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 […]
Sacrifice
Sacrifice is literally the “making sacred” (sacer facere) of a victim of violent unanimity, the victim who is the effective substitute for the violence of all and whose unanimous destruction ensures social concord. The substitution of animals for human victims only replicates the original substitutive mechanism, while clearly reflecting the need for victims whose destruction […]
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 […]
Vengeance in Reverse: The Tangled Loops of Violence, Myth, and Madness – by Mark Anspach
How do humans stop fighting? Where do the gods of myth come from? What does it mean to go mad? Mark R. Anspach tackles these and other conundrums as he draws on ethnography, literature, psychotherapy, and the theory of René Girard to explore some of the fundamental mechanisms of human interaction. Likening gift exchange to […]
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 […]
Mimesis and Science: Empirical Research on Imitation and the Mimetic Theory of Culture and Religion
by Scott R. Garrels This exciting compendium brings together, for the first time, some of the foremost scholars of René Girard’s mimetic theory of culture, with leading imitation researchers from the cognitive, developmental, and neuro-sciences. These chapters explore some of the major discoveries and developments concerning the foundational, yet previously overlooked, role of imitation in […]
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 […]
How We Became Human: Mimetic Theory and the Science of Evolutionary Origins
by Pierpaolo Antonello and Paul Gifford From his groundbreaking Violence and the Sacred and Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World, René Girard’s mimetic theory is presented as elucidating “the origins of culture.” He posits that archaic religion (or “the sacred”), particularly in its dynamics of sacrifice and ritual, is a neglected and major key to unlocking the enigma […]
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 […]
Can We Survive Our Origins? – by Pierpaolo Antonello, Paul Gifford
Are religions intrinsically violent (as is strenuously argued by the ‘new atheists’)? Or, as Girard argues, have they been functionally rational instruments developed to manage and cope with the intrinsically violent runaway dynamic that characterizes human social organization in all periods of human history? Is violence decreasing in this time of secular modernity post-Christendom (as […]