Mimetic Desire Research Articles

목걸이 (La Parure)와 모방 욕망 - 르네 지라르의 이론을 중심으로 -

목걸이 (La Parure)와 모방 욕망 - 르네 지라르의 이론을 중심으로 -

Mirror Image: A Study of the Power Politics of Mimetic Desire and Cinematic Confinement in Chloe (2009)

This study aims to analyze the power politics in the narrative of the film Chloe as addressed by the mirrored desire perceived in the film and to illustrate how this mimesis is communicated through the imagery of confinement that dominates the presence of the female protagonists. René Girard’s mimetic theory of triangular desire and scapegoat mechanism and Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s conceptual image of a mad woman in the mirror are employed as the frameworks on which the analyses are based. The results reveal four paradigms of triangular desire, the last of which confirms the male hegemony that underlies the film’s narrative and that, subsequently, undermines the message of women’s empowerment suggested by the film’s emphasis on the female characters and their supposed bonding. The feeling of entrapment of the female protagonists is revealed through the ways in which they are framed cinematically and metaphorically. The desire to break free from this inhibition is realized through the image of a mad double who rebels against such male constructs as family, work and sex, and whose presence entails such anarchical chaos that she must be dispensed with so that the patriarchal order can be restored. This affirms the stronghold that patriarchy has over both the female psyche and the general public conscience. The findings also support the adaptability of literary frameworks in a cinematic investigation.

Fake Tourism e immagini. Un’ipotesi di racconto visuale (e ideale) dell’esperienza turistica

The everyday technological abundance and proliferation of media and visual objects have progressively modified our perception and signification processes, but also our existence. Our actions are now often a result of our ongoing relationship between our Being (and our intentions) and media devices through which we tell our stories as subjects-objects of an everyday epos that exists since it is co-constructed, lived and shared from – and into – media environments, resulting in an immediacy that makes a radical mediation, to equalize the ontological differences, possible. Today images are the main code of performative and representative expression of the Social Humanity. Images “exceed”, according to Mitchell, by appearing as objects but still maintaining also some potential existential declinations. In the most common form of global human transit, which is tourism, the image becomes a recognizable “sign” of the destination and, because of its immediacy, an object of the research made by the visitor's gaze, according to Urry. The reification of the place makes it simpler and reproducible and the image of the destination is the only one that remains beyond the tourist trip itself. Over and above Benjamin’s mechanical reproduction, within the reproducibility of the journey and place, the image becomes paradoxically an expressive limit and a return to the past. Tourists are “guilty” of being driven by a mimetic desire – from the days when the industrialist travelled to imitate the nobleman – and try hard to stand out from that mass of which they are part. Images produced by tourists confirm this flattening of the tourist experience. While tourists could extensively express their individuality through devices, they do nothing but reproduce known, lived and recognizable subjects, narrations and frames. This is the paradox of the image: the expression of the movement of travellers turns out to be their self-imposed cage as the image appears to be a social comfort-zone to escape an unconscious confusion between real and communicated, representation and mystification. This paper will analyse the phenomenon of the fake tourism spread for representing locations that have never been reached and trips that have been faked through media.

O pragnieniu Prawdy. Propozycja Platona a kontekst przekazu biblijnego w świetle teorii mimetyczno-ofiarniczej René Girarda

The paper discusses the issue of the desire for truth in Plato’s Republic, Book VII, and the Old and New Testaments with regard to Girard’s theory of mimetic desire, the scapegoat mechanism and the founding murder. Both Plato and the Bible describe outstanding individuals – Anax, Moses and Jesus – who attain truth. This causes communal envy, leading to the outbreaks of mimetic violence. However, neither Plato nor the Old Testament allow the founding murder to happen. Consequently, they depict communities which deal with strict laws and suppressed violence. It is only in the New Testament that mimetic violence fi nds its outlet in the sacrifi cial killing of Jesus Christ.

The Scapegoat, Evangelical Revelation and Resentment

The mimetic desire that underlies resentment can enter into different and complex strategies of interaction. In his writings, Girard has indicated at least three such strategies: those of the solipsist, the non-conformist and the minimal- ist. His critical insight reveals indifference, transgression and minimalism to be strategies of resentment, where all of these are symptoms of an anthropological condition characterizing contemporary Western society today. At the same time, he sees evangelical revelation as the main source of our modern awareness of the mimetic nature of human beings: an awareness that has produced ongoing transformations in modernity linked to resentment. Moreover, he observes that it is the Judeo-Christian tradition itself that has disclosed the mimetic nature of human desire and the logic of resentment. Viewed from this perspective, modern humanity now has an extraordinary opportunity to renounce the scapegoating mechanism so as to resolve its resentments, as evangelical revelation makes recon- ciliation and social reconstruction possible.

The Artist in and of the Work

This paper will explore the problematic link between biography and literature as it is self-consciously demonstrated by Stephen’s theory about Shakespeare in the ‘Scylla and Charybdis’ episode of James Joyce’s Ulysses. I argue how Stephen’s construction of the link between Shakespeare’s life and his work both illuminates and repeats a larger critical gesture between biography and literature. This is based on a mode of hermeneutical temporality which sees the present moment as containing within itself temporal fullness to be realised in a teleological fashion. However, Joyce’s own ironic construction of Stephen, who disavows his own theorizing, should alert us as to how much we can take this theory at face value with respect to a character who invokes the name of Shakespeare as much to construct a theory of him as to deconstruct it. In response to this, I argue that Rene Girard’s reading of Shakespeare in terms of mimetic desire provides a more compelling picture of the ways in which not only his characters, but the characters in Ulysses understand and articulate sexual desire as mediated by a prior belatedness patterned on the desire of the Other. However, I problematize Girard’s reading of Shakespeare and Joyce, and my final contention is that the desire of reading and self-fashioning is set in motion not so much by mimetic recognition as it is by the Lacanian notion of misrecognition. This forms the discursive conditions of the articulation of that desire while irrevocably fracturing not only the Girardian idea of the triangulation of desire, but also the ‘loop’ of literature and biography by thwarting all attempts to speak and desire from the place of the Other, as the Other.

La cárcel del deseo mimético en Los trasplantados de Alberto Blest Gana

Los trasplantados (1904) de Alberto Blest Gana es una novela que no ha recibido la atención debida por parte de la crí­tica especializada. Su estudio es relevante en la medida en que permite establecer los rasgos distintivos de una novela clave -aunque poco visible- en la producción literaria del autor de Martí­n Rivas. El análisis de la historia de la adinerada familia Canalejas en el entramado social de Parí­s, que considera el diálogo intertextual, el comentario de la crí­tica precedente y la operacionalización de conceptos teóricos que iluminan las posiciones de deseo del relato, posibilita, entre otros aspectos, amplificar la reflexión sobre la significación de las escenas de lectura, del deseo mimético, del acontecimiento de la muerte y sus vinculaciones con la emergencia o superación del mal dentro del marco de la novelí­stica del escritor chileno.

A CRISE SACRIFICIAL DO SISTEMA JUDICIÁRIO BRASILEIRO E OS REFLEXOS NA SEGURANÇA PÚBLICA

O artigo analisa a crise do sistema judiciário brasileiro, aquela conduzida por juízes gnóstico-marxistas, que utilizam o garantismo penal para estabelecer uma política criminal bandidolátra e democida. A hipótese da pesquisa é de que parte do sistema de justiça criminal fomenta a violência indiferenciada na atual realidade nacional por não cumprir sua função de afastar a possibilidade do círculo da vingança por meio dos princípios da retribuição e da vingança como princípio de justiça. O argumento é que se a violência no Brasil chegou a um nível insustentável de mais de 65 mil homicídios por ano, sem contar outras formas de violência, então é porque o sistema judiciário não está cumprindo a sua função essencial: a preservação da ordem e da segurança do grupo através do controle da vingança privada e recíproca. A análise toma como fulcro a teoria mimética da violência de René Girard desenvolvida em sua obra A violência e o sagrado, onde demonstra que os homens são movidos por um desejo mimético gerador de rivalidades que, quando não controlado, pode desencadear violência indeterminada e o ciclo da vingança.

How can the Million Man March be Living Green?

This article aims to connect the Million Man March of 1995 with Gloria Bond Clunie’s play Living Green through the death of Buddy. Clunie suggests that the dream of living green in her play Living Green can be achieved only through the sacrificial death of Buddy. Likewise, it is proposed that the goals of the Million Man March can be achieved at a community level through a ritualized sacrifice, which René Girard conceptualized in his discussion of mimetic desire. Despite the violent events and victimized deaths in the African American community in West Side, the Freeman family, inspired and encouraged by the March, decides to move to the black neighborhood. Their determined action is to make Buddy’s death meaningful and revitalize the black community in a peaceful way.

René Girard y el juramento de Herodes

Nada mejor para interpretar y entender la enigmática muerte de Juan el Bautista, en el clímax de la celebración del cumpleaños de Herodes, que la teoría de René Girard sobre el deseo mimético y el chivo expiatorio. Antes de Girards, algunas obras literarias trataron el tema. Entre ellas destacan Salomé de Oscar Wilde y Herodías de Gustave Flaubert. Una y otra ofrecen una fascinante visión de la historia narrada por los evangelios y por el historiador Flavio Josefo. Aquí son examinados el contexto histórico y político, los personajes secundarios, los acontecimientos antes, durante y después del banquete, el a primera vista inexplicable final sangriento y sus terribles consecuencias.

Mimetic Desire in Dostoevsky’s The Idiot with Continual Reference to René Girard

It is common to see Myshkin, the principal character of Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, as a failed lover and a compassionate saintly figure, who gets entangled in a love triangle but cannot embody it. This paper challenges such a view and argues that Myshkin fully incarnates the violent dynamic of desire that governs the novel. With the help of René Girard’s notion of mimetic desire, the paper explores Myshkin’s relationship with Rogozhin as erotic rivalry. Instead of seeing the two characters as autonomous entities, it is suggested that they should be viewed as doubles, as two poles of the same consciousness. On this view, Myshkin’s compassion and Rogozhin’s lust become two different manifestations of the same desire, united by a conflict of interest, which drives the love triangle towards a violent resolution.

Cuerpos humanos y cuerpos utópicos: el deseo mimético en La Desdichada, de Carlos Fuentes

Con base en las propuestas teóricas de Jean Baudrillard, Michel Foucault y René Girard, se analiza el funcionamiento del deseo mimético y los cuerpos utópicos en La Desdichada (1989), relato de Carlos Fuentes que forma parte del volumen Constancia y otras novelas para vírgenes. La relación afectiva que se desarrolla entre dos sujetos (los personajes Bernardo y Toño) y un objeto (un maniquí que adquiere su propia personalidad), se examina mediante distintas variantes de un deseo sexual triangular. Finalmente, se da cuenta del proceso por medio del cual se da la humanización e involución del objeto.

Mimetic desire and mirror neurons: the consciousness of workplace bullying

Workplace bullying is important to business and government, because it has a real impact on unfortunate casualties’ wellbeing and organizations’ benefits. Studies into the causes and outcomes of workplace bullying with a focus on the key psychodynamic factors underlying harassment and the subsequent results are rare. This paper applies Rene Girard’s mimetic desire theory to clarify the elements and non-cognizant components associated with “interdividual” connections prompting aggression for the victim by the harasser. The disclosure of mirror neurons affirms that mimetic desire grows unwittingly through a mediator of the mimetic brain. Mimetic desire theory helps to recognize and understand that the destructive patterns of behavior and emotional responses to situations leading to moral harassment is a direct consequence of the mimetic rivalry between the bully and the victim. The unconscious mechanism is then brought up to the consciousness. The bully and the victim can avoid becoming entrapped within dysfunctional and toxic relationships such as bullying. The use of the mimetic desire concepts also enables human resources managers, bystanders, and practitioners to better deal with protagonists. This can help minimize or eliminate workplace bullying.

Concepts of narrative, founding violence, and multiculturalism in the Americas: Greimas, Girard, and Kymlicka

Abstract Greimas’s conception of narrative is based on a causality linked to basic paradigms establishing the deep meaning of a story; Girard’s conception of narrative is rooted in a universal mimetic desire which leads the “lynchers” to justify exclusion by producing mythical narratives demonstrating that the excluded was evil; Kymlicka’s perspective on cultural relationships is based on the necessity to create a socio-political framework helping people to cooperate in order to invent a better world. These three important thinkers analyze stories people tell themselves or believe in in order to organize a controlled and safer way of life for themselves. We compare the theoretical perspectives of these three thinkers in order to understand in what way contemporary writers of the Americas structure their narratives and explore encounters while aiming at fostering a vision of the world oriented towards multi and transculturalism.

Repetitions repeatedly repeated: mimetic desire, ressentiment, and mimetic crisis in Julian Rosefeld's Manifesto (2015)

This paper offers an exploration of Julian Rosefeld’s film Manifesto (2015), which is a fascinating amalgamation and interpretation of modernist, avant gardist manifestos. The paper employs the film itself as a hermeneutical framework, especially is use of the rhetorical-hermeneutical device of repetition, and also makes use of Rene Girard’s mimetic theory. Through this double-hermeneutic, two aims are set out: the first being to offer a way to rethink the meaning of the art manifesto as that modernist genre par excellence and the second being away to rethink trends in artistic and creative production in general.

Mimesis, network theory and digital social networks

We analyse the formal theory of networks and the new digital media from the perspective of mimetic theory. It is emphasised that the spatial form of the new media is characterised by distribution functions that are power laws. We show that this spatial form can be derived from the presence of mimetic desire in digital social networks. Finally, we show that network theory allows the representation of the scapegoat mechanism as it was analysed by René Girard.

Las tres versiones rivales de la filosofía en René Girard: Tradición, Genealogía, Enciclopedia

La obra de René Girard logra aunar, desde la tradición realista, las corrientes moderna y postmoderna. Su teoría del deseo mimético da lugar a una síntesis que supera el nihilismo y el fundamentalismo propio de estas tradiciones en favor de la tradición clásica.

Saint Peter as ‘Sympresbyteros’

Aristotle considered μίμησις/ mimēsis (“imitation”) to be innate in humanity from childhood, pedagogical in nature, and that humans are the most mimetic species ( Poet. 4.5–8). This essay investigates the relationship between Christian discipleship and education through the lens of René Girard’s “mimetic desire,” and how 1 Pet 5:1–5 (especially the hapax legomenon συμπρεσβύτερος/ sympresbyteros) can be informed by this pedagogical concept. Going beyond mere mimēsis and the imitation of surface-level actions, “mimetic desire” explores how modeled behaviors and desires – whether positive or negative – affect the desires and motivations of others. This is important for ministry as pastors/Christian educators should faithfully model the gospel externally and internally, so their congregants/students may learn to live as good citizens worthy of the gospel of Christ (Phil 1:27).

Mimetic Desire and the Complication of the Conventional Neo-Slave Narrative Form in Edward P. Jones’s The Known World

Abstract When critics declare that Edward P. Jones’s The Known World represents moral turpitude, capitalist proclivities, slavery, and whittling of white supremacy, their assertions are in order. But they often miss accounting for how The Known World, which bears some indices of the neo-slave narrative owing to its appropriation of the incidents of slavery in a novelistic platform, complicates its sub-tradition. This work investigates the text’s two-fold complication. First, Jones complicates the neo-slave narrative form by depicting slavery from a little known perspective of intra-racial slavery amongst black people. Then, he casts a white character, and not a black one, in the mold of a classical tragic hero. Mimetic desire, René Girard’s concept for an individual’s imitation of a prior model’s behavior, is drawn on to bare characters’ actions that accentuate both strands of complication. As the basis of all human action that includes rivalry, violence, and scapegoating, mimetic desire unravels the ‘mystery’ surrounding the sort of slavery overwhelmingly acknowledged by critics as untraditional in The Known World and the tragedy, also unique to the neo-slave narrative form, it gives rise to.

1950년대 테디 보이(Teddy boys) 스타일의 모방 특성 : 르네 지라르의 모방적 욕망 이론을 중심으로

The purpose of this study is to examine the origin of the “Teddy boys,” who were part of youth fashion and subculture in the 1950s, using René Girard’s mimetic desire theory as a framework. In addition, this study analyzes the meaning of the Teddy boy style, which combined Edwardian style with that of the American West, and reveals that strong needs and motives were behind the superficial image borrowed by participants in this subculture. The Teddy boy style was a subculture that emerged in the 1950s in working class young people in the United Kingdom. It gained momentum and the attention of young people who were leading social culture at the time . They revealed the country’s collective consciousness and formed their identity by borrowing the Edwardian look and the imitated attire of the upper class. After examining the Teddy boy style using René Girard’s mimetic desire theory, their imitation characteristics can be described as follows: First, the Teds (as they were also called) imitated the luxurious and ornamental Edwardian style as well as the luxury preference of the upper class. The metaphysical value they desired through the model was the right to luxury and, in turn, the comfort and happiness of material goods, luxurious tastes, the self-gratification that distinguishes it from others with luxurious tastes, and an affordable and stable quality of life. Second, they assumed the ideal imitating object, modified by incorporating the Edwardian look with the American Western look. The low status of the working class was economically and socially frustrating to the Teddy boys, and they needed new ideals to imitate. The object of the revised desire created by them was obtainable high social status, economic stability, and voluntary self-esteem as a cultural subject.