Mimetic Theory – A Compendium of Videos
This is a complete list of every pedagogic video on mimetic theory and René Girard. This list will be updated weekly as new content arises. “When scandals proliferate, human beings become so obsessed with their rivals that they lose sight of the objects for which they compete and begin to focus angrily on one another.” […]
Dan Wang
Dan Wang is an interesting cat. He is the author of this excellent piece called “College As An Incubator of Girardian Terror,” detailing the way that mimetic rivalry heats up in the environment of a college campus. Dan is a graduate of the University of Rochester, after nearly getting kicked out and negotiating his way […]
Obituary Tribute to René Girard – Stanford News Service
Cynthia Haven, author of Evolution of Desire, a biography of René Girard, begins this obituary tribute after the 2005 death of the founder of mimetic theory with these words: “René Girard was one of the leading thinkers of our era – a provocative sage who bypassed prevailing orthodoxies and “isms” to offer a bold, sweeping […]
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 […]
Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary – Paul Nuechterlein
Paul Nuechterlein, a well-known theologian, started Girardian Reflections with a passion for spreading a message of justice and peace. In a world filled with hostility, Nuechterlein dives into how desire can play a major roll in this continuous battle. With René Girard’s Mimetic Theory at the forefront of his analysis, Nuechterlein conducts seminars in Discipleship […]
Reading of Cervantes’ Don Quixote – González Echevarría
An interpretation of the great novel Don Quixote through the lens of René Girard’s mimetic theory. In mimetic theory, human love is always mediated by a third person who also works as a motivator. In the section of the famous novel that Echevarria interprets, Don Quixote interrupts a “reading” of stories by young people that […]
The Last Superstition – Roberto Calasso
What is the last superstition in human culture? Author, editor, literary critic, and man of letters Roberto Calasso muses….“man has a surplus of energy which he has to dispose of. That surplus is simply life. There is no life without a surplus. Whatever one does with that surplus, that decides the shape of a culture, […]
Scapegoating at Çatalhöyük – René Girard
In 2008, René Girard gave a keynote lecture at the Colloquium on Violence and Religion about how the dynamics of mimetic desire were playing out thousands of years ago. With a focus on what he called “Scapegoating at Çatalhöyük”, he analyzes the rituals that are contained in humanity’s earliest forms of artwork. Çatalhöyük was a […]
Things Hidden Since The Foundation of the World: Book Launch
Why is human violence the much-neglected key to understanding human emergence and development? How does it differ from animal violence? How was it controlled by the victimary or scapegoat mechanism? How does this stabilize human communities and lead to the creation of natural or archaic religion (‘the sacred’); and then to the development of our […]
Imitation, Mirror Neurons, and Mimetic Desire: Convergence Between the Mimetic Theory of René Girard and Empirical Research on Imitation – by Scott Garrels
Scott Garrels, of Fuller Theological Seminary in California, says this: “Psychological mimesis is the tendency of human beings to imitate the gestures, behaviors, and intentions of other persons; it is the very cornerstone upon which the entire work of René Girard is constructed. From this foundation, Girard has made a number of bold claims about […]