After the disappointing events of the 1960s, including the loss of Algeria, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, and the American war in the former French colony of Indo-China, people in France ...began to look seriously to Freudianism in the transformed version of Jacques Lacan, for a new way of understanding human relations and the relations between human beings and society. The movement in France is not specifically psychoanalytic but developed against such a background. Psychoanalytic thought acquired the kind of centrality in French intellectual life once associated with existentialism and Marxism and later with structuralism--a centrality it probably never possessed in the United States, even at the peak of its popularity. The movement was a reassessment and rethinking of Freud s thought and influence, and it iwa a movement that was almost unknown to the American public.
Les romans, nouvelles et récits des Amériques s’ouvrent de plus en plus aux altérités et ainsi se rejoignent dans leurs dynamiques. Leur structure narrative est fondée sur le schéma de Greimas et ...mène à la transformation de contenus à partir de temporalités/causalités qui s’enchaînent. Les causalités justifient des exclusions comme barbarie/civilisation. Elles sont fondées, selon René Girard, sur la mimésis d’appropriation et une violence réciproque menaçant la communauté et sur la production d’un bouc émissaire conduisant à une violence unanime. Cette dernière renforce l’homogénéité du groupe qui se construit sur des paradigmes binaires vie/mort, intérieur/extérieur et richesse/pauvreté. Ils sont aussi présents dans des textes fondateurs, Bible, Popol Vuh, Torah et Livre de Mormon. Cependant, la dynamique narrative d’exclusion est récemment déjouée par des auteurs comme Simone Chaput, Yann Martel, Paul Auster, Laura Esquivel ou Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. Pour déplacer la structure narrative causale justifiant l’exclusion, les textes contemporains des Amériques (Canada, Québec, États-Unis, Mexique, Brésil, Caraïbes) utilisent des techniques et des thématiques jouant du fragment, du hasard, du non-causal, des interprétations multiples et de la réincarnation. Ils s’inscrivent dans une dynamique à la fois postcoloniale au sens de Homi Bhabha et multiculturelle au sens de Will Kymlicka. Ils ouvrent sur un transculturalisme où égalité et différence marchent de concert dans la reconnaissance des altérités, le partage des savoirs et la multiplication des images de soi allant jusqu’à l’affirmation d’une normalité queer.
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 economic growth. Because of mimetic desire and the rivalry it generates, asserts Girard, "whether we're talking about marriage, friendship, professional relationships, issues with neighbors or matters of national unity, human relations are always under threat." Literary masters including Marivaux, Dostoevsky, and Joyce understood this, as did archaic religion, which warded off violence with blood sacrifice. Christianity brought a new understanding of sacrifice, giving rise not only to modern rationality and science but also to a fragile system that is, in Girard's words, "always teetering between a new golden age and a destructive apocalypse." Treguer, a skeptic of mimetic theory, wonders: "Is what he's telling me true...or is it just a nice story, a way of looking at things?" In response, Girard makes a compelling case for his theory.
Scott Cowdell provides the first systematic interpretation of René Girard’s controversial approach to secular modernity. Cowdell identifies the scope, development, and implications of Girard’s ...thought, the centrality of Christ in Girard's thinking, and, in particular, Girard's distinctive take on the uniqueness and finality of Christ in terms of his impact on Western culture. In Girard’s singular vision, according to Cowdell, secular modernity has emerged thanks to the Bible’s exposure of the cathartic violence that is at the root of religious prohibitions, myths, and rituals. In the literature, the psychology, and most recently the military history of modernity, Girard discerns a consistent slide into an apocalypse that challenges modern ideas of romanticism, individualism, and progressivism. In the first three chapters, Cowdell examines the three elements of Girard’s basic intellectual vision (mimesis, sacrifice, biblical hermeneutics) and brings this vision to a constructive interpretation of “secularization” and “modernity,” as these terms are understood in the broadest sense today. Chapter 4 focuses on modern institutions, chiefly the nation state and the market, that function to restrain the outbreak of violence. And finally, Cowdell discusses the apocalyptic dimension of Girard's theory in relation to modern warfare and terrorism. Here, Cowdell engages with the most recent writings of Girard (particularly his Battling to the End) and applies them to further conversations in cultural theology, political science, and philosophy.
When Athenians suffered the shame of having lost a war from their own greed and foolishness, around 404 BCE the public's blame was directed at Socrates, a man whose unique appearance and behavior, as ...well as his disapproval of the democracy, made him a ready target. Socrates was subsequently put on trial and sentenced to death. However, as René Girard has pointed out, no individual can be held responsible for a communal crisis. Plato'sApologydepicts Socrates as both the bane and the cure of Greek society, while hisCritoshows a sacrificial Socrates, what some might consider apharmakosfigure, the human drug through whom Plato can dispense his philosophical remedies. With tremendous insight and satisfying complexity, this book analyzes classical texts through the lens of Girard's mimetic mechanism.
InBattling to the EndRené Girard engages Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831), the Prussian military theoretician who wroteOn War. Clausewitz, who has been critiqued by military strategists, political ...scientists, and philosophers, famously postulated that "War is the continuation of politics by other means." He also seemed to believe that governments could constrain war.Clausewitz, a firsthand witness to the Napoleonic Wars, understood the nature of modern warfare. Far from controlling violence, politics follows in war's wake: the means of war have become its ends.René Girard shows us a Clausewitz who is a fascinated witness of history's acceleration. Haunted by the French-German conflict, Clausewitz clarifies more than anyone else the development that would ravage Europe.Battling to the Endpushes aside the taboo that prevents us from seeing that the apocalypse has begun. Human violence is escaping our control; today it threatens the entire planet.
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 argued by Steven Pinker and others)? Or are we, rather, at increased and even apocalyptic risk from our enhanced powers of action and our decreased socio-symbolic protections? Rene Girard's mimetic theory has been slowly but progressively recognized as one of the most striking breakthrough contributions to twentieth-century critical thinking in fundamental anthropology: in particular for its power to model and explain violent sacralities, ancient and modern. The present volume sets this power of explanation in an evolutionary and Darwinian frame. It asks: How far do cultural mechanisms of controlling violence, which allowed humankind to cross the threshold of hominization-i.e., to survive and develop in its evolutionary emergence-still represent today a default setting that threatens to destroy us? Can we transcend them and escape their field of gravity? Should we look to-or should we look beyond-Darwinian survival? What-and where (if anywhere)-is salvation?
Political philosophers Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin share an abiding interest in the Judeo-Christian tradition. In this first book to focus on their treatment of the Bible, Ranieri explores how they ...draw on its texts in their philosophies and shows what these considerations say about whether the combination of religion and politics leads to violence or can prevent it. He focuses not on Strauss's treatment of Judaism or Voegelin's of Christianity, but rather on the place of the Bible in their thought.
When Athenians suffered the shame of having lost a war from their own greed and foolishness, around 404 BCE the public’s blame was directed at Socrates, a man whose unique appearance and ...behavior, as well as his disapproval of the democracy, made him a ready target. Socrates was subsequently put on trial and sentenced to death. However, as René Girard has pointed out, no individual can be held responsible for a communal crisis. Plato’s Apology depicts Socrates as both the bane and the cure of Greek society, while his Crito shows a sacrificial Socrates, what some might consider a pharmakos figure, the human drug through whom Plato can dispense his philosophical remedies. With tremendous insight and satisfying complexity, this book analyzes classical texts through the lens of Girard’s mimetic mechanism.
First published in French in 1979, "The Ambivalence of Scarcity" was a groundbreaking work on mimetic theory. Now expanded upon with new, specially written, and never-before-published conference ...texts and essays, this revised edition explores René Girard's philosophy in three sections: economy and economics, mimetic theory, and violence and politics in modern societies. The first section argues that though mimetic theory is in many ways critical of modern economic theory, this criticism can contribute to the enrichment of economic thinking. The second section explores the issues of nonviolence and misrecognition (méconnaissance), which have been at the center of many discussions of Girard's work. The final section proposes mimetic analyses of the violence typical of modern societies, from high school bullying to genocide and terrorist attacks. Politics, Dumouchel argues, is a violent means of protecting us from our own violent tendencies, and it can at times become the source of the very savagery from which it seeks to protect us. The book's conclusion analyzes the relationship between ethics and economics, opening new avenues of research and inviting further exploration. Dumouchel's introduction reflects on the importance of René Girard's work in relation to ongoing research, especially in social sciences and philosophy.
