René Girard, Unlikely Apologist

Mimetic Theory and Fundamental Theology

Grant Kaplan

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780268100865, 9780268100858
• eBook ISBN: 9780268100889
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Social Philosophy

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.

CHAPTER ONE

MIMETIC THEORY AS HEURISTIC

Mimetic Anthropology

The foundation and driving force behind mimetic theory derives from Girard’s thesis about the shape of human desire. According to Girard’s own testimony, this thesis, or discovery, did not generate from his own genius. One finds the same insight already in Aristotle: “The instinct of imitation is implanted in man from childhood, one difference between him and other animals being that he is the most imitative of living creatures, and through imitation learns his earliest lesson; and no less universal is the pleasure felt in things imitated.”¹ Mimetic theory cannot even claim to have discovered this forgotten insight from antiquity. Erich Auerbach produced a famous study on literary theory—Mimesis—in the 1950s, which predated Girard’s earliest efforts.² What is unique to Girard, and to mimetic theory, however, is the attempt to plant this insight in the ground, to water it, and to attend to its growth. Girard’s importance, especially for theology, derives from his exploration of the implications of mimetic desire for different fields of study, especially anthropology and religion.

Desire, according to mimetic theory, is most primarily mediated through another person rather than generated from the individual subject. Mimetic desire is what most clearly distinguishes human beings from other primates. Girard makes this point quite forcefully in the opening section of Things Hidden: “There is nothing, or next to nothing, in human behaviour that is not learned, and all learning is based on imitation. If human beings suddenly ceased imitating, all forms of culture would vanish … To develop a science of man it is necessary to compare human imitation with animal mimicry, and to specify the properly human modalities of mimetic behaviour, if they indeed exist.”³ Girard’s claim for the centrality of mimesis in human behavior has been confirmed by recent neuroscience.⁴ In 1996, a group of Italian scientists in Parma discovered “mirror” neurons. According to Scott Garrels, “Mirror neurons are brain cells that are activated regardless of whether the individual is performing a particular motor movement or observing the same movement being made by another person.”⁵ In other words, these neurons mirror observed action. If one person sees another enjoying a hotfudge sundae, the former’s neurons respond similarly to how they would if their subject were the one enjoying the sundae.

Although this discovery focused on a study of macaque monkeys, scientific experiment indicates that the human brain has “many more, and more widely distributed, mirror neurons than monkeys, and that these are fired off from birth onwards.”⁶ In addition to imitating adult actions, infants distinguish between adult intentions and the completed act, evidencing even more clearly how infant brains seek to imitate the intention, not the action itself. From this data, Garrels concludes: “Human infants are thought to be immersed in a rich social matrix of self–other reciprocity and intersubjective experience from the very beginnings of life.”⁷ Humans do not learn to imitate as an act of departure from an earlier, more spontaneous autonomy; imitating itself is innate to human nature, as Girard had argued before this groundbreaking research.

The discovery of mirror neurons has important consequences both for the discipline of anthropology and for any theology seeking overlap with natural science. The motor and problem-solving skills of a three-year-old child will be no more advanced than that of many primates, but the former will know far more words than even the most verbose chimpanzee.⁸ But what does this say about human particularity? Garrels summarizes: “So foundational is our capacity to imitate, that many researchers believe it to be the linchpin that contributed to a wide-scale neural reorganization of the brain, allowing for the coevolution of more complex, social, cultural, and representational abilities from earlier primates to humans.”⁹ The imitative capacity enables humans to experience a mutuality that is more neurologically connected than that between other mammals. Humans can “lock into” other humans to a degree not achieved by other species. James Alison concludes, “Humans are exceptionally finely prepared imitating bodies for whom imitation, at which we can indeed improve, is the normal conduit through which we acquire language, gesture, memory and empathy, and so receive ourselves as ourselves.”¹⁰ Reflection on mirror neurons points to the same conclusion as Girard’s mimetic theory: we learn our accents, our preferred colors, and our notion of beauty from our communities, which give us a sense of who we are by telling us what we want.

Mimetic theory, of course, undermines one of modernity’s most fiercely defended dogmas: the sovereignty and goodness of individual choice. One is free, we learn from a thousand advertisements and grand narratives, to determine one’s own tastes, preference, likes, and dislikes. Although mimetic theory prioritizes the social over the individual, it does not eliminate individual sovereignty or choice. Girard on several occasions has rejected determinism or reductionism.¹¹ Girard upholds some measure of human freedom, however truncated, and maintains that human behavior cannot be reduced to biological or neurological predictors. The biological basis of imitation does not remove the capacity to moderate the object of imitation. Nevertheless, Girard’s notion of mimetic desire, which he calls “the real ‘unconscious,’” challenges our default mode of thinking about human agency.¹²

Girard applies the term “Romanticism” to the movement that clings most tightly to the notion of our desire’s autonomy.¹³ Romanticism bases authenticity and individuality on the strength and spontaneity—love at first sight—of one’s desires; hence, a mimetic desirer is an inferior desirer. Girard notes: “Romantic and modern ideologies have always promoted either a ‘true love’ or, nowadays, a ‘real desire’ that provides us with a badge of spontaneity. Intensity and authenticity are supposed to go hand in hand. Mimetic desire is regarded as weak on the ground that it is merely a copy and that copies never come up to the level of the original.”¹⁴ Girard’s first major work, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, which appeared in French in 1961 under the title Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque, undercuts the Romantic presumption. This title, playing off the homophony between “romantic” and “novelistic,” translates more accurately to “Romantic deceit and novelistic truth.” The book’s central concern is to show how certain novelists overcome the Romantic position held earlier in their lives. Girard explains in the opening pages:

The great novelists reveal the imitative nature of desire. In our days its nature is hard to perceive because the most fervent imitation is the most vigorously denied…. The romantic vaniteux does not want to be anyone’s disciple. He convinces himself that he is thoroughly original. In the nineteenth century spontaneity becomes a universal dogma, succeeding imitation…. Romantic revulsion, hatred of society, nostalgia for the desert, just as gregariousness, usually conceals a morbid concern for the Other.¹⁵

Girard’s work in literary theory argues that some of Western history’s great novelists—Cervantes, Proust, Flaubert, Stendhal, Dostoevsky—and its greatest modern playwright—Shakespeare—understood the mimetic kernel of desire and the consequences that such desire has for human relationships and for social cohesion. Rather than portray heroes as Romantic souls unaffected by society, these authors reveal how the truly authentic “hero” humbly admits the derivative nature of his desires, and therefore whatever liberation the hero achieves takes a different hue. Near the conclusion, Girard writes, “This time it is not a false but a genuine conversion. The hero triumphs in defeat; he triumphs because he is at the end of his resources: for the first time he has to look his despair and his nothingness in the face. But this look, which he has dreaded, which is the defeat of his pride, is his salvation.”¹⁶ Girard’s analysis of desire offers a stern challenge to the illusion that Romantic authenticity rescues its representatives from the great mass of imitators.

Being hardwired for imitation means living in the paradox that one’s sense of identity remains enmeshed within and is received from another. Mimetic hardwiring makes possible not only language acquisition but also any kind of education. It also precipitates conflict, competition, and violent escalation. Girard notes, “Imitation does not merely draw people together, it pulls them apart. Paradoxically, it can do these two things simultaneously.”¹⁷ One observes this especially in the teenage years, when friends can experience severe fallouts just a few short months after an intense bond. Without mimetic theory, most people find themselves at a loss to explain this falling out, or if they do explain it, they do so through the language of difference: they just grew apart. For mimetic theory it is similarity carelessly managed, rather than difference, that explains both individual and social conflict.

Mimetic theory offers an insight into the late-modern solution to the problem of conflict. Capitalism promises to quell competition over objects by creating a surplus of goods so great that everyone’s desires could be met. Yet what fun is it to possess an object universally and cheaply attainable? The allure of both the nightclub and the Ivy League remains rooted in a shared exclusivity.¹⁸ Scarcity persists, therefore, since certain objects of desire—especially lovers—cannot be multiplied, let alone mass-produced. Girard notes: “Eros cannot be shared in the same manner as a book, a bottle of wine, a piece of music, a beautiful landscape.”¹⁹ Friendship based on a common love of music or of a certain style of clothing receives a stiff challenge when the two friends fall in love with the same person; or it struggles to bear the weight of a third friend who disrupts the balance of mediated desire. If desire is mediated through another, it follows, almost inevitably, that unchecked mimetic desire will result in conflict. Further, on account of mimetic hardwiring, reciprocity quickly escalates conflict.

Mimetic Theory and the Foundation of Culture

Mimetic theory asks its readers to imagine a primal scene of mimetic desire gone awry: two children play peacefully until one child suddenly notices a toy long ignored by the second child, who owns the toy. Although she, the owner, has not wanted to play with this toy for weeks, she suddenly needs to have the toy held by her friend. Her playmate enlivens her desire for the object, but the focus is on the object—the toy—instead of the subject—the playmate, that is, the real initiator of desire. This confusion about the source of desire reflects what Hegelian social theory calls “false consciousness.” Such a primal scene, where one could foresee a violent eruption absent parental oversight, also applies to adults. The possibility of escalating reciprocity does not simply disappear upon reaching the age of reason, or adulthood. Adults learn to mask their desires more deftly, but they do not cease desiring mimetically. On this point Girard argues, “An equivalent situation rarely occurs among adults. That does not mean that mimetic rivalry no longer exists among them; perhaps it exists more than ever, but adults, like the apes, have learned to fear and repress rivalry, at least in its crudest, most obvious, and most immediately recognizable forms.”²⁰ Between children and adults there lies a continuity, not a break, in the pattern of desire. Adulthood does not correspond with the cessation of mimetic desire.

Just as watchful parents prevent destructive escalation among children, so too do various social mechanisms prevent adult conflict, including impartial judiciaries, police oversight, and strongly enforced social mores. In his attempt to extend the anthropological reach of his nascent literary theory, Girard wondered how the earliest humans dealt with this problem. If mimetic desire explained the existence of so many modern structures, how did the earliest human societies manage this desire? In his second major book, Violence and the Sacred, Girard sought to examine early human cultures in light of his mimetic hunch.²¹ For more than a decade, Girard familiarized himself with the major works of cultural anthropology and with ethnological studies. Violence and the Sacred extended mimetic theory into these fields.

Among the dozens of anthropological, ethnological, and ancient texts he consulted, Girard found mounds of evidence that pointed toward mimetic escalation and different forms of resolution. Yet no theorists of the earliest human communities connected the dots—they lacked the key insight into homo imitator, an insight that allowed Girard to order the evidence and discover scapegoating as the founding mechanism of ancient culture. Before exploring this insight, it merits lingering a little while on the difference between humans and animals.

Unlike in the mind of other animals, the imitative quality of the human mind easily entangles humans in patterns of reciprocal escalation. Before the discovery of mirror neurons, Girard noted, “Today we know that animals possess individual braking mechanisms to insure that combats between them seldom result in the actual death of the vanquished.”²² In one lecture, Girard commented on a sight familiar to those who have driven California’s Central Coast during winter months.²³ Here the great elephant seals rest on a stretch of beach, determining dominance and caring for their young. Yet despite the tussles that erupt every few minutes, the stronger seals do not kill the weaker ones, nor do the weaker ones gang up on the strongest. Paradoxically, it seems, in comparison to humans, the seals show both a greater inclination to violence and a more advanced capacity to curb it. Even at a nightclub, human behavior does not approximate the naked violence seen on the Central Coast. Yet when conflict does arise, humans seem to possess a far less evolved breaking mechanism than advanced mammals, such as elephant seals.

Girard relates this difference to the mimetic capacity, which he observes already in mammals: “There must be a mimetic element in the intra-species fighting of many animals, since the absence of an object … does not always put an immediate end to the fighting. Eventually, however, the fighting comes to an end with a kind of submission of the vanquished to the victor.”²⁴ Yet human intraspecies fighting, also based in a mimetic element, far outpaces even primates. Girard continues: “Unlike animals, men engaged in rivalry may go on fighting to the finish … An increased mimetic drive, corresponding to the enlarged human brain, must escalate mimetic rivalry beyond the point of no return … [It] must have caused, when it first appeared, the breakdown of societies based on dominance patterns.”²⁵

It is hard for us moderns to fathom this potential for destruction. Our advanced legal structures—possessing judiciaries unconnected to the crime—and sophisticated legal codes bottle up our reciprocal ferocity and channel it into the far less bloody realm of the online comment section. Primitive societies lacked any comparable breaking mechanisms. So how did humans come to learn how to live together in relative peace? This question, following Girard’s recognition of modern cultural institutions,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Mimetic Theory as Heuristic
• Chapter 2 Mimetic Theory and Rational Faith
• Chapter 3 Mimetic Theory and the Theology of Revelation
• Chapter 4 Realizing a Mimetic Theology of Religion
• Chapter 5 Imagining a Mimetic Ecclesiology
• Chapter 6 Trajectories of Modernity: Girard and Taylor in Conversation
• Chapter 7 Mimetic Theory and Atheism
• Epilogue: One Final Apology
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index