The Fyre Festival and Violent Mimesis
On April 27, 2017, the first attendees of the now-infamous Fyre Festival landed in the Bahamas. They expected a weekend of luxury and pampering, and to potentially rub shoulders with Instagram influencers such as Kendall Jenner and Hailey Baldwin. Instead, they were met with chaos. There were no luxury hotels or gourmet meals, just Lord […]
René Girard’s CBC interview – David Cayley
Since the beginning of time, humanity has been in constant conflict due to the mimetic nature of desire. In this televised interview, IDEAS producer David Cayley speaks with René Girard about the historical and biblical aspects of mimetic theory, scapegoating, and violence, from Cain and Abel through examples from contemporary literature. With the revelation of […]
Satan
Satan is the principle that drives discord, chaos, and confusion among humans. Satan is the embodiment and incarnation of mimetic rivalry and violence, the force behind conflict and conflict that operates through mimetic rivalries and the scapegoating mechanism. Whether you view “Satan” in the traditional, incarnate way like a ‘devil with horns’ or in a […]
Mediation
Points to the fact that between any human subject and its object of desire, there is a mediator or model who designates the object– person, place, or thing–as desirable, attractive. When the model is beyond the reach of the subject, either because of unassailable priority in history or in stable hierarchical order, we have external […]
Mimetic Theory and World Religions
by Wolfgang Palaver and Richard Schenk 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 key to understanding the new challenges posed by our world of resurgent violence and pluralistic cultures and traditions. Girard sought to […]