Memory, Origins, and the Searching Quest in Girard’s Mimetic Cycle: An Arendtian Perspective

Andrew O’Shea

doi:10.35765/forphil.2019.2401.03

Abstract

Memory, Origins, and the Searching Quest in Girard’s Mimetic Cycle: An Arendtian Perspective

Highlights

1 The theme of Christian conversion is explicit in his early critical theory, as it is in the novels he examines: the hero of the novel, in renouncing his desire to be god—what he describes as a “metaphysical desire”—experiences the following set of reversals: “deception gives way to truth, anguish to remembrance, agitation to repose, hatred to love, humiliation to humility, mediated desire to autonomy, deviated transcendency to vertical transcendency.” 2 Using the comparison with St Augustine’s Confessions he draws a parallel between the movements of pride as it is revealed though the novel and the movements of the Saint in his attempts to unite with God. 3 The novelist who achieves spiritual victory over desire is compared to the Saint who achieves victory over the world
The death and rebirth of the author “is not essentially different from that of a Saint Augustine or a Dante.” 4 Negative forms of imitation are replaced with positive forms of imitation which highlight a personal triumph: “truth,” “remembrance,” “autonomy,” and “vertical transcendency” are the fruits of a rebirth that comes from renunciation of the hero’s previous metaphysical desire
We find a self that is connected to God through memory—that is inseparable from interiority and memory as the faculty constituted by the imprint and trace of the Creator

Summary

Introduction

René Girard’s theory of mimesis, and the various stages of its application, is compelling not least because of his own personal journey, which he admits involved a conversion to Christianity at the time of the publication of his early elaboration of mimesis as triangular desire. 1 The theme of Christian conversion is explicit in his early critical theory, as it is in the novels he examines: the hero of the novel, in renouncing his desire to be god—what he describes as a “metaphysical desire”—experiences the following set of reversals: “deception gives way to truth, anguish to remembrance, agitation to repose, hatred to love, humiliation to humility, mediated desire to autonomy, deviated transcendency to vertical transcendency.” 2 Using the comparison with St Augustine’s Confessions he draws a parallel between the movements of pride as it is revealed though the novel and the movements of the Saint in his attempts to unite with God. 3 The novelist who achieves spiritual victory over desire is compared to the Saint who achieves victory over the world. The death and rebirth of the author “is not essentially different from that of a Saint Augustine or a Dante.” 4 Negative forms of imitation are replaced with positive forms of imitation which highlight a personal triumph: “truth,” “remembrance,” “autonomy,” and “vertical transcendency” are the fruits of a rebirth that comes from renunciation of the hero’s previous metaphysical desire. As his theory of mimesis develops to. This externality of pride . . . makes us live a life turned away from ourselves.” Ibid., 58–9

Resurrection from the Underground

Conclusion