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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Apocalyptic
See apocalypse. Apocalyptic events bring about the destruction of the world and of humanity. In Girard’s mimetic theory, apocalyptic things happen as the result of human violence—specifically, the mimetic cycle which starts with Mimetic Desire, gives way to Mimetic Rivalry, leads to collisions, and eventually is resolved through either war (violence) or the scapegoat mechanism […]
Intimate Domain: Desire, Trauma, and Mimetic Theory – by Martha J. Reineke
For René Girard, human life revolves around mimetic desire, which regularly manifests itself in acquisitive rivalry when we find ourselves wanting an object because another wants it also. Noting that mimetic desire is driven by our sense of inadequacy or insufficiency, Girard arrives at a profound insight: our desire is not fundamentally directed toward the […]
For René Girard: Essays in Friendship and in Truth
by Sandor Goodhart, Jørgen Jørgensen, Tom Ryba, James Williams In his explorations of the relations between the sacred and violence, René Girard has hit upon the origin of culture—the way culture began, the way it continues to organize itself. The way communities of human beings structure themselves in a manner that is different from that of other species on […]
Evolution of Desire: A Life of René Girard – by Cynthia L Haven
René Girard (1923–2015) was one of the leading thinkers of our era—a provocative sage who bypassed prevailing orthodoxies to offer a bold, sweeping vision of human nature, human history, and human destiny. His oeuvre, offering a “mimetic theory” of cultural origins and human behavior, inspired such writers as Milan Kundera and J. M. Coetzee and […]
When These Things Begin: Conversations with Michel Treguer – by René Girard
In this lively series of conversations with writer Michel Treguer, René Girard revisits the major concepts of mimetic theory and explores science, democracy, and the nature of God and freedom. Girard affirms that “our unprecedented present is incomprehensible without Christianity.” Globalization has unified the world, yet civil war and terrorism persist despite free trade and […]