Discovering Girard by Michael Kirwan, Darton,
Longman and Todd, London, 2004
ISBN 0 232 52526 9, pp 137, rrp $34.95.
Reviewed by Maggie Helass
Thirty years ago the public media gloatingly
reported that a well-known academic had published
a thesis that religion was based on violence.1
Today, religion and violence are at home
together in headlines around the world and
Jesuit priest Michael Kirwan has written a brief,
cogent introduction to the mimetic theory of the
influential French American cultural critic René
Girard.
“Put very simply, this is a theory which seeks
to elucidate the relationships – one might say
the complicity – between religion, culture and
violence.” (p 5)
Girard’s theory of endemic rivalry, conflict and
scapegoating in human culture brings a radical new
perspective to theology.
Our contemporary record of genocide, ethnic
conflict, religious persecution and violence in
defence of the ‘sacred’ causes outrage in sitting
rooms all over the world.
But what if our empathy for the sufferings of
unknown people far away is a marvelous evolution
in the history of human consciousness?
The three structural elements of mimetic theory
are:
• that our desires are to a large degree imitated
or derived through ‘mimesis’
• that societies have a tendency to channel
the violence which arises as a result of
mimetic interaction by means of a process
of ‘scapegoating’, which underlies not just
religious practices (such as sacrifice) but also
secular institutions
• that the revelation which occurs in the Jewish
and Christian scriptures is the primary force
responsible for showing us the truth about this
hidden violence, and for enabling alternative
ways of structuring human living.
1 Girard René La Violence et le sacré, Graset, Paris, 1972.
page 2
intense competition,
rivalry, envy and
jealousy.
Girard’s
scapegoat theory
presents us with
an understanding
of ‘the sacred’
as the means by
which a society’s
mimetic rivalry
and its consequent
aggression is
contained.
When the cultural
order is dangerously
destabilised by
the escalation of
mimetic desire (for instance in civil unrest) the
crisis is resolved by a realignment of the aggression – ‘all against one’.
Girard keeps returning to the paradox that
the more the rivals in a conflict try to establish
a difference between each other (by increasingly
hostile gestures, for example), the more they in
fact imitate one another (e.g. the Northern Ireland
conflict).
At the cosmic level, the act of exiling or
destroying a victim brings into being the most
fundamental social and cultural distinctions of the
sacred and profane.
Divisions at the foundation of political order
are related to the channeling of violence, either
inwards (upon a scapegoat) or outwards (upon
a common enemy). Aeschylus and Shakespeare
illustrate this theme.
This purely social process of expulsion or
extermination appears to the perpetrators as
if it is a holy action, because it brings, if only
temporarily, the peace and harmony which the
group desperately needs.
Precisely because the sacrifice seems to be
efficacious, it must be ‘of god’. Even the victim,
being simultaneously good and evil, is accorded
the status of a primitive deity. Hence Girard’s
formulation – ‘violence is the heart and secret soul
of the sacred’. Taboos, sacrifices and myths all have
the function of helping the community to ‘contain’
its mimetic violence.
In 1959, influenced by his studies, Girard
converted to Roman Catholicism.
page 3
it. Believing itself a liberator, it discovers its role as
a persecutor.” ( Girard 1986)
Girard is a literary critic who has dared to
propose a theory of religion on the basis of his
criticism. His brashness as a theorist laying claim
to explanatory power in anthropology, psychology,
literary criticism biblical studies and theology has
been roundly criticised.
But Girard believes it is a task of the critic to
“expose the mechanism for what it is – namely the
generative matrix of social existence”. (p 58)
Girard is in disagreement with many
contemporary philosophical and aesthetic theorists,
according to whom literary texts can only ever
relate to other fictional texts and should not be
read as if they have any bearing on genuine ethical
or religious situations.
One of the central tenets of mimetic theory is
precisely a liberating dissolution of the distinction
between fiction and reality.
Girard gives this very readable book his own
imprimator: “An elegantly written initiation into
the mimetic theory. I am lucky to have interpreters
who understand what I want to say and who can
write so well.”
Girard began his academic work as a literary
critic, and his ‘mimetic theory’ has its origin in
a movement towards enlightenment which he
discovered in the lives and work of five selected
European novelists.
The five novelists deal with ‘the collapse of the
autonomous self ’ – as an implicitly or explicitly
religious experience.
Girard works on the premise that it is the
nature of the great novel to tell us the truth about
human desire – in contrast to the romance which
perpetuates untruth about the autonomy and
stability of human desire.
Desire – distinguished from need or appetite – is
a function of culture. For this reason people learn
from one another what it is they should desire.
Desire is mimetic.
“Any kind of market is nothing other than
a mechanism for the harmonious mediation of
desires.” (p 19)
“From an evolutionary perspective, the mimetic
adoption of another’s desire has replaced instinctual
behaviour as the prime determinant of human
action. This is part of Girard’s explanation of why
humans seem to be much more prone to deadly
conflict than other life-forms.” (p 20)
Violence is the heart and secret
soul of the sacred
“In human relationships words like ‘sameness’
and ‘similarity’ evoke an image of harmony. If we
have the same tastes and like the same things, surely
we are bound to get along. But what will happen
when we share the same desires? Only the major
dramatists and novelists have partly understood and
explored this form of rivalry.” (Girard 1977)
Where mimesis leads to a convergence of desires
upon the same object the result will often be
rivalry or outright conflict.
The breakdown of hierarchically stratified societies
and their inhibitions has accelerated this potential
for conflict. With globalisation, long-established
differentiation is eroded in the face of equality and
democracy. Mimesis therefore encounters fewer
and fewer barriers. This world is characterised by
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Girard speaks of an opposition of ‘myth’ and
‘gospel’; the Gospel is the biblical spirit which
exposes the truth of violent origins, takes the side
of the victim, and works towards the overcoming of
scapegoating as a viable means of social formation.
The third phase of Girard’s mimetic theory
concerns the role of the Gospel, and of the Bible
in general, in disabling this machine and exposing
the falsity of the claims to sacredness which are
associated with it.
The four Servant Songs of Second Isaiah2 reveal
the scapegoat mechanism, and take the part of the
victim.
The Gospel revelation is one which uncovers
even more radically the truth which myth seeks
to conceal – that is, the murderous interaction of
human desires in order to preserve or protect a
social order in time of crisis.
This revelation occurs gradually, throughout
the Old and New Testaments, but finds its
clearest expression in the life, teaching, death and
resurrection of Jesus, and in the Christian doctrines
which reflect upon him.
Jesus insists on the link between distorted desire
and violent self-affirmation, and he is especially
critical of a religious system which masks this
connection and refuses to take responsibility for it.
He exhorts his followers to actions of renunciation
which can break the cycle of retributive violence.
Parables such as the Lost Sheep are a reversal of the
scapegoat mentality – which is readier to sacrifice
the individual for the sake of the majority.
The judgment passed upon Jesus in the
crucifixion is a human deed, not a divine act. The
Resurrection is the conclusive judgment of the
heavenly Father.
The whole biblical drama, for Girard, is a
struggle towards conversion and enlightenment.
The content of the conversion is a radical change
of perspective, which emerges when the subject
is confronted with the reality of its own imitated
desire, its ontological emptiness, and the violence
which issues from it.
“The scientific spirit, like the spirit of enterprise
in an economy, is a by-product of the profound
action of the Gospel text. The modern Western
world has forgotten the revelation in favour of its
by-products, making them weapons and instruments
of power; and now the process has turned against
2 Isaiah 42.1-9; 49.1-6; 50.4-11; 52.13-53.12.