this speculation itself, when it becomes the unanimous pursuit of a single asset, which gives rise to the monetary order; the latter may then be able to cool speculative passions and divert them into the production of profane, non-monetary goods.
The key difference with Hobbes is that the idea of a social covenant is seen from a Girardian point of view as a typical obfuscation of the true, violent origins of social order - peace and stability emerging from the bellum omnium contra omnes - through the coalescence of enmity onto a sacralised victim.
Literary Influence
Girard's influence extends beyond philosophy and social science, and includes the literary realm. A prominent example of a fiction writer influenced by Girard is J. M. Coetzee, winner of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. Critics have noted that mimetic desire and scapegoating are recurring themes in Coetzee's novels Elizabeth Costello and Disgrace. In the latter work, the book's protagonist also gives a speech about the history of scapegoating with noticeable similarities to Girard's view of the same subject. Coetzee has also frequently cited Girard in his non-fiction essays, on subjects ranging from advertising to the Russian writer Aleksandr SolzhenitsynAleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was aRussian and Soviet novelist, dramatist, and historian. Through his often-suppressed writings, he helped to raise global awareness of the Gulag, the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system – particularly in The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of...
.
Honours and awards
- Honorary degrees at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (the Netherlands, 1985), UFSIA in Antwerp (Belgium, 1995), the Università degli Studi di Padova (Italy, 2001, honorary degree in "Arts"), the faculty of theology at the University of Innsbruck (Austria), the Université de Montréal (Canada, 2004), and the University of St Andrews (UK, 2008).
- The Prix MédicisPrix MédicisThe Prix Médicis is a French literary award given each year in November. It was founded in 1958 by Gala Barbisan and Jean-Pierre Giraudoux. It is awarded to an author whose "fame does not yet match his talent."...
essai for Shakespeare, les feux de l'envie (A Theatre of Envy: William Shakespeare, 1991) - The prix Aujourd'hui for Les origines de la culture (2004)
- Guggenheim FellowGuggenheim FellowshipGuggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
(1959 and 1966) - Election to the Académie françaiseAcadémie françaiseL'Académie française , also called the French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. The Académie was officially established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII. Suppressed in 1793 during the French Revolution,...
(2005).
Further reading
. Paris: (PUF), 1982. ISBN 2130374859.- Alison, James (1998). The Joy of Being Wrong. Herder & Herder. ISBN 0824516761.
- Anspach, Mark (Ed.; 2008). . Nr. 89. Paris: L'Herne. ISBN 978-2851971524. A collection of articles by and a number of other authors.
- Bailie, Gil (1995). Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads. Introduction by René Girard. New York: Crossroad. ISBN 0824516451.
- Bellinger, Charles (2001). The Genealogy of Violence: Reflections on Creation, Freedom, and Evil. New York: Oxford. ISBN 0195134982.
- Depoortere, Frederiek (2008). Christ in Postmodern Philosophy: Gianni Vattimo, Rene Girard, and Slavoj Zizek. London: Continuum. ISBN 0567033325.
- Dumouchel, Paul (Ed.; 1988). Violence and Truth: On the Work of René Girard. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ISBN 0804713383.
- Fleming, Chris (2004). René Girard: Violence and Mimesis. Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 0745629482. This is an introduction to 's work.
- Girard, René, and Sandor Goodhart. For René Girard: Essays in Friendship and in Truth. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2009.
- Golsan, Richard J. (1993). René Girard and Myth: An Introduction. New York & London: Garland. (Reprinted by Routledge, 2002. ISBN 0415937779.)
- Hamerton-Kelly, Robert G. (1991). Sacred Violence: Paul's Hermeneutic of the Cross. Fortress Press. ISBN 0800625293.
- Hamerton-Kelly, Robert G. & Johnsen, William (Eds.; 2008). Politics & Apocalypse (Studies in Violence, Mimesis, and Culture Series). Michigan State University Press. ISBN 978-0870138119.
- Heim, Mark (2006). Saved from Sacrifice: A Theology of the Cross. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. ISBN 0802832156 .
- Kirwan, Michael (2004). Discovering Girard. London: Darton, Longman & Todd. ISBN 0232525269. This is an introduction to 's work. (1994). . New York: Peter Lang. ISBN 0820422894. This book is both an introduction and a critical discussion of Girard's work, starting with Girard's early articles on and Saint-John Perse, and ending with A Theatre of Envy.
- Livingston, Paisley (1992). Models of Desire: René Girard and the Psychology of Mimesis. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0801843855.
- McKenna, Andrew J. (Ed.; 1985). René Girard and Biblical Studies (Semeia 33). Scholars Press. ISBN 9995387638.
- McKenna, Andrew J. (1992). Violence and Difference: Girard, Derrida, and Deconstruction. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0252062025.
- Mikolajewska, Barbara (1999). Desire Came upon that One in the Beginning... Creation Hymns of the Rig Veda. 2nd edition. New Haven: The Lintons' Video Press. ISBN 0965952916.
- Mikolajewska, Barbara & Linton, F. E. J. (2004). Good Violence Versus Bad: A Girardian Analysis of King Janamejaya's Snake Sacrifice and Allied Events. New Haven: The Lintons' Video Press. ISBN 978-1929865291.
- Oughourlian, Jean-Michel. The Puppet of Desire: The Psychology of Hysteria, Possession, and Hypnosis, translated with an introduction by Eugene Webb (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991). (2010). . Paris: . ISBN 978-2841745142.
- Swartley, William M. (Ed.; 2000). Violence Renounced: Rene Girard, Biblical Studies and Peacemaking. Telford: Pandora Press. ISBN 0966502159.
- Tarot, Camille (2008). . Paris: La Découverte. ISBN 978-2-7071-5428-6. This book discusses eight theories of religion, namely those by , , , , , , and .
- Webb, Eugene. Philosophers of Consciousness: Polanyi, Lonergan, Voegelin, Ricoeur, Girard, Kierkegaard (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1988)
- Webb, Eugene. The Self Between: From Freud to the New Social Psychology of France (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1993).
- Wallace, Mark I. & Smith, Theophus H. (1994). Curing Violence : Essays on Rene Girard. Polebridge Press. ISBN 0944344437.
- To Honor René Girard. Presented on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday by colleagues, students, friends (1986). Stanford French and Italian Studies 34. Saratoga, California: Anma Libri. ISBN 0915838036. This volume also contains a bibliography of Girard's writings before 1986.
Bibliographies
- Girard-Database: searchable database provided by the University of Innsbruck, Austria. Accessed 25 November 2008
- Dietmar Regensburger: Bibliography of René Girard. The most detailed bibliography, ending in 2003. Accessed 24 November 2008
- Dietmar Regensburger: Bibliography of Literature on the Mimetic Theory of René Girard. Updates appear periodically in the Bulletin of the Colloquium on Violence & Religion. Accessed 25 November 2008
- The René Girard Bibliography. A short list of publications. Accessed 24 November 2008
Online videos of René Girard
Interviews, articles and lectures by René Girard
In chronological order.- "Are the Gospels Mythical?" in First Things: A Journal of Religion, Culture, and Public Life, April 1996. See also "August/September Letters" in First Things: A Journal of Religion, Culture, and Public Life, August/September 1996, for follow-up correspondence. Accessed 24 November 2008
- Girard lecture, on Violence, Victims and Christianity (Oxford 1997) Accessed 24 November 2008
- "What Is Occurring Today Is a Mimetic Rivalry on a Planetary Scale" Interview by Henri Tincq, , November 6, 2001. Translated by Jim Williams. Original title: "".
- "Violence & the Lamb Slain". Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity, December 2003. A short, accessible introduction to Girardian thought, plus an interview with Girard. Accessed 24 November 2008
- Ratzinger Is Right in New Perspectives Quarterly (NPQ) Volume 22, Number 3 (Summer 2005). On Pope Benedict XVIPope Benedict XVIBenedict XVI is the 265th and current Pope, by virtue of his office of Bishop of Rome, the Sovereign of the Vatican City State and the leader of the Catholic Church as well as the other 22 sui iuris Eastern Catholic Churches in full communion with the Holy See...
and relativism. Accessed 24 November 2008 - Interviews with Girard on mimetic desire (Saturday, September 17, 2005) and on ritual, myth, and religion (Tuesday, October 4, 2005) by Robert P. HarrisonRobert P. HarrisonRobert P. Harrison is the Rosina Pierotti Chair of Italian Literature at Stanford University.He was born in Izmir, Turkey, and raised in Rome. He is the host of the podcast Entitled Opinions . He plays lead guitar for the cerebral rock band Glass Wave.- External links :* * *...
on Entitled OpinionsEntitled OpinionsEntitled Opinions is a literary talk show hosted by Robert P. Harrison, a professor of French and Italian at Stanford University. The show is also available as a podcast. Topics range broadly on issues related to literature, ideas, and lived experience...
. Accessed 24 November 2008 - "The J'Accuse of Rene Girard: The Audacious ideas of a great thinker" Interview with Girard by Giulio Meotti, Il Foglio, March 20, 2007. (Translation by Francis R. Hittinger IV.) Accessed 24 November 2008 Reception speech of René Girard. This speech does not discuss his own work but is a eulogy of his predecessor. Accessed 24 November 2008
- Robert Doran: Apocalyptic Thinking after 9/11: An Interview with René Girard SubStance 115 (Volume 37, Number 1, 2008. Accessed 24 November 2008 Centre Pompidou: Traces du sacré: René Girard, le sens de l'histoire. Excerpts from a conversation with Benoît Chantre (see ). Accessed 24 November 2008
- Cynthia Haven, René Girard: Stanford's provocative immortel is a one-man institution, Stanford Report, 11 June 2008.
- Cynthia Haven, René Girard: Stanford's provocative immortel is a one-man institution, Stanford Report, 11 June 2008.
- Grant Kaplan, An Interview with René Girard, in First Things: A Journal of Religion, Culture, and Public Life, November 6, 2008.
- Cynthia Haven, "Christianity Will Be Victorious, But Only In Defeat": An Interview with René Girard, in First Things: A Journal of Religion, Culture, and Public Life, July 16, 2009.
- René Girard, "On War and Apocalypse" in First Things: A Journal of Religion, Culture, and Public Life, Aug/Sept 2v009.
- The Scapegoat: René Girard's Anthropology of Violence and Religion: Interview with Girard on CBC's interview program Ideas http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/episodes/2011/02/28/the-scapgoat-rene-girards-anthropology-of-violence-and-religion/, Feb 2011
Organizations inspired by mimetic theory
- Colloquium on Violence & Religion, founded in 2006.
- Imitatio, founded in 2008. Accessed 24 November 2008
- Imitation, Mimetic Theory, and Religious & Cultural Evolution - A Templeton Advanced Research Project, a two-year project.
- The Raven Foundation. This foundation "seeks to promote healing, hope, reconciliation and peace by offering insight into the dynamics of conflict and violence".
- Theology and Peace, founded in 2008. "An emerging movement seeking the transformation of theological practice through the application of mimetic theory".
- Preaching Peace founded in 2002 as a website exploring the Christian lectionary from a mimetic theoretical perspective, 2007 organized as a non-profit in Pennsylvania committed to "Educating the church in Jesus' vision of peace."
Blogs inspired by mimetic theory
Other resources
- Dietmar Regensburger: Link Collection on René Girard & the Mimetic Theory. Accessed 25 November 2008
- Colloquium on Violence and Religion, Annual Conference 2004: Nature, Human Nature, and the Mimetic Theory. Some of the conference papers are available here. Accessed 24 November 2008
- Paul Nuechterlein: Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary: Understanding the Bible Anew Through the Mimetic Theory of René Girard Accessed 24 November 2008
- Philippe Cottet: On René Girard. Available in French and English. Accessed 24 November 2008
- Mark Gordon: Was Christ Just Another ‘Scapegoat’? May 3, 2006. Accessed 24 November 2008
- Thomas A. Michael: How To Scapegoat the Leader. A Refresher Course (for those who do not need it). An introduction to Girard. Accessed 24 November 2008
- Joseph Bottum: "Girard among the Girardians" in First Things: A Journal of Religion, Culture, and Public Life, March 1996. A review of Violence Unveiled by Gil Bailie, The Sacred Game by Cesareo Bandera, The Gospel and the Sacred by Robert G. Hamerton-Kelly, and The Bible, Violence, and the Sacred by James G. Williams. Accessed 24 November 2008
- Paolo Diego Bubbio: "Mimetic Theory and Hermeneutics" in Colloquy 9 (2005). Accessed 24 November 2008
- University of St Andrews, UK: Honorary degrees - June 2008. Accessed 26 November 2008
- Gerald J. Biesecker-Mast: “Reading Walter Wink's and Rene Girard's Religious Critiques of Violence as Communication Ethics.” National Communication Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, Illinois, November 20–23, 1997. A short and clear explanation of the thought of Girard (principally) among other similar thoughts about people, violence and society.
- "Scapegoats and Sacrifices: Rene Girard". Australian Broadcasting Commission - Philosopher's Zone. Accessed 24 November 2008
- Trevor Merrill: "On War: Apocalypse and Conversion: Review Article on 's and 's " in Lingua Romana: a journal of French, Italian and Romanian culture Volume 6, number 1 / fall 2007. Accessed 24 November 2008
- The website Preaching Peace contains a number of articles related to , for example:
- Per Bjørnar Grande: Girard's Christology (no date).
- Per Bjørnar Grande: Comparing Plato's Understanding of Mimesis to Girard's (no date).
- Matthew Pattillo: Violence, Anarchy and Scripture: Jacques Ellul and René Girard. Originally published in Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis and Culture Vol 11, Spring 2004.Accessed 12 February 2009