Chapter 1: A Theory of Agency
Girard’s apocalyptic predictions begin with an innocuous observation: the defining characteristic of humanity is mimesis – the capacity to imitate.[1] More so than most social theorists, Girard is psychologically reductive. That is to say, he takes this single psychological capacity to be the constitutive mechanism behind a seemingly endless array of social phenomena, including but not limited to: rivalry, envy, violence, innovation, masochism, bipolarity, scapegoating, ritual, prohibitions, homosexuality, vanity, religion, and, indeed, imminent apocalypse. It then becomes important – to both interrogate the ambition of Girard’s psychology as well as understand the shape of his social theory – to have a complete and charitable reconstruction of Girard’s psychology in view.
Part One is such an attempt, and it is motivated by the two aforementioned aims. First, I hope to interrogate the plausibility, originality and significance of Girard’s psychological views. This, in turn, sets me up to answer the question: “what does our understanding of mimetic psychology reveal about the shape of Girardian social theory?”
I will attempt to accomplish both tasks with three broad strokes. First, in Chapter 1, I will introduce mimetic theory as, at its core, a theory of agency concerned with a subset of human behavior that proceed through a mimetic form (Section 1.1). Importantly, the form of mimesis (Section 1.2) will be delineated from the force behind mimesis (Section 1.3) – a separation which will be interpretively crucial to understanding, in a later section, why only certain mimetic behaviors are compulsive, reciprocal and trend towards extremes.
Second, in Chapter 2, I will focus my reconstruction on a specific species of mimesis – mimetic desire. After properly introducing these technical terms in their respective sections, I will argue that acquisitive mimesis is best understood as ranging from physical desire to metaphysical desire (Section 2.1), from external mediation to internal mediation (Section 2.2), and, finally, from the positive to the negative phase (Section 2.3). In drawing out this first range (physical to metaphysical desire), I hope to introduce a species of mimetic desire – physical desire – overlooked in the current scholarship that renders Girard’s psychological views more plausible (Section 2.1.1). Also, in developing this first range, I will put Girard in dialogue with Rousseau with the aim of interrogating the former’s originality and the fruitful side effect of uncovering the relationship between recognition and mimesis (Section 2.1.2). This relationship will prove to be crucial in making sense of Girard’s psychological landscape and help us resolve otherwise hard-to-answer questions internal within Girard, chief amongst them: whom do we imitate (Section 2.1.3)?
Lastly, in Chapter 3, I will mount a defense of Girard’s significance. My general argument is going to be that Girard rescues a certain intersubjective conception of humanity that has been systematically overlooked by influential currents in modern social theory. This will, in turn, provide me with the resources to understand the shape, aims, and scope of Girard’s own social theory – the second aim of Part One.
1.1 Sympathy and Mimesis
Mimesis, as a form of agency, can be understood under the light of David Hume. In his A Treatise of Human Nature, Hume develops a concept that becomes foundational to Scottish moral philosophy: sympathy. [2] Sympathy is the human capacity to understand others by co-experiencing their emotions in one’s own mind. In order to emphasize how constitutive and inevitable he took this capacity to be, Hume employs the famous metaphor of two violin strings setting each other in motion:
As in strings equally wound up, the motion of one communicates itself to the rest; so all the affections readily pass from one person to another, and beget correspondent movements in every human creature. When I see the effects of passion in the voice and gesture of any person, my mind immediately passes from these effects to their causes, and forms such a lively idea of the passion, as is presently converted into the passion itself … No passion of another discovers itself immediately to the mind. We are only sensible of its causes or effects. From these we infer the passion: And consequently these give rise to our sympathy.[3]
What is relevant in this analogy for Girard, is the observation that there is a species of human behavior – for the lack of a better word, I use “behavior” in the broadest possible sense: actions, experiences, judgements, intentions, etc. – that proceed when an external instance of that behavior is observed. Indeed, this logic that Hume identifies in sympathy – the carrying out of a behavior upon its observance – is none other than the logic of mimesis.
But there are also two important differences. First, mimesis is not limited to passionate experiences but expands to govern the full spectrum of human behavior. Hume suggests, at least in the quoted passage, that sympathy observes actions in the other yet only arouses passions in the observer. Instead, Girard would say that whatever the mind focuses on will be elicited. If we direct our attention to others’ subjective experience, then passions will arise in us. Yet, if we focus on their physical actions, then we will be nudged to perform these actions. We should also add two more things on this point. Mimetically triggered behaviors are not mirror copies of behaviors as performed by the other but as perceived by the observer. What is elicited is what the observer takes the behavior to be, not what it actually is. This might seem a trivial distinction in the realm of action, which is somewhat objective, but a key move in Girard’s theory will eventually rest on the assumption that we tend to misjudge and, therefore, falsely imitate the subjective experiences of others.[4] Furthermore, since it is clear that mimesis operates according to what the observer calls to mind, we should also permit the logic of mimesis to extend to memory and even imagination. That is to say, this mimetic resonation – exemplified by Hume’s metaphor of the violin strings – nudges us toward certain behaviors even when we simply recall them in memory or imagine them ex-nihilo.[5]
Second, as my use of the word “nudge” should suggest, Girard takes mimetic behavior to be much less inevitable and immediate as the metaphor of resonant strings would imply. After all, we don’t imitate every action or sympathize with every experience that crosses our path. To fully develop this point, we need to separate the form of mimesis from the force of mimesis. This is not a division that Girard himself makes, but one that is helpful to introduce in understanding his theory.
1.2 The Form of Mimesis
When I speak of mimesis as a theory of agency, I refer exclusively to the form of mimesis which operates on the logic we uncovered in Hume. The form of mimesis is constitutive to behavior which proceed when the subject calls to mind – whether that be through observation, memory, or imagination – an externalized instance of said behavior. Deciding to spare one’s enemies after reasoned deliberation is not mimetic. Yet, if the same act of mercy is carried out with, say, a compassionate act of Christ in mind, then it is mimetic. This theory of agency divides the human sphere into the mimetic and non-mimetic. The former have their origin in and are formed by an external other, whereas the latter behaviors are created by the subject, for example, through reason.
But why does it matter if behavior proceed through this form? This question is all the more relevant since mimesis can operate – in fact, it almost always operates – unconsciously.[6] That is to say, for the subject to “call to mind” an external behavior it is enough for it to be registered in the unconscious. Think of a high school basketball player practicing a specific move by imitating his favorite professional athlete. When this high schooler performs the same move in a game, the idea goes, he need not consciously have to recall the original action for this behavior to be mimetic since the original move by the professional athlete is so deeply embedded in his unconscious through repetition. When we permit this unconscious operation of mimesis, it becomes hard to even differentiate the mimetic from the non-mimetic, much less see the significance of the former.
The full significance of mimesis will take this entire project to reveal, but I will highlight an initial point in anticipation of the dialogue with Rousseau. Girard, I will show, believes that we can only carry out certain actions or hold certain normative attitudes with true confidence and certainty if it proceeds through this mimetic form of agency. That is to say, only when I can call to mind an other whose actions or views are in alignment with mine, do my actions or views take on a confident form, proceeding from both an “I” and a “We.” Very crudely, this certainty that only the mimetic form of behavior can provide, will lead the Girardian subject to seek recognition.
While I can’t yet do justice to the significance of the form of mimesis, I will attempt to do so for its empirical plausibility. Mimesis, as a theory of agency, has received substantial empirical support from the late-20th-century discovery of mirror neurons.[7] Mirror neurons fire both when one performs an action – say, raise a hand – and when we perceive others performing the same action. They also fire when a mere intention to act is observed.[8] Furthermore, mirror neurons are deeply interconnected with the limbic system, which governs emotions and sentiments, and the cortical system, which governs reasoning and judgement, revealing how permeated this reflective capacity is in the human psyche.[9] Actions, intentions, emotions, and even judgments – this broad neuro-biological reach of mirror neurons is an empirical justification for expanding Hume’s sympathy beyond mere passions. This “neurological, automatic, and necessary”[10] process that seems to have its hands in the full spectrum of human behavior is the biological basis for the form of mimesis – by merely perceiving the behaviors of another, we are presented, through mirror neurons, with identical behaviors that we are nudged towards.
1.3 The Force of Mimesis
Of course, many of Girard’s canonical examples of mimesis appear to be more than just nudged – they are backed by an unending drive that render them compulsive.[11] What is the force that makes them so? After all, there appear to be behaviors, proceeding through the mimetic form that are almost irresistible – chanting in a large crowd – whereas other mimetic suggestions – performing a dangerous activity – often illicit an opposite response within us.
First, we should permit that the form of mimesis always carries with it a small, nudging force. This doesn’t matter greatly to Girard’s theory and is just based off the intuition that, ceteris paribus, we are slightly more inclined to carry out an action if it has been mirrored by an other. Second, beyond this nudge, a wide array of forces that are unrelated to mimesis can drive behaviors that proceed through the mimetic form. If I am hungry and watch my friend eat a burger, then my ordering of the same burger will be a behavior with the form of mimesis – because the origins of the action are external – that is fueled by the force of hunger. In this case, an impetus which has its origin within me is given shape by a suggestion originating from an other. Third, of all the forces “within me,” one in particular is extremely powerful and the animating impetus fueling Girard’s most popular social phenomena: “shame.”[12] Shame will be given a proper treatment in the following section on metaphysical desire. But, as a first pass, it can be understood as a deep and all-encompassing despair that one has a deficient ontological status. At its core, shame is a drive towards substance: a yearning to make one’s being “real” in some sense. This preliminary overview of shame is incomplete without also introducing the logic that directs this force: transference.[13] Transference, I will show, aims at identifying the cause of one’s shame or the cause for the resolution of one’s shame. The Girardian subject will blame and destroy the former and will love and deify the latter.[14] Transference is a drive towards causality – it seeks to understand and explain the world and the reason for its shame. But, importantly, it does so in a simplified and erroneous way. As a first approximation, Girard takes the cause for one’s shame to always be complex and multifaceted, yet transference is only satisfied if it can single out and hold responsible one single source. Therefore, it does so in a deceitful way. What I hope is clear, even in this brief introduction, is that beyond merely directing shame, transference carries within it forces of its own – desires to get even: love and hate – that will play an equally important role in Girard’s social observations.
Transference and shame, together, are the most important forces fueling mimesis. In conjunction with the form of mimesis and recognition (which will be introduced later on), these four concepts are the constitutive building blocks of Girard’s psychology.
1.4 A Partial Theory
As I’ve already mentioned, the form of mimesis is only a partial theory of agency – it describes a subset of behavior whose origins lie elsewhere. The exhaustive complement to mimetic behaviors, then, must be original behaviors that we, in some sense, create ourselves. This distinction is the highest division in Girard’s psychological landscape.
To clarify, it is not as if any specific instance of behavior necessarily has to be exclusively original or mimetic. Even the seemingly mimetic example I gave of ordering the same burger as one’s friend must involve some originality: I probably gesture to the waiter in a different way than our friend did, form our own words when ordering, etc. Behaviors are not exclusively mimetic or original but exist on a spectrum – Girard says as much in his discussion of innovation: “a truly innovative process [is often] continuous with imitation.”[15] But this is as far as Girard’s interest in original behavior seem to extend: there is no discussion behind the complementary logic that forms these original actions. Whether that be reason, instinct, or intuition – Girard doesn’t venture an answer and seems content in leaving half of his landscape unfinished. Instead, he dedicates his energy exclusively in analyzing mimesis, and not without reason: as I will soon show, Girard is interested in analyzing instances of mimesis so inflamed that they become the dominant, if not exclusive, logic that govern behavior and events.
But even within the realm of mimetic behavior Girard’s focus is heavily partial. This partiality is what his original contributions are to the lineage of mimesis. Of course, mimesis is nothing new. It has received significant treatment in the philosophical tradition starting from Plato, whose metaphysics and politics revolved around mimesis, and Aristotle, who coined man “the most imitative creature in the world.”[16] Girard conceives of his own contribution to this well-established tradition, then, as illuminating an overlooked species of mimesis.[17] While other philosophers have thoroughly examined how we imitate the non-acquisitive aspects of others, such as language and customs, Girard focuses on the instances where we imitate the desires of others. This latter type, what Girard termed “acquisitive mimesis” or “mimetic desire,” is central to his work as the generating mechanism of both culture and violence. This distinction, then – between non-acquisitive mimesis and acquisitive mimesis – would be the next division we should have in mind in his psychological landscape. While these divisions – and, thus, Girard’s focus – may seem somewhat arbitrary now, the full import of Girard’s partiality will reveal itself in Chapter 3 when we interrogate his significance.
Footnotes
[1] Girard, Reader, 33.
[2] See Honneth, Recognition, Chapter 3 for how Hume’s notion of sympathy influenced the tradition of Scottish moral philosophy.
[3] Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, 576.
[4] What I have in mind are passages beginning on Girard, Desire, 57 that detail how we believe everyone else enjoys a degree of satisfaction and fulfilment that we are robbed of and, thus, end up on wild mimetic goose chases.
[5] Don Quixote would be a canonical Girardian example here: when he performs acts of heroism, Amadis of Gaul, his model, is never physically present. Clearly, it is enough for us to have a model’s behavior in memory to be mediated by them.
[6] For a brief discussion of this, see the definition of Model/Mediator in Girard, Reader 290.
[7] See Oughourlian, Genesis, Chapter 1.
[8] See Oughourlian, Genesis, 90.
[9] See Oughourlian, Genesis, 105.
[10] Oughourlian, Genesis, 89.
[11] Readers interested in examples for compulsive mimetic behaviors can examine Girard, Desire, Chapter 8 & 10.
[12] See Girard, Desire, 67.
[13] See Girard, Things, The Theory of Religion.
[14] For an example of this, see the instances of aggressive and reconciliatory transference in Girard, Things, The Theory of Religion.
[15] Girard, Innovation, 18.
[16] Aristotle, Poetics, Chapter 4.
[17] For Girard’s contributions to the western tradition of mimesis, see Palaver, Theory, 41. Specifically, refer to the section titled “Acquisitive Mimesis and the Western Tradition.”
Table of Contents
Part I: The Psychology of Spirit
Chapter 2: Acquisitive Mimesis
Chapter 3: The Rescuer of Spirit
Part II: A History of Violence
Chapter 4: Mimetic Anthropology
Chapter 6: Mimetic Eschatology
PART III: Antidotes to Apocalypse
Chapter 7: Renouncing Violence