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Aristotle on Mimesis and Violence: Things Hidden since the Foundation of Literary Theory
Arata Takeda
Introduction: Girard on Plato and Aristotle
In Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World, René Girard speaks of “the Platonic terror of mimesis.”1 Girard points out that Plato’s mistrust of art can be understood as a fear of mimesis that he shares with primitive peoples.2 Primitive peoples fear mimetic phenomena such as twins or mirrors because, Girard argues, they somehow relate mimesis to violence. The prohibitions they impose on themselves, or put another way, the strictures on things they profoundly fear, reveal an incomplete but sagacious knowledge of the threat that arises out of mimetic violence.3 The phenomenon of twins and the primitive peoples’ response to it are illustrated in Violence and the Sacred.4 “It is only natural,” Girard explains there, “that twins should awaken fear, for they are harbingers of indiscriminate violence, the greatest menace to primitive societies.”5 This menace is perceived in a way as a “highly contagious disease,” the typical reaction to which would consist in preventing and avoiding contagion.6 The explanation goes on:
The way primitive societies attempt to accomplish this [sc. to avoid contagion] offers a graphic demonstration of the kind of danger they associate with twins. In societies where their very existence is considered dangerous, the infants are “exposed”; that is, abandoned outside the community under conditions that make their death inevitable. Any act of direct physical violence against the anathema is scrupulously avoided. Any such act would only serve to entrap the perpetrators in a vicious circle of violence—the trap “bad” violence sets for the community and baits with the birth of twins.
An inventory of the customs, prescriptions, and interdictions related to twins in those societies where they are regarded with dread reveals one common concern: the fear of pollution.7
Plato’s animosity toward mimesis appears to be akin to this kind of primitive knowledge reflected in “the precautions taken against ‘bad’ violence.”8 Thus, Girard considers Plato to be “unique in the history of philosophy,” and, what is more, “closer than anyone to what is essential, closer than primitive religion itself.”9 Yet, at the same time, Girard tells us, Plato fails to relate his fear to acquisitive or possessive mimesis, the very form of mimetic behavior that provokes violent conflict. Plato’s approach to mimesis in The Republic suffers, as it were, from a sample bias: Plato deals with types of mimesis of representation, but not of appropriation.10 This dismissal or omission of the acquisitive dimension of mimesis is going to determine the cultural meaning of mimesis in the whole of Western thought. Girard emphasizes this by saying, “all of his [sc. Plato’s] successors, beginning with Aristotle, have followed his lead.”11
At this point, we do well to consider some reasons to be skeptical, especially with regard to Girard’s somewhat reductive view on Aristotle. In his Poetics, Aristotle manifestly opposed Plato’s attitude to mimesis; it is anything but fair to say that he simply adopted Plato’s approach. Of course, what Aristotle does is to object to Plato’s negative view of mimesis by offering, in turn, a positive one, so the conceptual framing of mimesis as such ought to remain the same, and this is what Girard is obviously referring to. But, is it indeed so? If we alter the way of valorizing something, does the valorized subject necessarily remain within the same conceptual framework? Do not the relations between various elements of the concept alter as well, so that in the end, there emerges a potentially alternative framework?
This cautious skepticism leads us to our point of departure. As far as the relation between mimesis and violence is concerned—and here, I mean mimesis in the Aristotelian, not in the Girardian sense—there is a fundamental question to be asked: How does Aristotelian mimesis relate to the question of violence? Is there something that we have neglected, we have failed to see, or we have not been willing to see for millennia, something that also escaped Girard’s attention? Girard does address Aristotle’s Poetics in Violence and the Sacred, to which we shall come back to later on. However, inasmuch as Aristotle is evidently not among those who figure prominently in his thought, as do Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud and Claude Lévi-Strauss, the question needs a comprehensive consideration.
Aristotle’s verdict on the use of violence in tragedy
We begin by reflecting on literature, what Aristotle defines as mimesis, and its relation to violence in general. Human being’s fascination for violence is timeless, all the more so if we are not directly affected by it. Such nonaffectedness is guaranteed by the mediatory character of literary representation. Blood, violence, and gore enjoy a magnetic presence in literature, and this presence is particularly powerful in that genre of literature, which is designed to be performed and received collectively: the drama. In dramatic texts, violence always had a frequent occurrence, although the conventions of performing it, on the scene or behind the scene, have varied a great deal over the course of history.12 Violent actions represent, and have represented, part of entertainment, if not the entertainment, artistically provided to the audience.
What is important in terms of the question we are raising here is the significance of the use of violence within the tradition of European tragedy. By the tradition of European tragedy, I understand a whole range of dramaturgical and theatrical practices that, whether we liked it or not, stood under the influence of the Aristotelian theory of tragedy. From the Renaissance up until the eighteenth century, Aristotle’s Poetics has been interpreted as including, as it were, a set of technical rules for dramatic composition. Beyond the question of whether it was originally intended to be descriptive or normative, it has exerted an immense normative power over the practice of writing, and writing on, drama and tragedy in particular—the shaping of the form, the finding of the motif, and the management of the plot, especially in view of the effect on the spectator. In the mid-nineteenth century, Gustav Freytag looked back to the past centuries through which Aristotle had been the authoritative figure in the field of drama and acknowledged in his seminal work on the Technique of the Drama: “Aristotle established a few of the highest laws of dramatic effect.”13
Aristotle’s definition of tragedy is generally known; it is most succinctly given in chapter 6 of his Poetics. In order to put it in the historical context within which I shall develop my argument, I quote it in Thomas Twining’s translation of 1789:
Tragedy, then, is an imitation of some action that is important, entire, and of a proper magnitude—by language, embellished and rendered pleasurable, but by different means in different parts—in the way, not of narration, but of action—effecting through pity and terror, the cor...
