Toast a l'Anniversaire de Rene Girard

Abstract

On December 25, 2003, René Noel Girard will celebrate his eightieth birthday. His intellectual itinerary, which began in Avignon, where his father was the archivist of the Musée des Papes, through his early training at the École des Chartes and an American degree in history, to his early fame as a literary critic with a strong theory of the novel, clearly suggests his willingness to cross well patrolled academic borders. As his work has evolved over the decades, these transgressions have extended deeply into other fields in the sciences de l'homme—notably anthropology, psychology, sociology, and religious studies—where they have challenged received opinions and divined old riddles. The annual "Colloquium on Violence and Religion" has become a global forum for the intersection of Girardian thought with theorists in disciplines as seemingly remote as thermodynamics, ethics, economics, cultural studies, mythography, and dance.