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| girard violence and the sacred: Violence and the Sacred René Girard, 1979 His fascinating and ambitious book provides a fully developed theory of violence as the 'heart and secret soul' of the sacred. Girard's fertile, combative mind links myth to prophetic writing, primitive religions to classical tragedy. |
| girard violence and the sacred: Violence and the Sacred René Girard, 2005-04-13 René Girard (1923-) was Professor of French Language, Literature and Civilization at Stanford Unviersity from 1981 until his retirement in 1995. Violence and the Sacred is Girard's brilliant study of human evil. Girard explores violence as it is represented and occurs throughout history, literature and myth. Girard's forceful and thought-provoking analyses of Biblical narrative, Greek tragedy and the lynchings and pogroms propagated by contemporary states illustrate his central argument that violence belongs to everyone and is at the heart of the sacred. Translated by Patrick Gregory> |
| girard violence and the sacred: Violence and the Sacred René Girard, 1988-01-01 His fascinating and ambitious book provides a fully developed theory of violence as the 'heart and secret soul' of the sacred. Girard's fertile, combative mind links myth to prophetic writing, primitive religions to classical tragedy.--Victor Brombert, Chronicle of Higher Education. |
| girard violence and the sacred: Violence and the Sacred René Girard, 1977 This brilliant study of good and evil examines the presence of ritual violence in sacred ceremony. |
| girard violence and the sacred: Violence and the Sacred, Epz Edition Girard, 2006-01-01 |
| girard violence and the sacred: Towards Reconciliation Paul Gifford, 2020-01-01 Conceived at the moment of Girard’s death in November 2015, and written up in the period of strategic stock-taking ‘after Girard’, this book aims to suggest briefly and clearly to a wide English-speaking audience that: (i) Girard has in fact cracked the enigma of the obscurely ‘foundational’ complicity between violence and the sacred; (ii) that his ‘mimetic theory’ and his writings on biblical texts, when read as a fundamental ‘anthropological argument’ continuous with Darwin, bring formidable new light to a vast range of enigmas and problems: terrorist violence, the new atheism, the function of world’s oldest temple, the Good Friday Agreement... In counterpoint to this (largely) ‘dark’ matter, they illuminate superbly (‘from below’) the nature and ways of creation, revelation, redemption... and thus also of Reconciliation. Such insights provide a novel and exciting resource for scanning the knots, the black holes and the hidden ‘sacrificial’ logic that still secretly shapes cultural, social and political life today. The analytical tool-set Girard supplies can help shape the key dialogues needed to prepare delivering practices of reconciliation--and to avoid auto-generated ‘apocalypses’-- in the world of tomorrow. |
| girard violence and the sacred: Sacrifice René Girard, 2011-04 In Sacrifice, René Girard interrogates the Brahmanas of Vedic India, exploring coincidences with mimetic theory that are too numerous and striking to be accidental. Even that which appears to be dissimilar fails to contradict mimetic theory, but instead corresponds to the minimum of illusion without which sacrifice becomes impossible. The Bible reveals collective violence, similar to that which generates sacrifice everywhere, but instead of making victims guilty, the Bible and the Gospels reveal the persecutors of a single victim. Instead of elaborating myths, they tell the truth absolutely contrary to the archaic sense. Once exposed, the single victim mechanism can no longer function as the model for would-be sacrificers. Recognizing that the Vedic tradition also converges on a revelation that discredits sacrifice, mimetic theory locates within sacrifice itself a paradoxical power of quiet reflection that leads, in the long run, to the eclipse of this institution which is violent but nevertheless fundamental to the development of human culture. Far from unduly privileging the Western tradition and awarding it a monopoly on the knowledge and repudiation of blood sacrifice, mimetic analysis recognizes comparable, but never truly identical, traits in the Vedic tradition. |
| girard violence and the sacred: Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World René Girard, Jean-Michel Oughourlian, Guy Lefort, 2003-01-01 Presenting an original global theory of culture, Girard explores the social function of violence and the mechanism of the social scapegoat. His vision is a challenge to conventional views of literature, anthropology, religion and psychoanalysis. Rene Gerard is the Andrew B. Hammond Professor Emeritus of French Language, Literature and Civilization at Stanford University, USA. |
| girard violence and the sacred: Violence and the Sacred in the Ancient Near East Ian Hodder, 2019-03-14 This book is primarily for researchers and students in the archaeology of the Ancient Near East. The volume results from intense interaction between archaeologists at these sites and a group of theorists studying the scholarship of René Girard. |
| girard violence and the sacred: Battling to the End René Girard, 2009-12-15 In Battling to the End René Girard engages Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831), the Prussian military theoretician who wrote On 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 End pushes 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. |
| girard violence and the sacred: Rene Girard Chris Fleming, 2004-09-03 In recent years there has been a renewed interest in the work of Rene Girard, thought by many to be one of the most important, if controversial, cultural theorists of the twentieth century. Girard's work is extraordinarily innovative and wide-ranging, cutting across central concerns in philosophy, psychoanalysis, literary theory, anthropology, theology, and sociology. In this much-needed introduction, Chris Fleming traces the development of Girard's thought over forty years, describing the context in which he worked and his influence on a number of disciplines. He unpacks the hypotheses at the centre of Girard's thought - mimetic desire, surrogate victimage and scapegoating, myth, ritual, and the sacred - and provides an assessment of Girard's place in the contemporary academy. Comprehensive and clearly written, this book constitutes an excellent overview of Girard's work and is essential reading for students and researchers in continental philosophy, theology, literary studies, French studies, and cultural studies. |
| girard violence and the sacred: Evolution of Desire Cynthia L Haven, 2018-04-01 René Girard (1923–2015) was one of the leading thinkers of our era—a provocative sage who bypassed prevailing orthodoxies to offer a bold, sweeping vision of human nature, human history, and human destiny. His oeuvre, offering a “mimetic theory” of cultural origins and human behavior, inspired such writers as Milan Kundera and J. M. Coetzee, and earned him a place among the forty “immortals” of the Académie Française. Too often, however, his work is considered only within various academic specializations. This first-ever biographical study takes a wider view. Cynthia L. Haven traces the evolution of Girard’s thought in parallel with his life and times. She recounts his formative years in France and his arrival in a country torn by racial division, and reveals his insights into the collective delusions of our technological world and the changing nature of warfare. Drawing on interviews with Girard and his colleagues, Evolution of Desire: A Life of René Girard provides an essential introduction to one of the twentieth century’s most controversial and original minds. |
| girard violence and the sacred: For René Girard Sandor Goodhart, Jorgen Jorgensen, Tom Ryba, James Williams, 2012-01-01 In his explorations of the relations between the sacred and violence, René Girard has hit upon the origin of culture—the way culture began, the way it continues to organize itself. The way communities of human beings structure themselves in a manner that is different from that of other species on the planet. Like Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Émile Durkheim, Martin Buber, or others who have changed the way we think in the humanities or in the human sciences, Girard has put forth a set of ideas that have altered our perceptions of the world in which we function. We will never be able to think the same way again about mimetic desire, about the scapegoat mechanism, and about the role of Jewish and Christian scripture in explaining sacrifice, violence, and the crises from which our culture has been born. The contributions fall into roughly four areas of interpretive work: religion and religious study; literary study; the philosophy of social science; and psychological studies. The essays presented here are offered as essays in the older French sense of attempts (essayer) or trials of ideas, as indeed Girard has tried out ideas with us. With a conscious echo of Montaigne, then, this hommage volume is titled Essays in Friendship and in Truth. |
| girard violence and the sacred: Can We Survive Our Origins? Pierpaolo Antonello, Paul Gifford, 2015-01-01 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? |
| girard violence and the sacred: The Girard Reader René Girard, 1996 Rene Girard, the author of groundbreaking scholarly books such as Violence and the Sacred and Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, has long been an intellectual cause celebre in Europe. Although he has studied and taught in the United States since the 1940s, he is now -- in his 70's -- finding his lifework praised and taught in academic and religious circles throughout the country.The Girard Reader brings that work to a broader audience. It includes major excerpts from Girard's books and articles which cover all aspects of his theories on violence, religion, and culture. These views cut across theology, biblical studies, anthropology, psychology, and literature. The book concludes with a conversation between Rene Girard and editor James G. Williams that brings new focus to his Christian vision and breathtaking ouevre. |
| girard violence and the sacred: René Girard's Mimetic Theory Wolfgang Palaver, 2013-01-01 A systematic introduction into the mimetic theory of the French-American literary theorist and philosophical anthropologist René Girard, this essential text explains its three main pillars (mimetic desire, the scapegoat mechanism, and the Biblical “difference”) with the help of examples from literature and philosophy. This book also offers an overview of René Girard’s life and work, showing how much mimetic theory results from existential and spiritual insights into one’s own mimetic entanglements. Furthermore it examines the broader implications of Girard’s theories, from the mimetic aspect of sovereignty and wars to the relationship between the scapegoat mechanism and the question of capital punishment. Mimetic theory is placed within the context of current cultural and political debates like the relationship between religion and modernity, terrorism, the death penalty, and gender issues. Drawing textual examples from European literature (Cervantes, Shakespeare, Goethe, Kleist, Stendhal, Storm, Flaubert, Dostoevsky, Proust) and philosophy (Plato, Camus, Sartre, Lévi-Strauss, Derrida, Vattimo), Palaver uses mimetic theory to explore the themes they present. A highly accessible book, this text is complemented by bibliographical references to Girard’s widespread work and secondary literature on mimetic theory and its applications, comprising a valuable bibliographical archive that provides the reader with an overview of the development and discussion of mimetic theory until the present day. |
| girard violence and the sacred: Sacred Violence Robert Hamerton-Kelly, 1992 |
| girard violence and the sacred: Violence and the Sacred René Girard, 1972 |
| girard violence and the sacred: Wandering God Morris Berman, 2012-02-01 The third book in Morris Berman's much acclaimed trilogy on the evolution of human consciousness, Wandering God continues his earlier work which garnered such praise as solid lessons in the history of ideas (KIRKUS Reviews), filled with piquant details (Common Boundary), and an informative synthesis and a remarkably friendly, good-natured jeremiad (The Village Voice). Here, in a remarkable discussion of our hunter-gatherer ancestry and the paradoxical mode of perception that it involved, Berman shows how a sense of alertness, or secular/sacred immediacy, subsequently got buried by the rise of sedentary civilization, religion, and vertical power relationships. In an integrated tour de force, Wandering God explores the meaning of Paleolithic art, the origins of social inequality, the nature of cross-cultural child rearing, the relationship between women and agriculture, and the world view of present-day nomadic peoples, as well as the emergence of paradoxical consciousness in the philosophical writings of the twentieth century. |
| girard violence and the sacred: How We Became Human Pierpaolo Antonello, Paul Gifford, 2015-10-01 From his groundbreaking Violence and the Sacred and Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World, René Girard’s mimetic theory is presented as elucidating “the origins of culture.” He posits that archaic religion (or “the sacred”), particularly in its dynamics of sacrifice and ritual, is a neglected and major key to unlocking the enigma of “how we became human.” French philosopher of science Michel Serres states that Girard’s theory provides a Darwinian theory of culture because it “proposes a dynamic, shows an evolution and gives a universal explanation.” This major claim has, however, remained underscrutinized by scholars working on Girard’s theory, and it is mostly overlooked within the natural and social sciences. Joining disciplinary worlds, this book aims to explore this ambitious claim, invoking viewpoints as diverse as evolutionary culture theory, cultural anthropology, archaeology, cognitive psychology, ethology, and philosophy. The contributors provide major evidence in favor of Girard’s hypothesis. Equally, Girard’s theory is presented as having the potential to become for the human and social sciences something akin to the integrating framework that present-day biological science owes to Darwin—something compatible with it and complementary to it in accounting for the still remarkably little understood phenomenon of human emergence. |
| girard violence and the sacred: Violence, the Sacred, and Things Hidden René Girard, 2021-11-01 Never before translated in English, this 1973 discussion between René Girard (1923–2015) and other prominent scholars represents one of the most significant breakthroughs in mimetic theory. Organized by the French journal Esprit, the conversation was an opportunity for Girard to debate with his interlocutors the theories he expounded in Violence and the Sacred (1972). These scholars prompted him to reconsider the book’s strictly sociological interpretation of religion, highlighting the misrecognition of violent scapegoating at its origins and in its myths and ritual practices, by addressing the relation between his critique of primitive or archaic religion and the role of Judeo-Christianity. The ensuing discussion opened up an entirely new and admittedly startling phase of his thinking, where he deployed an epistemology rooted in Biblical revelation, which he viewed as an ongoing deconstruction of sacrificial practices. In this text, he vindicates for the very first time the anthropological relevance of Judeo-Christian scriptures. The 1973 discussion thus marks a new and decisive step in Girard’s intellectual journey, making this volume a critical document for understanding the transition period between Violence and the Sacred and Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (1978). |
| girard violence and the sacred: Philosophy's Violent Sacred Duane Armitage, 2021 This book critiques the postmodernism and Continental philosophy of Heidegger and Nietzche through the lens of the mimetic theory of Rene Girard-- |
| girard violence and the sacred: Anorexia and Mimetic Desire René Girard, 2013-08-01 René Girard shows that all desires are contagious—and the desire to be thin is no exception. In this compelling new book, Girard ties the anorexia epidemic to what he calls mimetic desire: a desire imitated from a model. Girard has long argued that, far from being spontaneous, our most intimate desires are copied from what we see around us. In a culture obsessed with thinness, the rise of eating disorders should be no surprise. When everyone is trying to slim down, Girard asks, how can we convince anorexic patients to have a healthy outlook on eating? Mixing theoretical sophistication with irreverent common sense, Girard denounces a “culture of anorexia” and takes apart the competitive impulse that fuels the game of conspicuous non-consumption. He shows that showing off a slim physique is not enough—the real aim is to be skinnier than one’s rivals. In the race to lose the most weight, the winners are bound to be thinner and thinner. Taken to extremes, this tendency to escalation can only lead to tragic results. Featuring a foreword by neuropsychiatrist Jean-Michel Oughourlian and an introductory essay by anthropologist Mark R. Anspach, the volume concludes with an illuminating conversation between René Girard, Mark R. Anspach, and Laurence Tacou. |
| girard violence and the sacred: Mimesis and Sacrifice Marcia Pally, 2019-10-17 Central to identity, personal responsibility, economic systems, theology, and the political and military imaginaries, the practice of sacrifice has inspired, disturbed, and abused. Mimesis and Sacrifice brings together scholars from the humanities, military, business, and social sciences to examine the role that sacrifice plays in different present-day settings, from economics to gender relations. Inspired by Rene Girard's work, chapters explore (i) the extent to which the social character of human living makes us mimetic, (ii) whether mimesis necessarily leads to competitive aggression, (iii) whether aggression must be defused by aggressive sacrificial rituals-and whether all sacrifice has this aim, and (iv) the role of the “second lesson of the cross” (as Girard called it), the lesson of self-giving for others, in addressing present societal problems. By investigating sacrifice across this span of arenas and questions yet within one volume, Mimesis and Sacrifice presents a new appreciation of its influence and consequences in the world today, contributing not only to mimetic theory but to greater understanding of which societal arrangement enable us to live well together and what hobbles that goal. |
| girard violence and the sacred: René Girard, Unlikely Apologist Grant Kaplan, 2016-08-20 Since the late 1970s, theologians have been attempting to integrate mimetic theory into different fields of theology, yet a distrust of mimetic theory persists in some theological camps. In René Girard, Unlikely Apologist: Mimetic Theory and Fundamental Theology, Grant Kaplan brings mimetic theory into conversation with theology both to elucidate the relevance of mimetic theory for the discipline of fundamental theology and to understand the work of René Girard within a theological framework. Rather than focus on Christology or atonement theory as the locus of interaction between Girard and theology, Kaplan centers his discussion on the apologetic quality of mimetic theory and the impact of mimetic theory on fundamental theology, the subdiscipline that grew to replace apologetics. His book explores the relation between Girard and fundamental theology in several keys. In one, it understands mimetic theory as a heuristic device that allows theological narratives and positions to become more intelligible and, by so doing, makes theology more persuasive. In another key, Kaplan shows how mimetic theory, when placed in dialogue with particular theologians, can advance theological discussion in areas where mimetic theory has seldom been invoked. On this level the book performs a dialogue with theology that both revisits earlier theological efforts and also demonstrates how mimetic theory brings valuable dimensions to questions of fundamental theology. |
| girard violence and the sacred: Christianity, Truth, and Weakening Faith Gianni Vattimo, René Girard, 2010-02-16 The debate over the place of religion in secular, democratic societies dominates philosophical and intellectual discourse. These arguments often polarize around simplistic reductions, making efforts at reconciliation impossible. Yet more rational stances do exist, positions that broker a peace between relativism and religion in people's public, private, and ethical lives. Christianity, Truth, and Weakening Faith advances just such a dialogue, featuring the collaboration of two major philosophers known for their progressive approach to this issue. Seeking unity over difference, Gianni Vattimo and René Girard turn to Max Weber, Eric Auerbach, and Marcel Gauchet, among others, in their exploration of truth and liberty, relativism and faith, and the tensions of a world filled with new forms of religiously inspired violence. Vattimo and Girard ultimately conclude that secularism and the involvement (or lack thereof) of religion in governance are, in essence, produced by Christianity. In other words, Christianity is the religion of the exit from religion, and democracy, civil rights, the free market, and individual freedoms are all facilitated by Christian culture. Through an exchange that is both intimate and enlightening, Vattimo and Girard share their unparalleled insight into the relationships among religion, modernity, and the role of Christianity, especially as it exists in our multicultural world. |
| girard violence and the sacred: Mimesis, Desire, and the Novel Pierpaolo Antonello, Heather Webb, 2015-10-01 Fifty years after its publication in English, René Girard’s Deceit, Desire, and the Novel (1965) has never ceased to fascinate, challenge, inspire, and sometimes irritate, literary scholars. It has become one of the great classics of literary criticism, and the notion of triangular desire is now part of the theoretical parlance among critics and students. It also represents the genetic starting point for what has become one of the most encompassing, challenging, and far-reaching theories conceived in the humanities in the last century: mimetic theory. This book provides a forum for new generations of scholars and critics to reassess, challenge, and expand the theoretical and hermeneutical reach of key issues brought forward by Girard’s book, including literary knowledge, realism and representation, imitation and the anxiety of influence, metaphysical desire, deviated transcendence, literature and religious experience, individualism and modernity, and death and resurrection. It also provides a more extensive and detailed historical understanding of the representation of desire, imitation, and rivalry within European and world literature, from Dante to Proust and from Dickens to Jonathan Littell. |
| girard violence and the sacred: Conversations with René Girard René Girard, 2020-05-14 French theorist René Girard was one of the major thinkers of the twentieth century. Read by international leaders, quoted by the French media, Girard influenced such writers as J.M. Coetzee and Milan Kundera. Dubbed “the new Darwin of the human sciences” and one of the most compelling thinkers of the age, Girard spent nearly four decades at Stanford exploring what it means to be human and making major contributions to philosophy, literary criticism, psychology and theology with his mimetic theory. This is the first collection of interviews with Girard, one that brings together discussions on Cervantes, Dostoevsky, and Proust alongside the causes of conflict and violence and the role of imitation in human behavior. Granting important insights into Girard's life and thought, these provocative and lively conversations underline Girard's place as leading public intellectual and profound theorist. |
| girard violence and the sacred: Transforming the Sacred into Saintliness Wolfgang Palaver, 2021-02-04 Studies into religion and violence often put religion first. René Girard started with violence in his book Violence and the Sacred and used the Durkheimian term 'sacred' as its correlate in his study of early religions. During the unfolding of his theory, he more and more distinguished the sacred from saintliness to address the break that the biblical revelation represented in comparison to early religions. This distinction between the sacred and saintliness resembles Henri Bergson's complementing Emile Durkheim's identification of the sacred and society with a dynamic religion that relies on individual mystics. Girard's distinction also relates to the insights of thinkers like Jacques Maritain, Simone Weil, and Emmanuel Levinas. This element explores some of Girard's main features of saintliness. Girard pleaded for the transformation of the sacred into holy, not their separation. |
| girard violence and the sacred: Mimetic Theory and Film Paolo Diego Bubbio, Chris Fleming, 2019-02-21 The interdisciplinary French-American thinker René Girard (1923-2015) has been one of the towering figures of the humanities in the last half-century. The title of René Girard's first book offered his own thesis in summary form: romantic lie and novelistic truth [mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque]. And yet, for a thinker whose career began by an engagement with literature, it came as a shock to some that, in La Conversion de l'art, Girard asserted that the novel may be an “outmoded” form for revealing humans to themselves. However, Girard never specified what, if anything, might take the place of the novel. This collection of essays is one attempt at answering this question, by offering a series of analyses of films that aims to test mimetic theory in an area in which relatively little has so far been offered. Does it make any sense to talk of vérité filmique? In addition, Mimetic Theory and Film is a response to the widespread objection that there is no viable “Girardian aesthetics.” One of the main questions that this collection considers is: can we develop a genre-specific mimetic analysis (of film), and are we able to develop anything approaching a “Girardian aesthetic”? Each of the contributors addresses these questions through the analysis of a film. |
| girard violence and the sacred: Violence, the Sacred, and Things Hidden René Girard, 2021 In 1973 Girard was invited by the editors of Esprit in Paris to discuss his work with several interlocutors from the fields of philosophy, psychoanalysis, literature, and theology. In this exchange Girard addresses challenges to his thinking, and is further prompted to consider the relation between his critique of primitive or archaic religion and the role of Judeo-Christianity, which Western culture has adopted as its own, and to which his book pays scant attention-- |
| girard violence and the sacred: The (De)Legitimization of Violence in Sacred and Human Contexts Muhammad Shafiq, Thomas Donlin-Smith, 2021-01-21 This book provides a multidisciplinary commentary on a wide range of religious traditions and their relationship to acts of violence. Hate and violence occur at every level of human interaction, as do peace and compassion. Scholars of religion have a particular obligation to make sense out of this situation, tracing its history and variables, and drawing lessons for the future. From the formative periods of the religious traditions to their application in the contemporary world, the essays in this volume interrogate the views on violence found within the traditions and provide examples of religious practices that exacerbate or ameliorate situations of conflict. |
| girard violence and the sacred: Cannibalism Eli Sagan, 1993 |
| girard violence and the sacred: Divinity and Experience : The Religion of the Dinka Godfrey Lienhardt, 1961-01-01 |
| girard violence and the sacred: When These Things Begin René Girard, 2014-01-01 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. |
| girard violence and the sacred: Violence, Desire, and the Sacred, Volume 1 Scott Cowdell, Chris Fleming, Joel Hodge, 2012-08-16 Violence, Desire and the Sacred presents the most up-to-date inter-disciplinary work being developed with the ground-breaking insights of René Girard's mimetic theory. The collection showcases the work of outstanding scholars in mimetic theory and how they are applying and developing Girard's insights in a variety of fields. Girard's mimetic insight has provided a fruitful way for different disciplines, such as literature, anthropology, theology, religion studies, cultural studies, and philosophy, to engage on common anthropological ground, with a shared understanding of the human person. The aim of this edited collection is to present this interdisciplinary work and to illustrate how Girard's insights provide fertile ground for bringing together disparate disciplines in a shared purpose. As academic work on Girard's insights is growing, this collection would meet the need to show the critical, interdisciplinary applications of these insights. |
| girard violence and the sacred: A Theatre of Envy René Girard, 2000 In this groundbreaking work a foremost literary and cultural critic turns to the major figure in English literature William Shakespeare and proposes a dramatic new way of reading and performing his works. The key to A Theatre of Envy is René Girards's original expression and application of what he calls Mimetic Theory. For Girard, people desire according to the desires of others. He sees this as fundamental to the human condition and works out its implications in a most convincing and ultimately, easily comprehensible way. Bringing his insights to bear on Shakespeare, Girard reveals the previously overlooked coherence of problem plays like Troilus and Cressida and makes a convincing argument for elevating A Midsummer Night's Dream from the status of entertaining chaotic comedy to a profound and original commentary on the human condition. Shakespeare transforms the crude literary form of revenge tragedy into a profound and prophetic unmasking of violence - even more relevant today than in his time. Throughout this impressively sustained reading of Shakespeare, Girard's prose is sophisticated enough for the academic as well as being accessible to the general reader. Anyone interested in literature, anthropology, psychology and particularly, theology as relevant to the overriding contemporary problems of violence in all its forms will want to read this challenging book. All those involved in theatrical productions and performance will find A Theatre of Envy full of exciting and practical ideas. 'In its enormous breathtaking scope, (René Girard's work) suggests...the projects of those 19th century intellectual giants (Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche and Freud) who still cast such long shadows today. By contrast, contemporary criticism seems paltry and fainthearted.' Comparative Literature René Girard was born in Avignon, read cultural history in Paris and in 1947 went to the USA where he has for the last 50 years held a number of prestigious academic posts. He has written more than half a dozen books, best known of which are, Violence and the Sacred, The Scapegoat, and Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, he has also been featured in many interviews and magazine articles. His Martin D'Arcy Lecture - Victims, Violence and Christianity - delivered in Oxford in November 1997, aroused the enthusiastic interest of a wide variety of British experts in many fields as well as those involved in the wider and increasingly significant world of contemporary spirituality in all its popular and peremptory expressions. While not giving a naive answer René Girard does provide a profound and practical way to unmask violence not only in Shakespeare's world, but in our own. |
| girard violence and the sacred: The One by Whom Scandal Comes René Girard, 2014-01-01 “Why is there so much violence in our midst?” René Girard asks. “No question is more debated today. And none produces more disappointing answers.” In Girard’s mimetic theory it is the imitation of someone else’s desire that gives rise to conflict whenever the desired object cannot be shared. This mimetic rivalry, Girard argues, is responsible for the frequency and escalating intensity of human conflict. For Girard, human conflict comes not from the loss of reciprocity between humans but from the transition, imperceptible at first but then ever more rapid, from good to bad reciprocity. In this landmark text, Girard continues his study of violence in light of geopolitical competition, focusing on the roots and outcomes of violence across societies latent in the process of globalization. The volume concludes in a wide-ranging interview with the Sicilian cultural theorist Maria Stella Barberi, where Girard’s twenty-first century emphases on the continuity of all religions, global conflict, and the necessity of apocalyptic thinking emerge. |
| girard violence and the sacred: Girardians James G. Williams, 2012 This book documents the story of the Colloquium on Violence & Religion (COV&R), founded at Stanford University in 1990. COV&R brings together international scholars and educators in various fields who are dedicated to the exploration, criticism, and development of Rene Girard's mimetic model of the relationship between violence and religion in the genesis and maintenance of culture. Girard's work has generated a diversity of interdisciplinary research programs. The book recounts the history of COV&R's meetings and the research of its members and friends that have had a special role in the adventure of ideas flowing from Girard's mimetic theory. (Series: Beitrage zur mimetischen Theorie. Religion - Gewalt - Kommunikation - Weltordnung - Vol. 32) |
| girard violence and the sacred: Proust René Girard, 2003-01 |
VIOLENCE AND THE SACRED - ia601604.us.archive.org
The qualities that lend violence its particular terror—its blind brutality, the fundamental absurdity of its manifestations—have a reverse side. With these qualities goes the strange propensity to seize …
Violence and the Sacred - api.pageplace.de
The qualities that lend violence its particular terror—its blind brutality, the fundamental absurdity of its manifestations—have a reverse side. With these qualities goes the strange propensity to seize …
Girard Violence And The Sacred [PDF] - netsec.csuci.edu
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Religion and Violence: A Girardian Overview - JSTOR
René Girard’s mimetic theory sees mimesis as the most central determinant of human behavior. According to him it also generated so much violence that it threatened the very existence of …
René Girard and the Deferral of Violence
18 Nov 2019 · René Girard’s signal contribution to anthropology is his analysis of mi- metic desire as the root of a specifically human violence that culture comes into existence to control.
René Girard and Violence - Wayne Northey
review René Girard’s Violence and the Sacred (1977), and felt a similar sense of having encountered a “great frontier”. Evangelical author Donald Dayton wrote of so connecting to Karl Barth’s …
René Girard and Raymund Schwager on Religion, Violence, and …
In the course of this discussion, Girard stated that the Gospel provided an anthropological framework for a really scientific approach to the essential questions of anthropology. According …
René Girard and Mimetic Theory - saet.ac.uk
explored in Girard’s 1972 book, Violence and the Sacred. Breaking away from his training as an archivist and medieval historian in wartime Paris, Girard had developed the first statement of his …
The Cross of Christ, Sacrifice and Sacred Violence - JSTOR
For Girard, Christ's death exposes the scapegoat mechanisms which lie at the heart of society and, in bringing them out into the open, annul them once and for all, and offer a new basis for society, …
René Girard and Atonement: A Dialogue - CORE
The dialogue explores the profound impact of Girard’s mimetic theory, especially his concepts of “sacred violence” and “scapegoating,” on both historical and emerging understandings of …
SACRED VIOLENCE IN SHIRLEY JACKSON’S THE LOTTERY
This paper will briefly survey the range of criticism before applying René Girard’s (1966) theory on violence, religion, and scapegoating to this tale of ritualized communal murder. Key words: René …
René Girard’s Scapegoat and Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer: The
First, I will discuss Girard’s and Agamben’s sacred victims. Second, I will discuss several scholarly comparisons of Girard and Agamben that indicate a fundamental difference, and third, I will …
Violence, Mysticism, and René Girard - SAGE Journals
Unless broadly defined as religion itself, mysticism initially seems a topic far removed from the concerns of René Girard (1923−2015), the great French cul-tural anthropologist, biblical …
Mimesis and Violence -An Introduction to the Thought of Rene Girard
Violence and the Sacred represents Girard's first attempt to pose and pursue this question in detail; it suggests that violence itself is invariably culture's 'answer' to disintegration and disorder.
Special Issue: René Girard’s Mimetic Theory and its ... - JSTOR
In this issue of the journal, Nikolaus Wandinger, who, like Schwager, is a professor of dogmatics, introduces Girard’s understanding of religion and violence in a way closely connected with …
Politics of Indifference: René Girard and Peter Sloterdijk - Springer
In Violence and the Sacred, Girard establishes his view of society on a funda-mental paradox: through the attempted elimination of violence by way of victimization, society encloses violence …
SOPHOCLES’ ‘OEDIPUS REX’ IN RENÉ GIRARD’S ‘VIOLENCE AND …
René Girard’s works (primarily in ‘Violence and the Sacred’), in psychoanalytic theory and structuralism, as well as in the book contemporary with ‘Violence and the Sacred’ - ‘Anti …
Violence and the Bible: The Girard Connection - JSTOR
From Greek tragedy he discerns that a primal violence of a whole group against an innocent, varyingly-emarginated, ran- dom victim was the origin of human society and all its institutions, …
And The Origins of Culture* - JSTOR
According to Girard, violence is legitimized by a given group - say, an African monarchy - translated into violent sacrificial rituals and recognized in this form as sacred. This is the function of …
The Bible, Violence, and the Sacred: Liberation from the Myth of ...
The Bible, Violence, and the Sacred: Liberation from the Myth of Sanctioned Violence. By James G. Williams. Foreword by Rene Girard. HarperSanFrancisco, 1991. 288 pages. $27.00. In his …
VIOLENCE AND THE SACRED - ia601604.us.archive.org
The qualities that lend violence its particular terror—its blind brutality, the fundamental absurdity of its manifestations—have a reverse side. …
Violence and the Sacred - api.pageplace.de
The qualities that lend violence its particular terror—its blind brutality, the fundamental absurdity of its manifestations—have a reverse side. …
Girard Violence And The Sacred [PDF] - netsec.csuci.edu
By accessing Girard Violence And The Sacred versions, you eliminate the need to spend money on physical copies. This not only saves you money but …
Religion and Violence: A Girardian Overview - JSTOR
René Girard’s mimetic theory sees mimesis as the most central determinant of human behavior. According to him it also generated …
René Girard and the Deferral of Violence
18 Nov 2019 · René Girard’s signal contribution to anthropology is his analysis of mi- metic desire as the root of a specifically human violence that …
