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Abstract: This issue, which combines well-known and respected Girardians with new and equally welcome contributors, continues the steady increase in the variety of venues and circumstances where mimetic theory is in play. It is a good time for The Colloquium on Violence & Religion to feel proud of the way it has served its mission of "exploring, critiquing, and developing René Girard's mimetic theory since 1990." If I were to name all the significant contributors to this mission over the years it would eat a big hole in the space reserved for our authors. But then I shouldn't extend myself into that space either, except to thank René Girard from the bottom of my heart for his gift to all of ... Read More PubDate: 2021-10-21T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: René Girard stands as one of the most fascinating figures in the study of violence and religion. As a thinker, theorist, and theologian, his contribution to literary and cultural theory is indicative of his profound ability to see beyond societal phenomena into the very mechanizations of human existence. Historians, economists, philosophers, psychologists, and even neuroscientists have followed Girard's lead and stepped into the waters of mimetic theory in order to surf the waves of such concepts as desire, imitation, and violence. Yet amid the number of articles, monographs, and anthologies produced by Girard and his colleagues in the Academy, only a few scholars have struck out further into the open seas of ... Read More PubDate: 2021-10-21T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: Like Marcel Proust, the late Strindberg stands on the threshold between realism and modernism, where memory and the hidden truths of the mind demand radically new literary representation. The great realist tradition of the nineteenth century still remains vital for him in a novel like The Scapegoat [Syndabocken] (1907), where the heritage from Balzac is obvious. But in the last decades before his death in 1912 he also produces some of his most spectacular works, experimenting with genre conventions, with dream logic and stream of consciousness. One can even—and this is my interest here—discern signs of astonishing insight concerning triangular desire, one of his most stubborn motifs since The Defence of a Madman ... Read More PubDate: 2021-10-21T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: Girard discusses "homosexuality" on three occasions in his oeuvre. Late in the first chapter of Deceit, Desire, & the Novel (DDN) he discusses the relationship between Veltchaninov and Troussotsky, characters in Dostoyevsky's The Eternal Husband. Then in Part III of Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World (THFW) the sections entitled "Homosexuality" and "Mimetic Latency and Rivalry" are dedicated to the subject. Indeed, in the latter of these Girard reproduces his discussion of Veltchaninov and Troussotsky from the earlier book (thus making it unnecessary for me to discuss its earlier appearance). Finally, he touches on the matter in Chapter 4 of A Theater of Envy: William Shakespeare (TEWS), dedicated to ... Read More PubDate: 2021-10-21T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: Nowadays in paleoanthropology it becomes more and more evident that the process of encephalopathy has guided our evolutionary line and that it can be investigated following two main strands of interpretation: the one based on selective mechanisms, which act on large numbers and in a completely random way, and the strand that constitutes the cornerstone of the Darwinian perspective on the evolution of life; or the one that is articulated according to a philosophical approach, aimed at formulating a "law of complexity-consciousness," which, following Teilhard de Chardin's hypothesis, highlights the possible action, within the evolutionary mechanisms, of loadbearing lines of development, responsible for the "formation ... Read More PubDate: 2021-10-21T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: What is a machine' What distinguishes a machine from a tool or a simple instrument—for example, a knife, a hammer, an ax, or a pencil' Tools are technical objects that can be seen as extending or continuing a bodily action. They augment its efficiency. To push, hit, tear, pierce, crush, grasp, or throw: tools and simple instruments allow us to do better what, to some extent, we can already do without them. They enhance our performance, make the action easier, more precise, they push back the limits of what we can do. What is done with difficulty and imperfectly with our bare hands, teeth, or nails can be done better and more easily using a tool, or with the help of a stone, a leaf, a stick, or of any natural object ... Read More PubDate: 2021-10-21T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: To try to recover something of the religious framework that is inextricably connected to the history of apophatic thought amid the emancipatory claims of various modern nihilisms, I find it helpful to consider how contemporary philosophical views have worked steadily toward an eradication of the false sacred in our world in order to produce nothing more than an empty space that might nonetheless yield the possibility for something like a source of sacrality to appear—though being careful to refrain from making such suggestions for the most part. Though such possibilities flirt with the utopian, they may also highlight a religious sense of grace that is also a necessity in our world though seemingly coming from ... Read More PubDate: 2021-10-21T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: Why are human beings inclined to commit violence that finally brings themselves into conflict' How could human beings have maintained their society that is full of violence and conflicts' René Girard's theory of mimetic desire and the scapegoat mechanism are the answers to these two anthropological questions. Even though his theory basically belongs to the tradition of anthropological philosophy, it is not limited to that realm. In reality, his theory has been applied in other academic disciplines, in particular, in social science, such as political science and economics.There are two remarkable features of Girard's theory that make it possible for its influence to extend beyond anthropology. The first one is that ... Read More PubDate: 2021-10-21T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: The processes of globalization, embraced with such eagerness in the 1990s, started being reviewed a decade later, having revealed a vicious underside. Behind the diverse masks of globalization hide murderous identities that promise different types of violence. During Brexit, the referendum in June 2016 that was to decide whether the United Kingdom left the European Union (EU) or stayed in it, Britain rejected what the EU represents—a common identity—to pursue a road on its own—a separate identity.1 Significantly, one of the elements that analysts regarded as central to Brexit was immigration. According to a recent book by Nidesh Lawtoo, immigration is one of the main rhetorical tropes of the new political ... Read More PubDate: 2021-10-21T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: "The structural patterns of the comic … deny the sovereignty of the individual."The question of the nature of humor is not new. Many have applied themselves to understanding it in both general and specific ways, and because of the widespread interest in the subject, humor research is not limited to any one discipline or theory, although many available humor theories conform to the concerns of particular paradigms. Given the inevitable and pervasive pluralism around humor, there is no dominant perspective on how it can best be understood. Each theory that sheds light on the phenomenon may be valuable in its own way, although clearly some theories are better than others.1Thomas Veach is a recent thinker who has ... Read More PubDate: 2021-10-21T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: In 2019, Kathryn Frost looks for conjunction where mimetic theory and attachment theory can agree on the issue of human proximity. Her search starts from an apparent conflict between René Girard's cautionary stand against proximity and attachment theory that favors proximity-seeking as a formative experience in one's personal development. She comes with a plan for "a hybrid of mimetic theory that privileges attachment … and caregiving,"1 and designs a program "to break through the mimetic vortex of conflict cycles."2Both mimesis as the "parsimonious principle" that undergirds Girard's theory and proximity-seeking in attachment theory are working at a prerepresentational level.3 This explains why her conflict ... Read More PubDate: 2021-10-21T00:00:00-05:00
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Abstract: A faint smell of rosemary permeates the room; it is a soft and soothing smell. Weaving into it is another, not as sweet but an amiable one, and a few more sniffs will reveal that it is the comforting smell of a sweating body after a long, tiring walk. Small drops of sweat sit on the broad forehead of a young male figure sitting on a bedstead, quiet except for an occasional deep and very prolonged breath that inhales decades of struggle and exhales uncountable moments of grief, tiredness, and regret. The man on the bedstead, wearing old jeans soaked in his sweat, is holding a black pen. His bare feet are neatly crossed in front of him; with a leaning hand, he unwillingly and reluctantly, but carefully, takes a note ... Read More PubDate: 2021-10-21T00:00:00-05:00
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