René Girard's mimetic theory has been object of much interest in the last few years, both in the 'Continental' and in the 'English-speaking' philosophical areas. Nevertheless, Girard's thought is not always accepted in the academic circles. The main cause for this is that his theory is considered too 'philosophical' in the Human Sciences Departments, and it seems too close to cultural anthropology and literary criticism to be appreciated by philosophers. This is the reason why it could be fruitful to focus (...) the attention on the philosophical aspects of René Girard's thought. I clarify what is meant exactly by 'philosophy' within the mimetic theory of René Girard and I define the borders of the problem of the 'death of philosophy,' as it appears from Girard's work. Then, I focus on philosophical hermeneutics and its relationship with the mimetic theory. Finally, I try to answer a central question: is it still possible to speak of 'philosophy' within the Girardian universe? (shrink)

Young children learn to make sense of the world through mimetic processes. These processes are focused to begin with on their parents, brothers and sisters and people they know well. Young children want to become like these persons. They are driven by the desire to become like them, which will mean that they belong and are part of them and their world. Young children, and indeed humans in general are social beings. They, more than all non-human primates, are social beings (...) who cannot survive without the Other. In mimetic processes the outside world becomes the inner world and the inner world becomes the outside world. The imaginary is developed and the imaginary develops ways of relating to the outside world. In a mimetic loop, this in turn affects the inner world of the imaginary. These processes are sensory and governed by desire. All the senses are involved which means that the imaginary has multiple layers. Since there is an intermingling of images, emotions and language, these processes are rooted in the body and at the same time transcend the body as they become part of the imaginary. Human beings create images of themselves in all cultures and historical periods. They need these images to understand themselves and their relationship to other human beings and to develop social relations and communities. Images of the human being are designs and projections of the human being and his or her relationship to other people and to the world. They are formed to visualize representations of individuals or aspects of them. They arise when we communicate about ourselves. They support us to live with diversities and to develop similarities and feelings of belonging with other people. They are the result of complex anthropological processes, in which social and cultural power structures play an important role. (shrink)

Mimetic theory draws support from diverse disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. But arguably Girard would have even more influence if his theory had stronger life data, and one field well positioned to provide such input is psychology. Girard distinguished his thinking from Freud, while critiquing the psychoanalytic tradition more generally, in Book III of Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World1—a work taking the form of an extended dialogue with two psychiatrists. One of these, Jean-Michel Oughourlian, has (...) begun to develop the Girard-inspired practice of "interdividual psychology."2 In Girard's own hands, albeit to a limited degree, mimetic theory has been applied to mental health issues.3... (shrink)

In this paper, we compare and contrast institutional theory and convention theory on the concept of mimetism, suggesting how they can cross-pollinate each other and more specifically how the self-referential quality of collective beliefs improves the understanding of mimetic isomorphism. We test this proposition with the case of responsible investment’s mainstreaming.First level results decompose the history of RI into five successive periods. A content analysis of articles on RI in the financial press leads to second level results consisting in a (...) number of salient representations of RI, which we consider to be the dominant conventions. The data is structured using a bracketing strategy, which allows a longitudinal analysis of conventions and their evolution over the five RI periods. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Mimetic Desire and the Nigerian Novel:The Case of Chike Momah's Titi: Biafran Maid in GenevaTerri Ochiagha (bio)René Girard's mimetic theory was first informed by Western canonical novels. Girard's paradigm, with its psychological, anthropological, and historical backing, provides explanations for universal phenomena like rivalry, violence, scapegoat mechanisms, and the religious processes of sin and redemption. While it is not reflected in his choice of literary subjects, Girard has endeavored to (...) assert the universality of mimetic desire and its implications in "Other," non-Western cultures. However, little or no attention has been paid to novels that do not circulate primarily within Western canonical circles. To start redressing this gap in the literature, I use Girard's mimetic theory to study a Nigerian novel, Chike Momah's Titi: Biafran Maid in Geneva and show how the paradigm is suited to a novel so distant in space, time, and culture from the famous works that first inspired it. Apart from identifying the nature and phases of mimetic desire that appear in the novel, I propose other possible triangulations of desire, separating out the mimetic from the nonmimetic, and address the possible implications of the homosexual nature of the novel's interracial triangular desire. [End Page 205]A First Encounter with the NovelSince I assume that neither the author nor the novel under discussion are well known to the readers of this article, I will briefly discuss the author and trace the outline of the plot, in order to allow for an uninterrupted flow in my explication of the dialectics of mimetic desire.The situation of Chike Momah in Nigerian letters is singular. He belongs to the Ibadan golden generation of authors, heralded by Chinua Achebe's first novel, Things Fall Apart (1958), and his contemporaries at University College, Ibadan, including the Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, plus Chukwuemeka Ike, Elechi Amadi, Christopher Okigbo, Flora Nwapa, and J. P. Clark, among others. Despite his talent, Momah did not join the literary movement that his fellow alumni inaugurated. Almost 40 years later and two years prior to his retirement from his United Nations position in 1990, he began his literary career, which has yielded five novels and several essays. Being a firsthand witness to the birth of Nigerian written literature, he was sought after by biographers and conference organizers. However, his oeuvre has not garnered sufficient attention. This could be the result of a number of factors: first, the distribution of most of his novels has been limited; second, his writings began to emerge at a time when the literary reputations of his contemporaries had long since arrived at their zenith; and third, novels that primarily seek to entertain, as most of his do, are often disregarded in the realm of postcolonial criticism.Titi: Biafran Maid in Geneva (1999) is Momah's second novel. It is the sole Nigerian Civil War novel to portray the horrors of the conflict from the viewpoint of a Biafran family living in Geneva, the Okekes. Its excellent exploration of war trauma frames an entertaining story line. This involves Titi, the Okekes' maid, and her multiple love affairs. Mimetic desire sets in during the course of her relationship with Eddy Mafa and the love triangle that ensnares them with Suzanne, Eddy's European lover. This tangled web provides the perfect substrate on which to test Girard's theory of mimetic desire.Suzanne, Titi, and Eddy: The Genesis of Mimetic DesireAccording to Girard, mimetic desire occurs when we crave for an object, place, status, or person simply because someone else desires it. The resulting rivalry can bring us into conflict with the models we imitate. According to this theory, [End Page 206] the romantic concept of spontaneous desire is illusory since it is learned from the Other. One therefore learns the value of desired objects from desiring subjects. Mimetic desire is schematized by a triangle. However, as we will see, not all love triangles are triangulations of mimetic desire.In Titi: Biafran Maid in Geneva, the eponymous protagonist meets Eddy at the Okekes' house. They begin a relationship, which does not show many signs of prospering beyond its physicality. Apart from the fact that both... (shrink)

In this article I further Adriana Cavarero and Nidesh Lawtoo’s discussion of “mimetic inclination” to consider the way a person can be known in their uniqueness. Cavarero says that we receive a sense of the uniqueness of another by relating their narrative. I suggest that this also reveals a sense of the uniqueness of the one narrating, and that this can be understood as a practice of care. This narration is, as a consequence, distinct from representation (which itself is distinct (...) from mimesis) and is better described as apprehension. By drawing on Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Christina Sharpe’s In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, I detail a primary form of care connected to apprehension that is engendered by what Sharpe calls “the weather of antiblackness”. Morrison both details this form of care in Beloved and practises it herself in her storytelling. This expands feminist analyses of vulnerability, providing critical resources for rethinking existence apart from its colonial and patriarchal articulation. (shrink)

The ancient Greeks and Romans often conceived works of art as inspiring them to direct imitation of what they saw represented. Such mimetic contagion is attested to throughout antiquity, yet its operation as a motif is most usefully analysed in the context of a particular historical moment: this volume takes Terence's Eunuch both as an exemplar of a persistent pattern of framing responses to art, and also as a case study of how mimetic contagion functions as a key to a (...) particular literary work and a perspective on the cultural context in which it resides. (shrink)

What is the relation between mimesis and posthumanism? And why should these seemingly antagonistic concepts be joined in a volume opening up a new branch of posthuman studies titled Mimetic Posthumanism? After the plurality of innovative qualifications that, since the twilight of the twentieth century, have been giving critical and creative specificity to the posthuman turn, rendering posthumanism "critical" and "speculative," "philosophical" and "ecological," among other future-oriented perspectives, adding "mimetic" to the list of qualifications may initially sound disappointing. Skeptics might (...) wonder: What now? Is the posthuman turn so deprived of originality that it now returns to the old humanistic notion of "mimesis," traditionally restricted to all-too-human forms of artistic representation? This first impression is partially justified. At first sight, what we group under the rubric of mimetic posthumanism appears to look in two diametrically opposed directions: the mimetic side looks back to the past origins of aesthetic and philosophical theories attentive to the ways humans are uniquely endowed with a capacity to copy, represent and, in this restricted sense, imitate the world; the posthuman side looks ahead to technological developments that go beyond the human and are characterized by posthumanist difference rather than humanistic sameness, innovation instead of repetition, creativity and originality rather than copying or imitation. Given the long shadow mimesis casts on the very idea of technological innovation that drives posthuman studies, mimetic posthumanism might thus not only seem deprived of originality, it may also appear to generate a performative contradiction that a genealogy of philosophers informing posthuman studies has long trained us to critique, unmask, and deconstruct. And yet, precisely if we adopt genealogical lenses, the opposition between mimesis and posthumanism reveals itself to be less stable than it appears to be, generating mirroring inversions of perspective that open up new possibilities for alternative reconstructions. Convoking the ancient philosophical and aesthetic concept of "mimēsis" should at least remind thinkers of the posthuman that first appearances tend to be deceiving. A second look, in fact, shows that if the two perspectives look in opposed directions, they can be joined to compose a Janus-faced conceptual figure. As we shall see, a plurality of posthuman figurations, configurations, or, better still, transfigurations open up creative, strikingly metamorphic, and even original directions of inquiry to further a "mimetic turn or re-turn to mimesis" in the twenty-first century. After all, the same genealogists that paved the way for the supplementary "post" that now destabilizes the anthropocentric concept of the "human," rendering it "posthuman," started by troubling the hierarchical metaphysical binaries on which humanism relied. Such binaries were often structured on much-iterated oppositions such as inside/outside, nature/culture, mind/body, self/other, male/female, dominant/subaltern, and human/nonhuman. They also rested on an idealist metaphysics that opposed the "copy" to the "original," the material "phenomenon" to the ideal "Form," the "imitation" to the "model." Despite their multiple iterations that traverse the history of western thought, ultimately, such binary oppositions rested on a dominant conception of mimesis that, at least since Plato, was predicated on the mirroring logic of the Same, a vertical mimetic logic that has long been deconstructed, overturned, and unmasked as a metaphysical fiction. In the wake of Nietzsche's critique of metaphysics, humans revealed themselves to be far removed from being mere debased imitations of a divine, transcendental, and ideal model posited in an imaginary world behind the world. Rather, the very idea of a divine model, ideal, or phantom turned out to be given form by all-too-human drives constitutive of our evolutionary history in general and modernist critiques of that history in particular. As a period characterized by technological innovations and accelerations, modernist thinkers were thus quick to diagnose a change in human character or subjectivity that turned the ego into a copy, simulacrum, or, to use Nietzsche's phrase, a "phantom of the ego." Over a century later, in the wake of recent developments in robotics and algorithmic reason, and especially the artificial intelligence (AI) revolutions that increasingly blur the frontier between human and artificial intelligence, it is thus tempting to repeat modernist claims on radical changes or transformations. (shrink)

The task of mapping the reception of mimetic theory in Latin America presents two challenges. On the one hand, rather than looking at just one country, this study has to take into account a mosaic of nations making up a continent, each with their own local diversities and particular complexities. Such circumstances impose specific rhythms onto the assimilation of Girardian thought, and being aware of these rhythms is vital to understanding the precise impact of mimetic theory. On the other hand, (...) such a study also has to cover two languages, Spanish and Portuguese, which means identifying the translations of his work and the impact of Girard’s ideas in both of the languages.And that is not all: such a mapping .. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Mimetic SacredGirard and Bataille Transcending DesireJeffery D. McNeil (bio)René Girard's (1923–2015) mimetic theory and Georges Bataille's (1897–1962) theory of the sacred both describe an unwitting pull to violence fueled by an aspect of desire. This violence cannot be denied but may be channeled through ritual, resulting in social cohesion or utter catastrophe. Their theories also illustrate the contagious flow of affective violence between individuals, quickly infecting the whole. (...) Girard describes a violent contagion that threatens physical annihilation, while Bataille's more vital contagion illustrates the dissolution of self into other. Both come to the same result—collective cohesion. However, for all the similarities, the essential mechanisms "end up with profoundly different visions of the dynamics sustaining the social bond and, indeed, of society's whole affective economy."1 For Girard, the operative community requires distinct individuals specific in their identities. A lack of distinctions between individuals—a state he calls undifferentiation—leads to a struggle for identity, conflict, and violence. Unity comes from the catharsis of collectively thwarting violence before conflict can destroy the community. For Bataille, unity comes from collectively communicating through ritual. A [End Page 103] primal urge to slip out of the hierarchical mastery of discontinuous being and join with the other in a step closer to continuous being unites through mutual affect generated through shared experience. Girard asserts that cohesion occurs by maintaining separation, while Bataille describes cohesion generated in its destruction.Despite their similar concerns and many agreements, Girard and Bataille have rarely been compared. Among those few studies, Tiina Arppe argues that the divergence in both thinkers' theories can be found in their sources, namely, Emile Durkheim's theory of the sacred and Alexandre Kojève's reading of Hegel.2 Antony D. Traylor argues in answering the question of the purpose of sacrifice that Bataille's understanding may add to or replace Girard's scapegoat mechanism.3 Traylor dissects both theories focusing on Girard's critique of metaphysical desire and Bataille's notion of sovereignty. Nidesh Lawtoo mobilizes both thinkers and others to unmask the mimetic forces entwined in ego creation.4 First, similar to Arppe, I argue that apparent contradictions between Girard and Bataille arise from critical influences of each thinker and offer an analysis paving the way, like Traylor, toward compatibility. However, I focus on the influence (or denial) of Sigmund Freud and Marcel Mauss—whom I argue are the most crucial influences for untangling these theories. By examining Girard's interpretation of Freud's theory of cultural origin and Bataille's use of Mauss's notion of the gift and potlatch, I trace a short anthropological genealogy of the sacred that proves critical to both theories.5 In that regard, I eschew wrestling with metaphysical concerns and instead take an anthropological approach to the sacred that moves beyond compatibility. Second, we perform a synthetization, illuminating a shared mimetic force lurking within both theories and how Bataille offers an expansion to Girard's already acute observations—for which Lawtoo's notions of the mimetic unconscious and mimetic communication are essential.My primary source for Girard's theory is Violence and the Sacred, with secondary support from The Scapegoat and Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World. For Bataille, I consult Erotism: Death and Sensuality and two essays: "The Notion of Expenditure" (and its later development in The Accursed Share) and "Definition of Heterology." I also use a small but significant excerpt from Theory of Religion concerning sacrifice and the festival. Secondary literature is introduced as needed. [End Page 104]PSYCHOANALYTIC ANTHROPOLOGYGirard and Bataille found varying degrees of influence in Freud. A short detour through the relationship between subject and desire and the violent origins of the sacred will set the stage for a deeper comparison. While Girard does not explicitly admit using the father of psychoanalysis as a starting point,6 he acknowledges the influence and relegates it under his own, claiming that Freud's theory "has been replaced by another explanation, at once very close to and very far removed from the Freudian viewpoint."7 Lawtoo illustrates essential similarities to be "Girard's emphasis on desire as the essence of... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:MIMETIC THEORY AND THE PROGRAM OF ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS Lillian E. Dykes Memphis, Tennessee No prophet can claim to bring a final message unless he says things mat will have a sound of reality in the ears of victims.... (William James, The Variety ofReligious Experience) Is it possible to live nonviolently? The works of René Girard involve us in understanding of the Gospel's revelation of the mechanisms of violence and (...) nonviolence, but how is one to begin applying the Gospel to end violence? If Girard shows us thatviolence is the basis ofall culture and religion, where does one find a new model today? Ifthe shift from human to transcendent mediation results only in personal destruction, then why bother? IfGirard is correct, and the power ofthe nonviolent Gospel is moving like a vapor through the world, where are the people who are living non-violently? Is there corroboration for Girard's statement, "A new kind ofhumanity is in the process of gestation; it will be both very similar to and very different from the one featured in the dreams of our Utopian thinkers" (Things Hidden 445)? Ifit were possible to show that someone, somewhere were able to live in community without the protection ofscapegoating, following their lead might save us from the spirals ofviolence we arecreating. Ifone could find a design or an application ofGirard's theories, with confirmation that the resultis peace, would people be willingto consider giving upthe protection of violence? Some demonstration that Girard's understanding of Gospel Lillian E. Dykes91 non-violence is practical and possible seems necessary in order to hasten a non-violent cure for our violent world. Perhaps we must accept on faith that it is possible to live non-violently. Ifit were not, then why would the Gospels have ever been written and why have they persisted? In my examination ofhistorical applications ofnonviolence, it seemed that whenever non-violence was implemented, the results were remarkable. Of course, we think of Jesus, Paul, Francis, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King...but they are all dead and most ofthem were murdered. Yet there is a modern community where Girard's theories ofnon-violence through the relinquishment ofhuman mediation is being lived out daily. And, thankfully, it is a flourishing community that experiences healing and renewal through the practice ofwhat René Girard terms "the abandonment ofmimetic desire" (Things Hidden 430). The world is witnessing the healing power of non-violence without knowingthatGospel non-violence is involved. Millions ofmen andwomen are attempting to live non-violently in the "Utopian" community ofGirard and the Gospels without havingread Girard and withoutthe need to believe in the truth ofthe Gospels. It seems to me that the twentieth century has seen the establishment of a community not based upon scapegoating but, rather, upon having been scapegoated. It is a fellowship ofthe Spirit that distinguishes itself by being a fellowship ofbelievers without "religious" scapegoating. Itresembles first century Christianity and is experiencingthe same explosive growth. This phenomenon is what I call the non-violent "religion" ofAlcoholics Anonymous. In this Fellowship of A. A. we can see what might be called, in Girardian terms, a community of scapegoats. Since 1935 there has been a laboratory wherein the theories of René Girard are beingapplied. Bill Wilson, anothervisionary, intuitedthe underlying mimetic principles which Girard shows us, and implemented his understandings in orderto escape the violence1 ofhis addiction to alcohol. Though he did not articulate what he discovered in the way that René Girard has, Wilson found a way to break free ofmimetic desire. He knew that to continue to drink would result in his death (AA 13). Though he did not speak ofhis dilemma in terms ofmimetic crisis, he found a way out of alcoholism by exchanging the mediator of his desires. What Girard discovered and now describes is demonstrated by the practical applications 1In the words of Jack Alexander, "There is a close resemblance between the criminal psychopath and the alcoholic mind. Both are grandiose, resentful, defiant, and hating of authority; both unconsciously destroy themselves trying to destroy others" (Pass it on 364). 92Mimetic Theory andAlcoholic Anonymous contained in the writings of Wilson, in the book Alcoholics Anonymous, with its Twelve Steps, and the Twelve Traditions... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:MIMETIC VIOLENCE AND NELLA LARSEN'S PASSING: TOWARD A CRITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS OF RACISM Martha Reineke University ofNorthern Iowa In her recent essay, "Working through Racism: Confronting the Strangely Familiar," Patricia Elliot proposes that members of dominant groups who want to contest racism1 not only challenge economic, political, and social processes within society that produce racism, but also address personal claims they make on institutional structures which help to maintain it (...) (63). Sympathetic with an anti-racist strategy that concerns itself not only with racism at the institutional level but also with racism on a more intimate scale, Elliot nevertheless laments that individual complicity in racism is frequently attributed to aproblematic attitude. As a consequence, anti-racist work among members of dominant groups often is arrayed along a narrow spectrum: in workshops or in-service seminars participants attempt to identify and acknowledge biased and discriminatory views. Elliot fears that consciousness-raising efforts ofthis kind are unlikely to effect social change ifthose who participate continue to favor the confessional stance. Urging her readers to develop a "critical consciousness," a concept she takes from bell hooks (hooks 118), Elliot asks that members ofdominant groups who desire to promote social change not only combat institutional racism, but also divest themselves oisubjective investments in racism (63). Only as persons commit 1 Racism "involves the subordination ofpeople ofcolor by white people" (Rothenberg 6). Marked by discrimination and prejudice, racism entails also the exercise ofpower (conscious and unconscious, intentional and unintentional) by which white people maintain positions of privilege over persons ofcolor (Rothenberg 7). Martha Reineke75 themselves to a sophisticated and nuanced analysis of white complicity in structures of domination in order to grapple with racism at multiple levels—includingidentityformation, maintenance, and transformation—can members ofdominant groups actually tackle and begin to dismantle it (Elliot 63). Elliot's call to critical consciousness is laudable, but the goal she sets forth is not easily attained. As 1 struggle to achieve hook's critical consciousness of racism, like Elliot (64), I find difficult the task ofexploring the construction ofmy own identity as a white academic.2 For example, when I discuss issues in women's lives in the classroom or at professional conferences, I not infrequently am challenged by women of color who note that unexamined privilege (race and class) skews my perspective.3 1 also find myselfspeaking for others, assuming their voices, when I should speak only for myself. As a consequence, I regularly have cause to ponder whether, under the guise of contributing to anti-racistwork, I am appropriating others' voices in ways that reinforce racism rather than challenge it. For instance, on what grounds do I, a white woman, in this essay propose to address the problem of racism by reflecting on a novella written by an African-American woman? Does white privilege foreground my choice, precluding me from reading a work of literature in ways that might challenge rather than further racism? Grappling with these issues while reflecting on the theme of a critical consciousness ofracism, I find instructive the Girardian notion of mimesis. The dynamics of mimesis account well for agents of racism who, simultaneously recognizing and denying difference, act in ways that inhibit social and subjective transformation. Were members ofdominant groups to 2 Ofcourse, a professional affiliation is only one facet ofone's identity. I focus on that facet here because, through conversations with students about literature, I seek to contribute to antiracist work. 3Recent publications record similar conversations among women ofcolor and white women about white privilege. In White Women, RaceMatters: The Social Construction ofWhiteness, Ruth Frankenberg offers an ethnographic analysis ofthe dynamics ofprivilege in white women's lives. In The Color ofPrivilege: Three Blasphemies on Race andFeminism, Aída Hurtado offers a reflexive theory ofgender subordination which focuses on unwritten rules, inclusive of daily practices and psychological processes, that maintain power for whites as a group. Contributors to Who Can Speak? Authority and Critical Identity consider the ethics and political legitimacy ofspeaking as someone (e.g., a speaker identifies herselfas white, middleclass, and heterosexual before offering her views) oxfor someone (e.g., a white Canadian author writes first person accounts ofthe lives ofNative Canadian women but stops when a group of... (shrink)

Throughout his career, René Girard consistently positioned his mimetic theory as a far more cohesive account of the wide range of phenomena previously addressed by Sigmund Freud, from the nature of human desire all the way to the origin and structure of human culture and religion. Subsequent theories that took shape in psychoanalysis after Freud were not a part of Girard's ongoing discourse for at least two main reasons: Psycho-analysis was seen as a misguided endeavor with fundamentally incompatible concepts and (...) philosophical assumptions, and as psychoanalysis seemed only to be going further in one direction—focusing on the intrapsychic mechanisms of the individual unconscious—Girard's interests went in... (shrink)

We combine philosophical theories with quantitative analyses of online data to propose a sophisticated approach to social media influencers. Identifying influencers as communication systems emerging from a dialectic interactional process between content creators and in-development audiences, we define them mainly using the composition of their audience and the type of publications they use to communicate. To examine these two parameters, we analyse the audiences of 619 Instagram accounts of French, English, and American influencers and 2,400 of their publications in light (...) of Girard’s mimetic theory and McLuhan’s media theory. We observe meaningful differences in influencers’ profiles, typical audiences, and content type across influencers’ classes, supporting the claim that such communication systems are articulated around ‘reading contracts’ upon which influencers’ image is based and from which their influence derives. While the upkeep of their influence relies on them sticking to this contract, we observe that successful influencers shift their content type when growing their audiences and explain the strategies they implement to address this double bind. Different types of contract breaches then lead to distinct outcomes, which we identify by analysing various types of followers’ feedback. In mediating social interactions, digital platforms reshape society in various ways; this interdisciplinary study helps understand how the digitalisation of social influencers affects reciprocity and mimetic behaviours. (shrink)

Silvia Federici's Caliban and the Witch is a landmark text in Marxist feminism, rethinking capitalism's development from and with the standpoint of women. In this paper, I trace Federici's theory and use of the Marxist concept of primitive accumulation through both Marx and Foucault, the two central interlocutors employed to analyze the perpetuity of violence following the explicit violence of capital's originary privatization. After understanding Federici's reading of the dialectical double helix of violence and compulsion via Marx, and the relation (...) of capital (as Reason and Order) to the body via Foucault, I position Adorno as a backdrop against which to view Federici’s thesis on primitive accumulation. Despite the innumerable theoretical similarities between Adorno and Federici, a close pairing shows what Caliban and the Witch misses in its final pages: a theory of mimesis—mimetic accumulation—that accounts for the dialectic of primitive accumulation's perpetuity. (shrink)

In the work of the French thinker René Girard (1923-2015), Christology originates in the view of Jesus as a scapegoat and non-violent role model. Initially, imitation creates the conditions for sacrifice, and sacrifice becomes a way of holding a society together. Mimetic theory localises the problem in rivalistic desires, a process where those who rival each other become more and more preoccupied with outdoing each other. Imitating Christ therefore helps one overcome the desire for otherness and instead identify with the (...) other. A number of theological implications arise from Girard’s theory on divine imitation, and it seems that it is Christ’s perfect imitation of God that makes him divine. Through imitation, Christ becomes both a mediator and a representation of God. Girard seems to replace the notion of following Christ with imitating Christ, as imitating Christ indicates a more common and everyday relationship. (shrink)

When we are most immersed in literary reading, and when that immersion is most significant, we may experience a literary work as constitutive of a ‘world’. With reference to the phenomenological tradition, it can be shown how this world is both a novel creation and serves to disclose, not least by shifting our perspective from, the world of ordinary experience. In this light, it will be shown how the problem of mimesis poses a challenge for recent neuroscientific approaches to literature. (...) At the same time, neuroscientific findings show the insufficiency of phenomenological accounts which fail to acknowledge the physiological and cognitive processes that underlie literary imagining. I introduce the notion of the ‘mimetic dimension’ in order to clarify what accounts based on phenomenology and neuroscience can and cannot explain about literary mimesis and the experience of a literary world. (shrink)

Those who anticipated the demise of religion and the advent of a peaceful, secularized global village have seen the last two decades confound their predictions. René Girard’s mimetic theory is a key to understanding the new challenges posed by our world of resurgent violence and pluralistic cultures and traditions. Girard sought to explain how the Judeo-Christian narrative exposes a founding murder at the origin of human civilization and demystifies the bloody sacrifices of archaic religions. Meanwhile, his book Sacrifice, a reading (...) of conflict and sacrificial resolution in the Vedic Brahmanas, suggests that mimetic theory’s insights also resonate with several non-Western religious and spiritual traditions. This volume collects engagements with Girard by scholars of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism and situates them within contemporary theology, philosophy, and religious studies. (shrink)

Malaysian corporations have to disclose corporate social responsibility, and a typical genre for disclosure is CSR reports. These reports incorporate other discourses which indicate the presence of interdiscursivity. The article examines interdiscursivity in Malaysian CSR reports. It selects the CSR reports of 10 major corporations and pursues an interdiscursive analysis which involves four sequential stages. CSR reports contain discourses of public relations, sustainability, strategic management, compliance and financial accounting. Although the discourses are often multisemiotic, language maintains primacy in content, while (...) image tends to exemplify or simplify content. These discourses constitute an interdiscursive profile, and it has central and auxiliary discourses. The central discourse is public relations discourse, and it promotes corporations helping and not harming society. The auxiliary discourses are sustainability, strategic management, compliance and financial accounting discourses, and these discourses mitigate the promotional focus. Interdiscursivity enables the primarily promotional CSR reports to not seem overtly promotional. The choice of discourses is probably influenced by coercive, mimetic and normative reasons. These discourses enhance the reliability of CSR reports because their disclosure is anchored to various CSR aspects, international or reporting practices and professional domains. Interdiscursivity helps to build stakeholders’ confidence in disclosure and, therefore, in corporations. It joins other functions in CSR reports to convey corporations as agents of positive social change. The article also probes the relationship between interdiscursivity and intertextuality and advances a matrix of intertextual–interdiscursive use. (shrink)

The upshot of this article is that dance functions in Irigaray’s work in the following three ways: as (1) a symbol of a more positive comportment for heterosexual relationships; (2) an indication that the ambivalence in Irigaray’s work is self-consciously strategic; and (3) an example that teases apart the concepts of negative and positive mimesis, specifically by fleshing out the latter. More concisely, dance constitutes a figure of positive ambivalence (whether between heterosexual lovers, participants in a philosophical dialogue, or aspects (...) of a concept) as self-mimetic, curved silvering in the pursuit of social justice. (shrink)

The use of sacrificial animal blood in the Hebrew Bible has generated much discussion. While various scholars have attempted to explain the significance of these blood rites, each of these attempts has proved problematic. The current paper employs mimetic theory to develop a more robust and plausible model for exploring biblical animal sacrifice. Using the Passover ritual as a model, I develop a model of sacrificial blood rites as pantomimes of mimetic violence. These pantomimes re-create a violent yet transformative crisis (...) from the community's collective memory. Such rituals allow the community to enter into and re-experience the cleansing violence of a mimetic crisis, albeit in a more controlled manner. Through these pantomimes, the community attempts to appease the primitive sacred's blood lust and re-discover the divine blessing secured through the original crisis. This model may prove helpful when applied to more opaque examples of biblical blood manipulation. (shrink)

The interdisciplinary French-American thinker René Girard (1923-2015) has been one of the towering figures of the humanities in the last half-century. The title of René Girard's first book offered his own thesis in summary form: romantic lie and novelistic truth [mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque]. And yet, for a thinker whose career began by an engagement with literature, it came as a shock to some that, in La Conversion de l'art, Girard asserted that the novel may be an “outmoded” form (...) for revealing humans to themselves. However, Girard never specified what, if anything, might take the place of the novel. This collection of essays is one attempt at answering this question, by offering a series of analyses of films that aims to test mimetic theory in an area in which relatively little has so far been offered. Does it make any sense to talk of vérité filmique? In addition, Mimetic Theory and Film is a response to the widespread objection that there is no viable “Girardian aesthetics.” One of the main questions that this collection considers is: can we develop a genre-specific mimetic analysis (of film), and are we able to develop anything approaching a “Girardian aesthetic”? Each of the contributors addresses these questions through the analysis of a film. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Complex Mimetic SystemsHans Weigand (bio)The goal of science is to make the wonderful and complex understandable and simple—but not less wonderful.—Herb Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial11. IntroductionComplex systems theory stands for an approach in the social as well as natural and computational sciences that studies how interactions between parts give rise to collective behaviors of a system, and how the system interacts and forms relationships with its environment. (...) A typical example is the market economy, in which the order is emergent: it is the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design.2 Complex systems theory is currently a popular vehicle for understanding the complexities of the Internet; other examples of its application are as diverse as the stock market, ant colonies, epidemics, and the spread of business innovations. The focus in this article is on modeling social systems rather than physical or biological phenomena. [End Page 63]The mimetic theory developed by René Girard fits well with a systems perspective, as it has specific ideas about the drivers of human action (at the micro level) and cultural processes (at the macro level). The relationship has been explored earlier in several books and articles;3 in particular, in the work of the Centre de Recherche en Epistémologie Appliquée (CREA) in Paris. The systems perspective received a new stimulus in the 1990s in the form of complex adaptive systems (CAS),4 not least because of the agent-based computer simulations adopted at that time. The objective of this article is to introduce a special version of CAS, called complex mimetic systems (CMS), which builds on mimetic theory. The purpose of this article is twofold. On the one hand, the phrasing of mimetic theory in terms of CMS poses an interesting challenge to the theory to formalize its concepts and explicate possible limitations. On the other hand, CMS might be a useful contribution to the CAS field, as it incorporates concepts such as “social influence” that are very basic to but typically not spelled out in current CAS work.The structure of this article is as follows. In section 2, I briefly review the CAS literature and introduce the idea of complex mimetic systems. Section 3 describes a straw-man agent architecture for CMS, whereas in section 4, I move to the macro level and formalize the culture reproduction cycle. To illustrate the applicability of the CMS framework, I discuss in section 5 Ingo Piepers’s recent CAS analysis of the European international system in the period 1490–1945, and comment on it from a CMS perspective.2. Complex Mimetic SystemsThe characteristic features of complex systems are as follows:• Nonlinear effects: a small perturbation may have a large effect.• Feedback loops: the effects of an element’s behavior are fed back to it in some way. The feedback can be positive (amplification, runaway) or negative (damping).• Openness: a typical complex system interacts with its environment.• Memory: the history of a complex system may be important. Prior states may have an influence on present states.• Nesting, hierarchy: a complex system may itself be an element of a larger complex system. For example, clans in a tribal society, nation-states in an international system, or divisions in a company. [End Page 64]• Topology: the interactions of the elements are enabled and constrained by the network, or grid, of relationships between them.Complex Adaptive SystemsComplex adaptive systems (CAS) are a modern variant of complex systems theory. The elements of a complex adaptive system are called agents, as CAS builds on computational research in the field of multiagent systems.5 Although there is not much difference in the overall objectives, the use of agent simulation opens up interesting research opportunities. Let me clarify this by means of an introductory example given by Miller and Page, the standing ovation problem.6Standing ovations, in which waves of audience members stand up to express their particular appreciation of a performance, usually arise and evolve spontaneously. Suppose that we want to model this phenomenon. A starting point could be a simple mathematical model in which we distinguish N people, each receiving a signal... (shrink)

At stake in Adorno’s aesthetics in general, and his analysis of musical development in particular, is the manner in which artworks resist the formal, subjective characteristics of the death drive’s play. In order to win back control, as it were, of a mastery that has hardened nature’s particularity, Adorno conceives of a transformed, critical mimesis. Ultimately the work of the contemporary Finish composer, Kaija Saariaho, is revealed as an exemplary instance of a transformed mimetic play which critiques the menacing elements (...) of the death drive, but does not altogether discard it. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:MIMETIC SADISM IN THE FICTION OF YUKIO MISHIMA Jerry Piven New York University Mishima Yukio (1925-1970) was one ofthe mostenigmatic authors of the 20th century. Novelist, playwright, actor, exhibiionist —his novels are rife with homoerotic and violent imagery, while his fanatical and nihilistic philosophy calls for a return to a Samurai ethos. Mishima thus attained infamy in Japan and in the West, as his shocking novels inspired hordes ofyoung (...) Japanese into a cult ofMishima worship, while critics who acknowledge his genius are still nervous about his sadistic homosexuality and his suicide. Mishima's works are suffused with erotic bloodshed and misogyny, and Mishima finally ended his life by ritually disemboweling himself. I will make the case that Mishima was incessantly plagued by torturous mimetic frustrations, and that his final act of spilling his blood and intestines can be interpreted as the result of mimetic hatred against his rivals. I also argue that Mishima was fundamentally schizoidal; in Girardian terms, a man whose hypocrisy for the sakeofdesire rendered him an exhibitionistic maskdisguisingmimetic rage and fear. Having previously written about Mishima from a psychoanalytic perspective, I believe that a Girardian approach would often yield drastically different interpretations of identical biographical and literary materials. ' 1I initially wrote on Mishima for several diagnostic assignments at my psychoanalytic institute, the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis (NPAP). After considering the psychoanalytic and Girardian approaches, I expanded these original essays using identical material to determine whetherthe interpretations orconclusions would differ; I was struck by the way the same details could provide both remarkable congruences and vast divergences ofperspective. Read side by side, one can find compatible conclusions, but one also finds perceptions ofthe same details that would be difficultto conceive or articulate 70Jeremy Piven Mimesis, misogyny, and maculacy Kimitake Hiraoka was a frail, sickly child before he became the muscular and exhibitionistic novelist Yukio Mishima. His brutal and helpless childhood inaugurated his mimetic complexes: his need to escape the suffocating and diseased environment of his grandmother, his rivalry with her, and his mimetic ideal ofbeauty and muscular invulnerability. Mishima was an unhealthy youth, taken from the arms of his mother before he was two months old, and confined to the sickroom of his grandmother for the first twelve years ofhis life. Under the auspices ofhis tyrannical and ostensively psychotic grandmother, Mishima lived in the dark, could play only female friends (becausetheywere deemed harmless), and could eat only gentle foods. He thus lived an imprisoned life away from his parents, amid the excrescences of his sick and hysterical grandmother until adolescence, when his father "reclaimed him." Mishima later rebelled against this sickly nature, sculpting himself into a statuesque ideal of masculine beauty. He became obsessed with martial arts and the eroticism ofhis own engraved body. His fiction and philosophy were permeated by misogyny, glorification ofGrecian male sexuality and aesthetics, and the repudiation ofanything weak or feminine. He finally killed himselfbefore age could wither his masculine beauty. Mishima's fiction prominently features protagonists who mirror his sickly youth. The autobiographical Confessions of a Mask (Kamen no Kokuhaku) describes the homoerotic development ofthis frail child. Such fraiIcharacters inMishima'sfiction arealwaysdrawneroticallytobeautiful males as both mimetic rivals and models. The narrator of Confessions describes his sexual attraction to a sewage collector, a "ladler of excrement"(8). Thehandsomemanwith "ruddycheeks" and "shiningeyes" fascinates the narrator, and he is filled with desire lookingathistightjeans. using psychoanalytic perspectives andjargon. Two ofthe original essays will be published inthePsychoanalyticReview in comingmonths: "PhallicNarcissism, Anal Sadism, and Oral Discord: The Case ofYukio Mishima (part I)," and "Narcissistic Revenge and Suicide: The Case ofYukio Mishima (part H)." I am currently translating these articles for publication in Japan. I included a brief discussion of Mishima in the introduction to Psychological Undercurrents ofHistory (Piven and Lawton, eds.), to explore the complex methodological and psychological dynamics of the field of psychohistory. A commentary on Mishima's traumaticchildhood entitled "The Pathology ofGenius," will appearin aforthcomingedition ofTapestry: TheJournalofHistoricalMotivations andtheSocialFabric, and afinal article, "Voyeurism and Rage in The Sailor Who Fellfrom Grace with the Sea," will appear in Psychological Undercurrents ofHistory, Volume II (2002). Mimetic Sadism in the Fiction ofYukio Mishima71 The narrator thus emerges into a burgeoning homosexuality, but he also fantasizes about dying dramatically. His... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Mimetic Theory and Its Rivals:A Reply to Pablo BanderaRichard van Oort (bio)There are three ways to respond to a rival theory. You can ignore it, you can assimilate it to what you already believe, or you can assess its merits independently and then either reject it or adopt it as the better, more powerful theory. Let us briefly review these three strategies.1. Assuming you are already in possession of (...) a sufficiently powerful theory, a safe bet is simply to ignore the newcomer. Contrary to appearances, this is not a totally unreasonable strategy. Time is in short supply. Those in possession of a theory adequate to their purposes will naturally be hesitant to investigate a new one, the understanding of which may require considerable investment in time and imaginative effort. Better to let others do the risky and quite possibly foolhardy work of inventing and elaborating new theories. Chances are their attempts will fail anyway. Truly original ideas are hard to come by and, given this fact, it only makes sense to stick with what works rather than waste time on unfamiliar and unproven ideas.2. The second response is, on the surface at least, more gracious and benevolent, but this benevolence masks an intransigence quite as dogmatic [End Page 189] as the first. Thus we welcome the new theory into the fold, but with a view to assimilating it to what we already know. The new theory is not our rival but our friend. Rather than emphasize the differences, we point to the theory's similarities with our existing framework. The new theory is said to improve our understanding of one or two details, but these are held to be merely minor modifications and not at odds with what we hold to be fundamentally true. Thus the new theory is not really new at all. It is but another disciple of the old. Its claim to a place at the table is not at the head, as a rival leader and master, but alongside the other disciples whose collective task it is to disseminate the teachings of the one true master. This strategy is in fact extremely common and entirely understandable, from the viewpoint of both the adherents of the old theory and those of the new. For while the adherents of the old theory receive further confirmation of the superiority of their way of looking at the world, the adherents of the new theory receive a measure of respect by gaining access to an existing center of attention. As we all know, the mimetic attention space is by definition limited. We can't focus on everything at once, and sometimes the best strategy for a new theory is, so to speak, to follow the money. One piggybacks on the existing centers of attention. But the drawback is that the more one piggybacks, the less "new" one becomes.3. The third and final response is to take the new theory seriously as a rival center of attention. But this forces us into a genuine dilemma. For now we have to choose between theories that are accepted, for the time being at least, as equals in terms of their rivalry for our attention. But if both claim to be equally foundational, equally deserving of our attention to first things, then both cannot be equally true. One theory must come first; one must be superior to the other. But which?In a recent issue of Contagion, Pablo Bandera urges Girardians to adopt the third strategy when assessing Eric Gans's generative anthropology.1 We must recognize the theory's status as a genuine rival. Bandera believes that once the assessment has been fairly made, we must end up rejecting Gans's theory, at least insofar as it purports to be a theory of mimetic desire. The trouble is, Bandera claims, that most Girardians have adopted the second strategy, that is, they have simply assimilated Gans as a (slightly modified) version of Girard, without bothering to notice the very real differences between the two. The first strategy, complete ignorance of Gans's work, Bandera believes to be inaccurate as a description of the current situation. Indeed, he goes so... (shrink)

At first glance, it may appear perplexing to join the ancient concept of “mimesis” with the contemporary concept of “inclinations” via the title of “mimetic inclinations” – and for more than one re...

: In this paper I attempt to rethink the relationship between art and life by formulating it based on the rereading of the Benjaminian mimetic faculty by the anthropologist Michael Taussig. Taking this position within history as non-teleological change and based on human activity, to uphold a distinction between original and representation metaphysically becomes impossible. This is important in so far as any notion of primacy becomes obsolete, while at the same time one can work with the historical existence, both (...) material and ideational, of initially abstract concepts such as art. Art then is something that in itself does not have a materially specific reality, but forms reality through artworks, institutions, pecuniary allocations or human motivation. Taking art as a world-forming force that is nonetheless historically produced in turn opens up new, pluralist ways of using this historical given for possible futures. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Bible, "Creation," and Mimetic TheoryLucien Scubla (bio)I would like to propose and defend three theses that are related to the main theme of creation.First thesis. Although the idea of creation ex nihilo seems to have been suggested by the Bible to some philosophers, it is not a religious theory but a philosophical one. In the book of Genesis, there is no creation in the proper sense of the (...) word.For biblical thought, as for the savage mind, the world is not created, but only put in order by gods or spirits; and, for both of them, this ordering action consists in dividing or separating1 from each other things that already existed (or were potentially present) but were mixed and confused in a primitive chaos, or linked to each other as the organs of an original sacrificial victim: the Purusha (in Vedic religion), the goddess Sedna (among the Inuit people), the larvae (in Aboriginal Australian religion), and so on.In the light of Girardian theory, this means that there are two kinds of cosmic myths: those that describe (in mythical or ritual terms, of course) the founding events starting from the apex of the undifferentiation crisis, and those starting from the killing of the surrogate victim. However, groups of people generally have both kinds of myth. The first book of Genesis belongs to the first; the creation of Eve from the body of Adam, in the second book of Genesis, belongs to the second. Ancient Greek mythology begins with Chaos, and the act of Prometheus sharing an ox with Zeus can be seen, according to Jean-Pierre Vernant, as making a permanent separation between men and gods by means of a sacrificial victim.The second kind of myths are often violent. They show, for example in Australia, the mythical ancestors, the Numbakulla, dividing the larvae with knives. The first kind of myth can take a more academic turn, as we see in 1 Genesis, which is much more civilized than Hesiodic mythology. But both follow the same pattern, going from an undifferentiated world to a more and more differentiated world. [End Page 13]If we try to distinguish the biblical myth from other myths of creation, we might be tempted to focus our attention on an obvious feature. In 1 Genesis, Yahweh appears as the principal agent, the only father of all the things and beings that he produces successively, while in Hesiodic theogony the earth and the sky, who are gods, can generate other gods, and so on. This feature may suggest that the Jewish God is properly creating the world, while Hesiodic cosmogony describes a kind of process of self-organization that, in this regard, resembles our scientific cosmology.But in fact, Yahweh is no more a creator than other gods or spirits who produce all things by dividing a victim whose organs become the various beings existing in the universe. What makes a real difference between the biblical cosmology and the others is rather the fact that, in 1 Genesis, the creating god is a transcendent god, the one true God. In Greek mythology, for example, the earth, the sky, and so on are also gods, whereas in biblical cosmology they are only natural phenomena. Here, the creator and his creatures are not at all of the same kind.In other words, biblical creation rests on an implicit, first and founding separation of God and the world, which is a model for the subsequent separations in which creation consists. By its nature, God is holy, sacred, kadosh, which means separated. And the creation is the image of its creator as soon as it is made of separated things. Here, I think, we are reaching the feature that really makes Genesis distinct from other cosmogonies. Although the biblical text does not take the idea of separation as its explicit topic, because it is not a philosophical treatise but a religious explanation of the world, this idea constitutes its main object, of which it displays the various aspects.I. SeparationAs Leo Strauss has shown, in a lecture delivered in 1957 at University College (Chicago) and published by Nicolas Ruwet in the French journal of... (shrink)

Irony and sarcasm are common linguistic tropes. They are both based on falsehoods that the speaker pretends to be true. I briefly characterize their differences. A third trope exists that works when the relevant propositions are true – yet its rhetorical effect resembles irony and sarcasm, I call it mocking. It is mimetic evil: an agent copies another so that the result ridicules him. The image is, in a limited way, true of him and it hurts; we all are vulnerable. (...) I provide a systematic framework for understanding this phenomenon, mocking, in terms of emulation and simulation. Finally, I introduce an idea of universal mimesis and discuss René Girard’s theory of desire. He argues that desires are copies of a model. This may not be possible, and I suggest a modification to his theory. I pay attention to his idea of mimetic desire as a source of hatred, which is obviously related to what I call here mimetic mocking. (shrink)

The aim of this special collection of essays, titled Intersubjectivity, Desire, and Mimetic Theory: René Girard and Psychoanalysis, is to reappraise the relationship between René Girard's thought and the psychoanalytic tradition. The tripartite structure of the title clearly echoes the English title of Girard's first book, Deceit, Desire and the Novel, with which he introduced the psychological dynamics of mimetic desire as represented in modern European novels.1 Through the reference to the intentionally broad notions of "intersubjectivity," "desire," and "mimetic theory," (...) our title also signals the intention to cover the multifarious aspects and issues that inform Girard's thinking in relation to core issues of... (shrink)

Intellectual sacrifice -- Intellectual expulsion -- Historical forms of mystification -- The path of demystification -- Conclusion -- A brief letter from René Girard -- Other mimetic paradoxes -- Interlude: corrections and paradoxes -- Girard's ontological argument for the existence of God -- Mimetic theory's post-Kantian legacy -- Mimetic theory and hermeneutic Communism -- The self in crisis -- Hermeneutic mimetic theory.

From the mediator, a veritable artificial sun, descends a mysterious ray which makes the object shine with a false brilliance. There would be no illusion if Don Quixote were not imitating Amadis. Emma Bovary would not have taken Rudolph for a Prince Charming had she not been imitating romantic heroines.And Humbert Humbert would not have chosen Lolita for a lover had he not been imitating romantic heroes. Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita, probably due to its controversial subject, is regularly analyzed as (...) a piece of “technical virtuosity and hilarity.”2 In this essay, I will attempt to show how the novel unfolds with René Girard’s theory of mimetic desire. This approach will highlight how the plot, style, and hero of... (shrink)