Chapter 4: Mimetic Anthropology
Acquisitive mimesis plays as central a role in Girard’s anthropology as it does in his psychology, so much so that the arch of hominization is exclusively characterized by an increasing capacity for acquisitive mimesis. Girard observes that, while displaying all the capacities of non-acquisitive mimesis, animals rarely imitate the desires of others. As a result, the social order can be maintained by rigid dominance hierarchies.[1] Yet, as our capacity for acquisitive mimesis increased, so did the amount of internal mediation which, as we now know, begins with object competition but degenerates into lethal mimetic rivalry. More worryingly, the metaphysical desires that populate mimetic rivalries are quite contagious for the simple fact that they too are desires and passed through imitation. Furthermore, because the nature of rivalry is to exact vengeance, it is also an engine of shame creation which only prunes the conditions for more metaphysical desire and thus rivalry. Girard is quick to point out how even a single mimetic rivalry, far from being a local concern, can quickly spread to all members within a group.[2] Throughout the process of hominization, entire hominoid groups would be caught up in this mimetic contagion, descend into anarchy, and self-destruct. Dominance hierarchies could no longer contain social groups when constituents began imitating each other’s desires.
The only hominoid groups that managed to survive were those who stumbled upon a particular cultural device: what Girard called the victimage mechanism.[3] In moments of mimetic contagion, such groups would, imitating each other, transfer the resentment built up from their personal rivalries upon an innocent but peculiar individual or group. This scapegoat would be blamed for all the chaos within the group and be expelled in an act of collective violence. It is unjust not because the scapegoat is completely innocent – in fact, groups often select those who are more responsible than others – but because the scapegoat is attributed the entirety of the blame, described as radically evil, and punished accordingly. Experiencing cathartic release from the sacrificial act, the tensions within the group are quelled. Order is restored.
If one agrees with the psychological landscape I have just painted, one must also, if at least partially, subscribe to this uncomfortable fact about the foundations of society. This is because moments of chaos are marked by an inflammation of mimetic rivalries and, thus, metaphysical desire which we now know to be outside the domain of reason. It is precisely the moment that the social contract and rational organization is most needed, in the war of all-against-all, that rationality is the most impotent. Only the catharsis from unjust, sacrificial violence, Girard reasons, can bring chaos to order. This whole process of scapegoating requires no new psychological mechanisms to be introduced, other than those already discussed in the negative phase of mimetic rivalries, to be understood. As is the case with negative rivalries, in the victimage mechanism, one perceives a sense of shame, projects the cause of shame solely to an external source through transference, and seeks to exact vengeance upon it. The only difference is that projection is collective, established through imitation, in the act of scapegoating and individualistic in the case of rivalry. Under this light, scapegoating is none other than a collective negative rivalry and the negative phase of mimetic rivalry, a local scapegoat.
Girard continues, this demonizing transference would work so well in premodern societies that the now peaceful community could only explain the drastic and unlikely resolution to the fact that the scapegoat was actually divine. The catharsis was so effective that people could only explain it as a miracle. Another, equally unjustified sacralizing transference occurs. The sacrificed scapegoat now becomes a prestigious god and a religion is formed around them. A sense of shame is identified and the solution, instead of the cause, is projected externally onto a model which is now worthy of reverence and imitation. This entire victimage mechanism – from innocent bystander to victim and finally to god – Girard argues, is the anthropological origins of myth and religion.
These myths usually contained two general sets of strategies to guard against future escalation towards mimetic contagion[4]: prohibitions and rituals. Prohibitions – such as the caste system, gender roles, etc. – created genuine social and spiritual difference amongst members within a group. They restricted the possibility of imitation altogether through radical inequality. This limitation on acquisitive mimesis, however arbitrary and oppressive, prevented the now differentiated individuals from entering into relationships of internal mediation and thus mimetic rivalry. Rituals, on the other hand, sought to reproduce the original sacrifice in a controlled manner. A placeholder, such as a lamb, would represent the first victim and the catharsis from the act of murder, amplified by its connection to the original expulsion, would alleviate societal unrest. Both institutions ultimately aimed at controlling mimetic contagion even though their strategies may seem completely different. In the early stages of contagion, prohibitions seek to contain it by prohibiting rivalrous behavior. Yet, when this is no longer a possibility, rituals seek to accelerate and discharge the tensions from rivalry in a controlled manner.
Girard’s observations become more surprising considering his further claim that modern societies are not radically different from these ancient ones. Prohibitions and sacrificial rituals are still the core logic our institutions operate on. We have found no new collective strategies to resolve violence other than scapegoating. By institution, Girard refers to all forms of cultural practices: actual institutions, such as the judiciary, but also gender norms, festivals, war rites, family units, etiquette, etc.
His central claim is that in moments of chaos, true peace and, therefore, lasting culture can only be founded upon the catharsis springing from the violent expulsion of a victim whose total guilt we believe in with absolute certainty. Since no individual nor group can be truly responsible for all the chaos – it is actually the tensions of each and every mimetic rivalry that lead to overall degeneration – the founding of institutions is always unjust. Peace comes at the expense of blaming a relatively innocent victim with absolute certainty. This certainty is only possible individually if we look around and see everyone else is also absolutely certain. Therefore, the founding of institutions is also always collective. Its collectiveness covers its injustice:
Foundation is never a solitary action; it is always done with others. This is the rule of unanimity, and this unanimity is violent. An institution’s role is to make us to forget this.[5]
It should, therefore, come as no surprise that we find Girard’s claims of the injustice of our institutions so surprising: the very efficacy of institutions rests on their ability to cover up the fact that they are unjust. But what are we to make of the plausibility of Girard’s double claim: that, first, “violence, in every cultural order, is always the true subject of every ritual or institutional structure”[6]; and, second, the only way we resolve violence is through unjust scapegoating? As with the case of mimetic desire, I will qualify the scope of his claim while leaving its function within Girard’s system untouched. I propose we make sense of Girard’s double claim by analyzing institutions in four concentric circles.
Exclusively in the outermost circle, lies institutions that are neither sacrificial nor prohibitory whose functioning does not rely on the prestige of a founding murder. For example, the federal mail service.
In the second circle, lies institutions that are not necessarily sacrificial nor prohibitory but whose functioning relies on or is aided by the prestige of a founding murder. A good example that Girard himself uses is the institution of rationality. Rationality has gained the prestige it has in modernity by scapegoating religion and blaming many ills of humanity on it. It gains the status of a savior only by demonizing a predecessor.[7] The rules of rationality itself aren’t necessarily sacrificial but they gain an aura of prestige nonetheless from scapegoating.
In the third circle, lies institutions that are directly prohibitory whose legitimacy depends upon a founding murder. The tripartite caste system Plato outlines in the Republic is such an institution. The legitimacy of this institution relies on the prestige of a founding myth that describes how each person is born with a particular type of metal that would decide their caste, a myth whose untruth Plato himself admits.
In the last circle, lies institutions that directly reproduce sacrificial scapegoating in an attempt to resolve violence. Here, we will find law, politics, and war. Law, so Girard argues, does not transcend the logic of sacrificial scapegoating. The logic of the judicial system is to identify parties guilty in accordance with a predetermined criterion and expel them from society. For Girard, the primary role of the judiciary is not justice but rather catharsis. If it really were for the former, it ought to, say, examine into the social conditions that lead to theft instead of just expelling the thief. Lawful punishment and private vengeance is different only in that the conditions of the former is laid out in advance and its legitimacy enforced by the state.[8] It might be difficult seeing the cathartic aims and unjust means of law in our own society, but it ought not be in the countless others where the punishment is clearly disproportionate to the crime: death for stealing grapes,[9] for example. To identify politics as sacrificial is an easier task. One interpretation of politics offered by Carl Schmitt sees the constitutive quality of politics as the making of friend-enemy distinctions, the former to benefit and the latter to, in somse sense, expel.[10] The frequency by which we see politicians cast undeserved blame on specific groups lends credence to this reading. More specifically, certain political mechanisms such as elections in democracies serve a sacrificially cathartic role that discharges tensions in precisely the way Girard outlines. It is easiest of all, then, to identify war as sacrificial. In times of internal chaos, it is a well-known tactic to redirect resentment towards an external enemy through warfare. The dizzying amount of propaganda this usually involves should be indicative of the untruth of this scapegoating.
I hope to have, again, limited the scope of Girard’s claims while preserving his most important insights and their argumentative role in the overall structure. His original description of institutions as sacrificial becomes more accurate as we move towards the innermost circle. Indeed, not all institutions are sacrificial, but the more an institution is aimed at dealing with violence, the more sacrificial it must be. That is not to say, however, that the institutions who aim for peace – such as law, politics, and war – are necessarily unjust. In fact, as we will soon investigate, institutions are becoming more just. His claim is somehow even less palatable: since chaos is the result of mimetic contagion and never the consequence of an independent actor, a truthful and just institution will have to recognize blame in almost everyone. But such an institution can never establish peace, because peace can only be founded upon the catharsis of expelling one source of radical evil. Not all institutions which aim for peace are necessarily unjust, but all institutions that succeed in bringing peace are. Girard’s surprising insight is that justice and transparency are incompatible with worldly peace.
Footnotes
[1] See Girard, Things, 90.
[2] For a discussion of the contagiousness of rivalry see Girard, Desire, 282.
[3] For an overview of the victimage mechanism and its foundational role in the process of hominization, see Girard, Battling, 62.
[4] Girard singles out ritual and prohibitions as the “two great institutions” within archaic religion. See Girard, Battling, 63.
[5] Girard, Battling, 23.
[6] Girard, Things, 210.
[7] When I comment on rationality as an institution I am specifically thinking about this quote and its immediate context: “it will perhaps have been our last mythology. We ‘believed’ in reason, as people used to believe in the gods” in Girard, Battling, 119.
[8] For a discussion on how legal institutions are a mere continuation of primitive vengeance and not a radical break from it see Girard, Violence, 15.
[9] I am referring specifically to the 17th century Virginian law that provided the death penalty for, among many trivial offenses, stealing grapes.
[10] See Schmitt, Political.
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