Contagion

Collective Violence and Birthday Parties

2022-01-26T17:13:59-05:00

The origins of the Mexican tradition of the pinata are uncertain; scholars will point to many different cultures as the primary creators of the practice. But beyond the question of which culture developed the tradition, Girardians can identify many elements about the practice which tie it to what Girard calls the origins of each and every culture. This article examines and analyses these elements in order to connect the pinata with what Girard calls “the scapegoat mechanism.” From here, we can make some introductory comments on the meaning of the pinata and its adoption of Christian components.

The Touching Test:

2022-01-24T16:46:45-05:00

Imagining a future in which robots can plausibly present as “just like us,” I sketch a phenomenology of robot love informed by René Girard’s mimetic theory as illuminated by Paul Dumouchel’s criteria for an artificial agent to present as human. With attention to Sandor Goodhart’s use of those criteria to assess Ava in the film Ex Machina, I argue that Ava passes Dumouchel’s test. She fails on other grounds because the ultimate test of an artificial agent is not the Turing test but what I name the “touching test.” Criteria for that test include tactful touch, double sensation, and a carnal hermeneutics that advances the kiss as the test’s most critical element.

The Philosophic Foundations of Mimetic Theory and Cognitive Science

2022-01-20T16:18:02-05:00

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Cancel Culture and The Trope of the Scapegoat

2021-10-08T03:28:23-04:00

The essay argues that contemporary phenomena such as cancel culture, presentism, and deplatforming enhance the escalation of violence and mimetic desire. Together with the dimension of ICT, and the acceleration of speed that comes with it, these phenomena tend to organise reality in such a way that carefully constructed arguments are wiped out beforehand. Moreover, the overall dominance of increased velocity, lack of deep attention, and decrease of the dominance of print culture, are seriously threatening the craft of slow and close reading. In turn, this decline actually changes the culture of the humanities fundamentally, since the younger generations of poor readers engage in various activities of cleansing. In addition, arguments are no longer neither carefully constructed nor carefully scrutinised. In the vein of cancel culture, the senders of certain arguments should rather be unplugged (deplatformed). History should be edited according to a set of contemporary moral principles, which even though they seem to be ethically sound, will actually only contribute to escalating violence. By means of a close reading of Christina Rossetti’s “In an Artist’s Studio,” the essay attempts to illustrate that the only way out of the destructive dialectics of mimetic desire is through the Christian concepts of agape and kenosis.

Faulkner’s Novels Past and Present

2021-10-16T11:21:33-04:00

Faulkner's major novels (Light in August, Absolom, Absolom! Go Down Moses) offer keen insights into American history as of its Civil War turning point and into developments since that cataclysm right down to our own day. What we regard as his formal and stylistic innovations--switchback chronologies, polyphonic narrators, run-on sentence structure, among others--serve an overall epistemic strategy that intersect with René Girard's mimetic theory of cultural organization and of the central role of violence within it. Faulkner's critique of racism involves sacrificial practices that Girard analyses in his biblical antropology. The novelist's sense of recurrent patterns within history fills out in specific detail Girard's exercises in what he calls "mimetic history. Faulkner's explicit recourse to biblical motifs are in tune with Girard's truth claims about biblical revelation.

Killing Our Way Out of Violence

2021-10-12T13:25:48-04:00

Anthropologist Richard Wrangham's execution hypothesis--that humanity evolved and domesticated itself through the coalitionary killing of its most aggressive members during the Pleistocene era--deserves extensive engagement with Girard's mimetic theory. This article, first, reviews and critiques The Goodness Paradox, wherein Wrangham's hypothesis is developed. Second, the article distills an in-depth 2021 interview, between Haw and Wrangham, wherein the latter's work is put into conversation with mimetic theory. The exchange breaks new anthropological ground for mimetic theorists to explore regarding the evolutionary domestication of humanity.

The Denial of Peter

2021-10-18T16:53:32-04:00

The literary critic and cultural theorist René Girard has presented, developed, and extended provocative ideas about, and insights into, mimetic desire. Our desires are not our own, Girard emphasizes; they do not come from within. We form our desires on the desires that we perceive in others; they are our models; we imitate them. There are descriptions of this power in the work of great writers of the Western tradition. But, even more, Girard maintains that we witness the operation of mimetic desire in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, perhaps above all in the Denial of Peter. In a moment of crisis, Peter failed: he betrayed Jesus. He realizes, and we know, what he should have done. On the other hand: according to Girard, Peter could not have done otherwise, and that is because mimetic desire, and the contagion that it generates, took hold of him, gave him no choice. Girard believes that we can resist mimetic desire, that we do have the power to choose. But we only have it when, through grace and conversion, we recognize the truths that the Gospels reveal.

Theory of the Apophantic Judgment According to Rene Girard

2021-10-11T11:29:15-04:00

Gianni Vattimo in his work “Credere di credere” affirmed that René Girard´s mimetic hypothesis was able to overcome traditional metaphysics and the classic theory of the truth,. In his controversy with the Italian philosopher, René Girard acknowledged that his work was a critique of the classical theory of the judgment. But he rejected the nihilistic consequences claimed by Vattimo. In this article we present in its proper terms the deconstructive process that René Girard exercises on the classical theory of judgment

A Hypothesis On The Origin Of Trade

2021-10-14T03:25:14-04:00

The primary objective of this study is to propose a hypothesis regarding the origin of trade that will help to solve the enigma of why human groups, normally each other’s enemies, stopped exchanging blows in order to exchange things. The perception of the interest of the other plays a crucial role in trade, both today and in its origins. The next step to be taken after a successful initial exchange was its consolidation, after it had been proved that it mutually benefited groups who had, until then, been enemies. Its subsequent usefulness in curbing violence contributed to its growing expansion. The emergence of a comparative advantage in the groups that adopted trade would have guaranteed their future progress with respect to those that continued to systematically adopt violent conduct towards their neighbours.

Mensonge Mélodramatique

2021-10-16T21:47:14-04:00

From the perspective of René Girard’s mimetic theory, mimesis comes out with a bang in Sense and Sensibility. Not only is Marianne Dashwood a principal character in Austen’s first canonical novel, but her romantic sensibility is thematized in the title. “Sensibility” for Marianne is feeling, unmediated desire expressed in unrestrained language and impulsive action. Yet Marianne’s actions are anything but unmediated, and they are compulsive rather than impulsive. Marianne perfectly encapsulates Girard’s mensonge romantique, or “romantic lie.” The great trumpet blast of mimesis in Marianne indicates that Austen was very much aware of it, and that she was proceeding with this awareness very deliberately. Marianne is a sign that Austen has identified her subject, which I am convinced is triangular desire. Furthermore, the mensonge romantique that is so obvious and transparent in Marianne’s “sensibility” will be present, less transparently but hardly less strongly, in other characters and other situations. Therefore, Marianne can be considered a signal from Austen to look for the mensonge elsewhere, and not just in Sense and Sensibility but also in the novels that follow.

This analysis will first explore mimetic aspects of Marianne and Edward Ferrars, seemingly polar opposites, through an extended conversation they have about picturesque beauty. Mimetic patterns here prefigure numerous developments in Sense and Sensibility, as well as Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Sandition. The analysis will move on to explore the proliferation of mimetic triangles that develop among other characters in Sense and Sensibility: Lucy Steel, Elinor Dashwood, Edward and Robert Ferrars, Sophia Grey, and Willoughby. The last part of the analysis will examine the spectacular but disastrous romance between Marianne and Willoughby, and the strange mimetic entanglement between Willoughby and Colonel Brandon. Girard, who is known to have greatly appreciated Austen in his later years, would certainly have ranked her with the very greatest of the "revelatory" writers.

The Reception of René Girard's Works in China

2021-10-24T10:55:15-04:00

The aim of this paper is to present a description and an analysis of the reception and academic influence of René Girard's thought in China. My analysis is based on two facts. First, the number of discussions of Girard’s works in the mainland Chinese literature is much smaller than in English literature. From 1988 through 2020, a total of 131 works related to Girard were published in Chinese. Among them, 85% were articles and, according to my search, most were not published in influential journals. 15% were master theses and there were no doctoral dissertations. Second, the thematic contents of discussions on Girard's works in the Chinese literature are more limited than in English literature. These works primarily apply Girard’s theories of scapegoating (47%) and mimesis (39%) to such things as fiction (67%), cultural phenomena (5%), desire (5%), economics (4%), and rituals (2%), rather than anthropology or religious phenomena. And 35% of the articles assign Girard a title that describes his field of research, the top two titles being literary critic and anthropologist. No published works identify him as a religious thinker or theologian. Though Girard’s theories can be applied broadly in different academic fields, in China the most common field of application is literature.

In this paper, I will explain the reasons that this outstanding literary theorist’s (and sometimes theologian’s) influence in China is very different from his influence in Western countries. I propose two major reasons. One is the limited number of Girard’s works introduced into China. The other reason for the difference in reception is the different understandings of certain key ideas in China and the West. I will analyze this reason with reference to three aspects: civilization background, religious understanding, and anthropological understanding. Also, I will make bold speculations for the possible future of Girard’s theories on religion and anthropology.