What is Mimetic Theory?
Pursuit and defense of an acquisitive desire mimetically reinforces the desire of the rival/model/obstacle and vice-versa, leading to an escalation of conflict unless something external to the conflict (like a taboo or a legal authority) intercedes or unless one of the rivals submits or dies. Girard calls this mimetic escalation scandal, after the Greek word skandalon, suggesting a “trap” or “snare.” A chief characteristic of scandal is that attempts to escape a problem only makes the problem worse (analogous to pulling against a snare). An example is the behavior of a nation-state perceived to be threatened by another nation-state. (A familiar situation?) Its defensive preparations look to its rival like aggressive provocations, which only increase the perceived threat. The rival then arms itself defensively, which is interpreted as aggression by the other side, and so on and so on. Therefore, the actions that were undertaken to secure each nation from threat have actually increased the threat and have fed a dynamic that is dangerously self-reinforcing (e.g. Europe, circa 1914.)
.. Since mutual interest in the object of desire is generated by human interaction, objects of rivalry can be manufactured out of thin air by mimetic conflict. Examples might include prestige, fame or success. (T.S. Eliot calls such things “shadow fruit”. They may also be called “vanities.”)
.. In eliminating my obstacle, I also eliminate the originator and sustainer of my desire and therefore the substance of the object in question. This leads to the paradox of success aptly expressed in Groucho Marx’s quip, “I wouldn’t belong to any club that would have me as a member.”
..And predictably when the rival falls away, the cherished thing no longer has its luster.
..The new contagion is catalyzed not by an acquisitive gesture, but by an accusatory one.
.. The violence of “all against all” is replaced by the more economical violence of “all against one”
.. The peace that results from scapegoating violence will occur at blinding speed since, unlike the antagonistic tugs on the mimetic object, the accusation encounters no resistance (other than the increasingly outnumbered and feeble objections of the single victim).
.. The accusation has been pragmatically justified by its predicted effect — the pollution having been purged, the society is now restored to health. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.
.. The scapegoat is also the only one in the culture who grasps the lie at the heart of the founding accusation — the only one who knows the “truth” of the culture — making him/her doubly threatening. Andrew McKenna has coined the term “the epistemological privilege of the victim” to name this phenomenon.
.. Girard is the first to adequately explain the widespread existence of sacrificial rites in human cultures.
.. Girard points out that it is similarity, rather than difference, that encourages one human to imitate another. (This accounts for the primitive fear of twins in many early cultures.)
.. Loss or weakening of such taboos/distinctions (what Girard calls the crisis of distinctions) can lead to new spasms of mimetic violence.
.. Girard’s anthropology implies that human subjectivity is essentially de-centered. The Mimetic Theory replaces the notion of the individual as the first principle of social analysis with the radical notion of interdividuality
.. The foundation of order has throughout most of history been through scapegoating violence and the mimetically attractive power of accusation. One could say of accusation what Heraclitus said of war — that it is “the father and king of all, and has made some as gods and others as men, and has made some slaves and others free.” Jesus calls Satan “the ruler of this world” in John 12:31. Satan, although very much a reality, is not a person in the strict sense but what Robert Hammerton-Kelly called the “Generative Mimetic Scapegoating Mechanism,” a feature of all human societies.
.. The success of the sacrificial system rests on a general belief in the validity of the original accusation and justifying myth. Since the guilt of the original victim is a lie at heart, any narrative that unmasks the lie will weaken/destroy the Power and unmake the culture founded on it. Again, Girard distinguishes between (1) a narrative that masks and propagates the founding lie and (2) one that unmasks and deconstructs it. The former he calls myth and the latter gospel.
.. One of the species of innocence is structural innocence — the idea that even a forensically guilty person can be an “innocent” victim of scapegoating violence — especially if the purpose of the violence has more to do with maintaining social distinctions than with punishing crime. In this sense, a black man lynched in the Old South for horse thievery should be viewed in the light of “structural innocence,” independent of whether he stole the horse. Likewise, the victim of judgment is structurally innocent if the point of the accusation is to preserve an appearance of relative righteousness in the accuser at the expense of the accused.
.. modernity exposes the victimization implicit in the hegemony of ecclesial power; postmodernity discloses the sacrificial nature of modernity’s foundational meta-narratives, etc
.. given the specter of apocalyptic violence made possible by the weakening or loss of those mechanisms, it seems more necessary than ever for our survival as a species to discover and model non-rivalrous, non-sacrificial ways of living. Auden: “We must love one another or die.”
.. The cure for mimetically produced violence will be a mimetically transmitted desire for peace. The model/cure will have to be someone who has transcended the lure of scapegoating violence, but who?