Contagion

A Childhood Memory of René Girard

2025-02-21T15:19:53-05:00

A Childhood Memory of René Girard

THE RECEPTION OF RENÉ GIRARD IN MEXICO

2025-01-06T14:10:05-05:00

This article is a genealogy of the reception of René Girard's work in Mexico. It develops three modalities in such reception in Mexico:

1) the first, “diffuse and indirect reception”, which began at the end of the sixties. Key here are José María Sbert, the translations of Ivan Illich´s texts that refer to Girard, the influence of Jean Pierre Dupuy on Jean Robert and a very long etcetera list of authors who cite Girard as an ingredient of something else. They are neither interested in his work globally nor do they assume his focus.

2) The second type of reception is the introductory one, which began in the late nineties and lasts until today.

3) the third modality is the use of Girardian theory for the analysis of various topics, which begins in the 2000s.

Moments of Grace in a Field of Ruins

2025-01-13T06:55:41-05:00

In 2006 Alejandro González Iñárritu and Guillermo Arriaga released their movie Babel. This film tells three complexly intertwined stories in four different countries. As the title suggests, it is about the problems of linguistic communication, especially where different languages are involved. However, this film also shows the entanglement in networks of guilt that are difficult to escape. Mimetic theory and the anthropology of Emmanuel Levinas not only provide a deeper understanding of these structures of guilt and sin, they also open our eyes to those moments in which the fateful progression of disaster can be interrupted. It is quite a person's vulnerability and defencelessness can become an impulse for salvation.

Imitation and Mimesis

2025-02-10T15:13:22-05:00

This article argues that appearances notwithstanding imitation and mimesis are two quite different phenomena or to put it otherwise that mimesis is not a species of imitation. The relations between imitation and mimesis have to my knowledge never been systematically inquired into and there is a lot of confusion about the relation between the two phenomena. This is a first attempt to understand better what differentiates them and to distinguish the proper phenomenology of each,

The Scapegoat Mechanism in Southeast Asian Ritual, Myth, and Politics

2025-01-05T21:27:17-05:00

This paper examines the ritual performance depicted in Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson’s Trance and Dance in Bali through the lens of René Girard's scapegoat mechanism. By exploring the portrayal of the mythical entities Rangda and Barong, the paper illustrates how the Balinese ritual reflects Girard's theories of collective violence and scapegoating. Extending this analysis, the paper explores the prevalence of similar scapegoat mechanisms in historical and contemporary Southeast Asian societies, particularly in the Philippines and Indonesia. This examination uncovers underlying patterns of societal violence justified by mythical and ritualistic frameworks that resonate across cultures. The findings demonstrate how Girard's theoretical framework can enhance our understanding of collective violence in Southeast Asia and show how visual ethnographic data, like Mead and Bateson’s film, enriches our comprehension of the scapegoat mechanism.

A Gift with No Giver

2025-01-04T10:22:48-05:00

This essay examines Maylis de Kerangal’s novel Mend the Living through the lens of René Girard’s theory of sacrifice, exploring the complex interplay between altruism, sacrificial violence, and communal renewal in the context of organ transplantation. It highlights how the novel disrupts the discourses of altruism that surround organ donation, revealing the coercive and sacrificial undertones embedded in the process. By framing the donor’s story as a modern scapegoat narrative, the analysis reveals the ambiguity of medicalized rituals performed on a body that is both dead and undead at the same time. Finally, the essay argues that Mend the Living introduces mimetic care, or “mending,” as an alternative to mimetic violence, showcasing how gestures and rituals of care can foster collective redemption and individual healing. A close reading of this contemporary novel suggests that Girard’s theory offers a profound lens for understanding the ethical and symbolic dimensions of organ transplantation as a social phenomenon.

The Mimetic Brain

2025-01-22T13:21:31-05:00

Our starting hypothesis is that the Girardian mimetic conception responds to the essence of the human being and, as such, has its correspondence in the human mind. To test it, we summarize the advances in neuroscience, explain the research on mirror neurons and the neural localization of envy; we focus on addictions and study the modern individual caught between totalizing and compulsive desire and a denaturalized and frustrating pleasure. In our society of abundance, the supply of pleasures exacerbates mimetic desire and leads to addiction. Our proposal consists in breaking the innate impulse that pushes us to compulsively search for dopamine to satisfy our pleasure circuit, and which society offers us everywhere. In short, the modern individual must rebel against the trap of mimetic desire.

Killing the Fathers of Värmland

2025-01-09T15:42:58-05:00

This article explores the Swedish folktale which, in its contemporary incationation, could appear to be an example of the narrativization and moralistic reinterpretation of an account of sacrificial violence as theorized by René Girard. The tale itself describes a Pagan chieftain--perhaps a giant--named Höök who is said to be the namesake of the village of Ekshärad in Värmland, and who was killed by a group of Norwegians following an altercation. However, the article traces the history of the tale to reveal that its various components pertaining to Girard's model of sacrificial violence and its representation in narration--Höök's alleged crimes, his confrontation with the Norwegians, his violent death at the hands of a collective, his elevation to the status of a community icon, and his mystification via claims he was a giant--all emerged in piecemeal fashion over the course of three centuries. And while the article argues that some additions to the story occurred randomly and accidentally, it also shows that other additions occurred due to storytellers' casual aesthetic preferences. The article accordingly argues that the case study of Höök reveals origins of sacrificial narratives beyond mere records of past events or a society's moral reckoning.

Envy, Deceit, and Dating Apps: The "End of Love" according to René Girard

2025-01-22T11:27:04-05:00

Holding envy to be “scarcely more than [a] traditional nam[e] given to internal mediation,” itself only a form of mimetic desire, René Girard did not address, nor emphasise, one of its distinctive dimensions: the visual one. This is surprising as, inscribed in the word’s etymology, it has notably been taken up by Dante — whom we know was a source of inspiration for Girard. “Envy” comes from the Latin invidia, derived from videre, “to see”; in his Inferno, Dante represents the “envious” with his eyes sewn with lead.

Much like Jean-Pierre Dupuy did with “jealousy” in La Jalousie : Une géométrie du désir (2016), this paper argues for a contemporary specificity of "envy" in relation to this visual dimension. It finds this link in a critical contemporary development of romantic/sexual relationships, brought to light by renowned sociologist Eva Illouz in her 2019 study The End of Love (La Fin de l’amour). “The content, frame and goals of sexual and affective contracts are now unclear and constantly put into questions,” she writes. While Illouz does not directly reference Girard, I show that her analysis of this new uncertainty can be understood in girardian terms through Jean-Pierre Dupuy.

Indeed, Dupuy has also long recognized the particular role that envy plays in liberal theories of justice (Le Sacrifice et l’Envie, 1992); yet he does not link this role to images. Illouz's nalytical framework being the same as Dupuy’s — the liberal market — I integrate to his analysis of envy her own emphasis on the visual dimension we seek. “Dating apps”, just as much on the rise as the certainty of “affective contracts” have been on the decline over the past decade or so, finally serve as the ultimate expression of this new development, emphasizing the visual dimension of envy at a critical stage.

The Contemporary Barrage of Victimhood

2025-01-02T10:43:19-05:00

This paper will outline the contemporary presence of collective, competitive victimhood for social advantage, often arising from mimetic rivalry. Resentment and lament in the Psalms fuels these impasses. The second section will present effective tools of social psychology, to ameliorate combative victimhood. Mental self-awareness and potentially shared victimhood-consciousness ease the tendencies of rivalry. Regular reciprocal communication, shared communal goals, and an attentiveness to forgiveness, heal the perceptions of estrangement and otherness. These techniques from social science are bolstered and magnified with the reassertion of the mandate to forgive from the Christian tradition. This refrain from the gospels disrupts and smooths feelings of hostility even to longstanding enemies. In the concluding section, with Wolfgang Palaver, I argue that the Gospel command of love of enemies, parable of the Good Samaritan, and acknowledgment of a transcendent God, compel a universalism that disrupts clenched social victimhood.

Masks, Morons, and Monsters

2024-12-31T15:31:00-05:00

Although René Girard mentions disability several times in his seminal works, neither disability scholars nor mimetic theorists have made a systematic exploration of connections between disability studies and mimetic theory. The study of stigma, which contributes to the foundations of disability studies, reveals social control, fear, and stereotyping as motivations and processes through which stigma is maintained. These components of stigma resemble elements of the scapegoating mechanism: the social stability maintained by scapegoating, fear as the inverse of mimetic desire, and stereotyping as the mask of the victim. This article uses the categories of social control, stereotyping, and mimetic fear to analyze mimetic dynamics in the history of intellectual disability and in its treatment in current philosophical discussions. It is proposed that a recent history of negative moral stereotyping and definitions of intellectual disability in opposition to a perceived norm have been manifestations of violent mimetic dynamics that continue today in philosophical treatments of human personhood. The article further explores how the category of the subhuman can be used as a way of victimizing people with intellectual disabilities that is socially acceptable since it avoids the appearance of scapegoating. In this way the article contributes to increasing connections between stigma theory, disability studies, and the wider social implications of mimetic theory.

“Where’s My Cookie?”

2024-12-29T15:48:42-05:00

This paper explores, in the context of incarceration and correctional chaplaincy, René Girard's hypothesis of mimetic desire (and its resulting violence) in conversation with Maximus the Confessor. It identifies Girard's mimetic hypothesis in a maximum-security environment where deprivation sharpens desires and violent rivalries over the smallest objects. For Girard, this violence over material objects does not stem from appetitive need or economic scarcity but from a deviated metaphysical desire for "plenitude of being." The paper then expands theologically on Girard’s insights using the work of Maximus the Confessor, arguing that for both Maximus and Girard, material objects have inherent value that human beings desire appropriately to satisfy basic needs; however, when misused to satisfy the desire for the divine object, material objects prove metaphysically insufficient, regardless of their material value. The paper concludes by exploring the concrete ramifications of this "metaphysical insufficiency" of material objects for peacemaking efforts beyond the incarceral context.

“Vanquisht with a peal of words”:

2024-12-30T12:16:51-05:00

Nietzsche’s famous declaration, that “God is dead! We killed him!” has been the subject of innumerable academic interpretations; and yet the phrase was not properly explicated until 2021, and then by Italian philosopher Giuseppe Fornari. It is not the first time that a misleadingly simple version of a manifesto makes a difficulty convenient as it concerns the end of the world. Fornari eviscerates shallow readings of Nietzsche, inaugurating a new school of mythological-philosophical thought, concerned with nothing less than the form and function of texts as a means to comprehend the origins of Being and the ritual functions of violence. Noting that Nietzsche never specifies the Christian God, Fornari opens the door to a new order of things. If Nietzsche meant the Christian God, Christ, when his “Madman” in aphorism 125 of The Gay Science makes the famous proclamation – why, then, did he not mention Christ specifically? And why is it regularly assumed that Nietzsche’s God must be Christ, rather than any other of the innumerable gods throughout recorded history? Geography plays a part, as does the synonymity of western civilization and Christendom, as does the fact that Nietzsche authored a work entitled The Anti-Christ. One explanation is that Jesus is God in human form (and Christ the name for his divinity), thus making Jesus killable. But when it comes to the death of Christ, there is likewise the question of sacrificial willingness: if the all-knowing goes to die, is that not unlike what we call today “suicide by cop” – perhaps something like “Suicide by God”? Certainly, Nietzsche missed something critical, as have his disciples. But the typological element of the literary tradition has not missed anything. In fact, as Fornari’s analysis of ancient Greek texts reveals, it is most fitting that we turn to a singular take on the Attic drama, which figures into Christian typology: John Milton’s Samson Agonistes. In Part One I thus offer a reinterpretation of the Nietzsche quotation, through both a reading of Fornari as well as Milton, as a way of getting closer to the heart of God’s death while investigating the typological function in biblical and literary scholarship, as concerns Samson and Christ. In Part Two, I offer a critical rejoinder, working with the second volume of Fornari’s Dionysus, Christ, and the Death of God, as well as Anselm of Canterbury. There it’s revealed that the either/or question of suicide in Christ entails a theological poverty of knowledge grounded in an interpretative lens several centuries in the making, as explicated in Fornari’s “Problem of the Sources” – a stance which refutes the divine nature of Christ at the cost of sacrificing legitimacy as concerns the essence of his manifestation, death, and ascension. In close I champion Fornari’s encyclopedic system of mediation as a new philosophical direction with which to investigate the Bible and English literature.

Girard's Apostasy

2025-02-05T20:21:04-05:00

The term “sacrifice” is no fringe concept in Mimetic Theory, and the figure of Jesus remains central. The question whether “sacrifice” is an adequate term to describe Jesus’ death therefore goes to the heart of René Girard’s claims concerning the historical influence of the Gospel texts and thus to the foundations of Mimetic Theory. Girard disavows his original position on the question, publicly conceding to Raymund Schwager in his 1995 essay “Mimetic Theory and Theology.” This study reexamines the purportedly canonical shift in Girard’s thinking, presenting and comparing Girard and Schwager’s respective positions on “sacrifice” and concluding that the two positions are incompatible. The study also revisits a 1995 essay of Georg Baudler vociferously denouncing Girard’s about-face on this question and Peter Stork’s 2015 re-presentation of Baudler’s arguments. The study contends that Girard's turn to theology leads him to contradict his earlier arguments, but his 1995 essay purporting to explain his recantation fails in various ways.