Anorexia and Mimetic Desire – René Girard
René Girard shows that all desires are contagious—and the desire to be thin is no exception. In this compelling new book, Girard ties the anorexia epidemic to what he calls mimetic desire: a desire imitated from a model. Girard has long argued that, far from being spontaneous, our most intimate desires are copied from what we see around us. In a culture obsessed with thinness, the rise of eating disorders should be no surprise. When everyone is trying to slim down, Girard asks, how can we convince anorexic patients to have a healthy outlook on eating? Mixing theoretical sophistication with irreverent common sense, Girard denounces a “culture of anorexia” and takes apart the competitive impulse that fuels the game of conspicuous non-consumption. He shows that showing off a slim physique is not enough—the real aim is to be skinnier than one’s rivals. In the race to lose the most weight, the winners are bound to be thinner and thinner. Taken to extremes, this tendency to escalation can only lead to tragic results. Featuring a foreword by neuropsychiatrist Jean-Michel Oughourlian and an introductory essay by anthropologist Mark R. Anspach, the volume concludes with an illuminating conversation between René Girard, Mark R. Anspach, and Laurence Tacou. Check out Anorexia and Mimetic Desire on Amazon.
Theater Of Envy: William Shakespeare – by René Girard
In this ground-breaking work, one of our foremost literary and cultural critics turns to the major figure in English literature, William Shakespeare, and proposes a dramatic new reading of nearly all his plays and poems. The key to A Theater of Envy is Girard’s novel reinterpretation of “mimesis.” For Girard, people desire objects, not for their intrinsic value, but because they are desired by someone else – we mime or imitate their desires. This envy – or “mimetic desire” – he sees as one of the foundations of the human condition. Bringing such provocative and iconoclastic insights to bear on Shakespeare, Girard reveals the previously overlooked coherence of problem plays like Troilus and Cressida and makes a convincing argument for elevating A Midsummer Night’s Dream from the status of a chaotic comedy to a masterpiece. The book abounds with novel and provocative interpretations: Shakespeare becomes “a prophet of modern advertising,” and the threat of nuclear disaster is read in the light of Hamlet. Most intriguing of all, perhaps, is a brief, but brilliant aside in which an entirely new perspective is brought to the chapter on Joyce’s Ulysses in which Stephen Dedalus gives a lecture on Shakespeare. In Girard’s view only Joyce, perhaps the greatest of twentieth-century novelists, comes close to understanding the greatest of Renaissance playwrights. Throughout this impressively sustained reading of Shakespeare, Girard’s prose is sophisticated but contemporary, and accessible to the general reader. Check out Theater Of Envy on Amazon.
Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World
Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World is René Girard‘s magnum opus. In dialogue with two psychiatrists, Jean-Michel Oughourlian and Guy Lefort, Girard articulates the full depth of mimetic theory unlike he does in any of his other works. Covering everything from the hominization of man to the implications of the Gospel revelation on the world, Girard dives deep into the consequences of mimetic desire. Buy it here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0804722153/