Intersubjectivity in Economics: Agents and Structures – edited by Edward Fullbrook
The editor of this volume is Edward Fullbrook, who is founder and editor of the Real-World Economics Review and a research fellow in the School of Economics at the University of the West of England. The volume explores the notion of intersubjectivity in economics and explodes the is of neoclassical economics of an atomistic economic […]
The Mimetic Brain – by Jean-Michel Oughourlian
The well-known psychiatrist Jean-Michel Oughourlian, a collaborator with René Girard on the book Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, referred to the Mimetic, or third, brain as the part of the brain which has the function of relationship, reciprocity, mimeticism. Obviously, every person only has one biological brain—but different functions of the brain […]
Mimesis and Economics: Self-Interest
The ideas that form the basis for the free market economy—ideas like “freedom” and “justice”—are at the heart of the market’s sacred aura. Few ideas have shaped Western economies like the notion of enlightened self-interest. Enlightened self-interest is the idea that people will naturally gravitate toward activities that further the interests of others in order […]
Intersubjectivity
Closely related to the term interdividuality, intersubjectivity is used primarily in reference to mimetic theory and its dialogue with economics to differentiate classical economic agents—who normally have their economic preferences determined solely based on their individual decision-making—from mimetic economic agents who only make choices in a reciprocal (and mimetic) relationship with other economic agents and […]
Interdividuality
This concept, closely related to intersubjectivity, is a term coined by psychiatrist Jean-Michel Oughourlian (along with Guy Lefort and René Girard) in Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World to express their conviction that a monadic, isolated subject does not exist and that the self can only be understood in relation to others. Therefore, […]
Texts of Persecution
Rene Girard identified what he called “texts of persecution,” or documents that recount phenomena of collective violence from the standpoint of persecutors—for instance, accounts of lynchings in the early twentieth century, or the medieval poet Guillaume de Machaut’s story Judgement of the King of Navarre, which blames the Jews for the Black Death and describes […]
Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life — by Luke Burgis
WANTING is a large-scale exposition of mimetic theory and its practical applications, especially the positive potential of mimesis, written by entrepreneur, author, and professor of business Luke Burgis. This book is the most ambitious and engaging explanation of mimetic theory for someone new to Girard’s thought. The book has a wide, sweeping range, moving from […]
Mimetic Desire in the Art Market: Mona Lisa
What art feuds reveal about human desire The art world has a fetish for conspiracy. Take a casual sweep of the news over a given year and you will turn up any number of stories about stolen masterpieces, disputed provenances, and multi-million-dollar black-market auctions. Art itches for intrigue and the latest installment involve the Mona […]
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 […]
What has Deviated Transcendency: Woolf’s “The Waves” as a Textbook Case – by Simon de Keukelaere’s
From the article, drawing heavily on Max Scheler: “Humankind––according to mimetic theory––is not (as Marx thought) homo economicus but rather homo religious. Mensonge Romantique et Vérité Romanesque, Girard’s first essay (1961), evocatively opens with a saying by Max Scheler: “L’homme possède ou un Dieu ou une idole” (Man has either a God or an idol). […]