Tag: rené girard

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 human nature and the resulting origin and structure of human culture and religion. The scope of Girard’s work is immense and has far-reaching implications across such diverse disciplines as anthropology, primitive religion, psychology, literary analysis, theology, and philosophy. Check out Imitation, Mirror Neurons, and Mimetic Desire

Desired Possessions: Karl Polanyi, Rene Girard, and the Critique of the Market – by Mark Anspach

The market illusion—the idea of an “invisible hand”—perpetuates the idea of “market motives,” or purely economic motives. These do not exist. Social relationships are embedded deeply in the market, and there is no desire that is not social. As Mark Anspach observes, “faith in the naturalness and inevitability of the “economic motive” absolves those who conform to it from direct responsibility for the suffering caused by their treating other people as commodities.” The market, or “market processes,” has taken on a level of being which the market does not possess. So when there is a collapse or catastrophe in the economy, people do not have to shoulder individual responsibility for it. It’s always just “the market” — with its cycles, it’s randomness, its impersonal nature to whom nobody can ascribe any real blame. Check out Desired Possessions

The Evangelical Subversion of Myth – by René Girard

Girard begins this subversive exploration of the evangelical (Gospel) subversion of myth by quoting Sigmund Freud in his famous work, Totem and Taboo. Freud recognizes that long before he intuited the violent origins of human culture, the Gospels had already revealed them. “In the Christian doctrine,” he writes, “men were acknowledging in the most undisguised manger the guilty primeval deed.” The Gospels, according to Girard, were the only text in which the Truth—a truth that had been expelled from human cultures—occupied the central place. The Gospel is true revelation, revealing the “things hidden since the foundation of the world,” including the founder murder of Cain and Abel and the founding murder that is at the heart of every culture but which humans have done their best to hide behind myths, rituals, and taboos. Check out The Evangelical Subversion of Myth

Mimetic Theory of René Girard and Asian Culture

The thought of Girard is beginning to infiltrate Asian countries. This is the site of Korean professor Ilkwaen Chung, for example, who have begun to explore the origins of Buddhist through the lens of Girardian theory. He asks many fascination questions like, “Is Buddha a scapegoat?” Professor Chung is perhaps the foremost Girardian scholar in South Korea, and those seeking to understand mimetic theory in Asia should explore this website, even though it doesn’t appear to have been updated in quite a while (since 2017). Visit Mimetic Theory of René Girard and Asian Culture

Mimetics: A Blog About René Girard and the Mimetic Theory

The best blog about Girard available in Brazil (a Portuguese-language blog) covering all things, including a nice description of Girard. Most South American countries have heavily Marxist strains running through the cultures, which Girardian theory can go a long way toward explaining. (Along with the West’s own self-hatred.) If that’s confusing, read on. Visit Mimetics

Shakespearean Cultures: Latin America and the Challenges of Mimesis in Non-Hegemonic Circumstances

by João Cezar de Castro Rocha In Shakespearean Cultures, René Girard’s ideas on violence and the sacred inform an innovative analysis of contemporary Latin America. Castro Rocha proposes a new theoretical framework based upon the “poetics of emulation” and offers a groundbreaking approach to understanding the asymmetries of the modern world. Shakespearean cultures are those whose self-perception originates in the gaze of a hegemonic Other. The poetics of emulation is a strategy developed in situations of asymmetrical power relations. This strategy encompasses an array of procedures employed by artists, intellectuals, and writers situated at the less-favored side of such exchanges, whether they be cultural, political, or economic in nature. The framework developed in this book yields thought-provoking readings of canonical authors such as William Shakespeare, Gustave Flaubert, and Joseph Conrad. At the same time, it favors the insertion of Latin American authors into the comparative scope of world literature and stages an unprecedented dialogue among European, North American, and Latin American readers of René Girard’s work. Check out Shakespearean Cultures on Amazon.

René Girard’s Mimetic Theory – by Wolfgang Palaver

A systematic introduction into the René Girard’s mimetic theory of the French-American literary theorist and philosophical anthropologist René Girard, this essential text explains its three main pillars (mimetic desire, the scapegoat mechanism, and the Biblical “difference”) with the help of examples from literature and philosophy. This book also offers an overview of René Girard’s life and work, showing how much mimetic theory results from existential and spiritual insights into one’s own mimetic entanglements. Furthermore, it examines the broader implications of Girard’s theories, from the mimetic aspect of sovereignty and wars to the relationship between the scapegoat mechanism and the question of capital punishment. Mimetic theory is placed within the context of current cultural and political debates like the relationship between religion and modernity, terrorism, the death penalty, and gender issues. Drawing textual examples from European literature (Cervantes, Shakespeare, Goethe, Kleist, Stendhal, Storm, Flaubert, Dostoevsky, Proust) and philosophy (Plato, Camus, Sartre, Lévi-Strauss, Derrida, Vattimo), Palaver uses mimetic theory to explore the themes they present. A highly accessible book, this text is complemented by bibliographical references to Girard’s widespread work and secondary literature on mimetic theory and its applications, comprising a valuable bibliographical archive that provides the reader with an overview of the development and discussion of mimetic theory until the present day. Check out René Girard’s Mimetic Theory on Amazon

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 the planet.      Like Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Émile Durkheim, Martin Buber, or others who have changed the way we think in the humanities or in the human sciences, Girard has put forth a set of ideas that have altered our perceptions of the world in which we function. We will never be able to think the same way again about mimetic desire, about the scapegoat mechanism, and about the role of Jewish and Christian scripture in explaining sacrifice, violence, and the crises from which our culture has been born. The contributions fall into roughly four areas of interpretive work: religion and religious study; literary study; the philosophy of social science; and psychological studies.The essays presented here are offered as “essays” in the older French sense of attempts (essayer) or trials of ideas, as indeed Girard has tried out ideas with us. With a conscious echo of Montaigne, then, this hommage volume is titled Essays in Friendship and in Truth. Check out For René Girard on Amazon.

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 earned him a place among the forty “immortals” of the Académie Française. Too often, however, his work is considered only within various academic specializations. This first-ever biographical study takes a wider view. Cynthia L. Haven traces the evolution of Girard’s thought in parallel with his life and times. She recounts his formative years in France and his arrival in a country torn by racial division and reveals his insights into the collective delusions of our technological world and the changing nature of warfare. Drawing on interviews with Girard and his colleagues, Evolution of Desire: A Life of René Girard provides an essential introduction to one of the twentieth century’s most controversial and original minds. Check out Evolution of Desire on Amazon.

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