(Previous post on this topic here.)
I’m on page 122, about halfway through the book now, and have come to the conclusion (which I half-suspected when I read about it) that it’s not written for the layperson, and particularly not for someone who just wants to know about mimetic theory and Girard’s ideas. Those ideas are in the book but they are scattered hither and thither (as my favourite lasagne recipe directs the maker to distribute the mozzarella) rather than laid out in a straightforward way.
The subtitle, ‘Dialogues on the Origins of Culture,’ seems to me to refer not only to the dialogue between Girard and his two questioners in this book but between Girard’s ideas and a vast array of ideas, developed and modified over centuries, in the fields of anthropology, biology (evolution in particular, duh), philosophy (phenomenology and symbology in particular), linguistics, ethnography, ethology, literature, literary criticism, mythology, sociology, psychology (Freud in particular) and probably 10 other fields I’ve forgotten. I am not au fait with any of these fields and am drowning in a roiling sea of names and jargon here.
Often, I don’t understand the question being asked — what the background is, how it relates to mimetic theory — and sometimes I don’t understand Girard’s responses. But, when Girard goes back to speaking on the central aspects of his topic, he repeatedly comes back to the same clear statements of his ideas, connections, and insights. For that I am grateful!
Here’s what I’ve gleaned from page 78 to 122:
** Speaking still of the role of the object in mimetic theory, Girard responds with agreement and warning to a question about Dupuy‘s and Dumouchel‘s view of “the object of the consumer society” as a good, their feeling that consumer society is the way to defuse mimetic rivalry:
“By making the same objects, the same commodities available to everybody, modern society has reduced the opportunity for conflict and rivalry. The problem is that if this is pushed to the extreme, as in contemporary consumer societies, then people ultimately lose all interest in these universally available and identical objects. It takes a long time for people to become disaffected, but this finally happens. The consumer society, because it renders objects available, at the same time makes them eventually undesirable, working towards its own ‘consumption.’ Like all sacrificial solutions, the consumer society needs to reinvent itself periodically. It needs to dispose of more and more commodities in order to survive. Moreover, the market society is devouring the earth’s resources, just as primitive society devoured its victims.”
The last sentence evoked a “Wow” from me. He’s saying, if I’m hearing him correctly, that we are sacrificing the earth as a means of keeping social conflict at bay, just as others have sacrificed animals and people for the same purpose. Are we also then scapegoating the earth? Leads me to think of the ‘Mother Nature ‘and ‘Gaia’ ideas as divinations, the earth as a symbol of the god who brings us punishment and reward, and who is enough an outsider in the human system (but obviously still part of it, because its vegetation and other creatures are literally part of our bodies) to be looked on as a suitable victim. Maybe I’m taking it too far.
He goes on to say that because we desire less and less what is more and more available,
“one buys objects with one hand and throws them away with the other — in a world where half the human population goes hungry. …The consumption society has simply become a system of exchange of signs, rather than an exchange of actual objects. This is why we live in a minimalist and anorexic world, because the world in which consumption is a sign of wealth is no longer appealing. Therefore, one has to look emaciated or subversive in order to look ‘cool’, as Thomas Frank would put it. The only problem is that everybody resorts to the same tricks, and once again we all begin to look alike. The consumer society, at its extreme, turns us into mystics in the sense that it shows us that objects will never satisfy our desires.”
What this brings to my mind are the HGTV shows (House Hunters, My House is Worth What?, Property Virgins, National Open House, and Designed to Sell are the ones I know best) that over and over tout granite countertops and stainless steel appliances as items all homes just must have. It’s really begun to feel a zombie-like mantra to me. I don’t think you can watch a half-hour on HGTV without hearing about the necessity of one or the other. These items are actually expensive but they look minimalist, sleek and slim. They are what’s ‘cool’ now, and have been for a few years. I keep wondering when they will go out of vogue, when it will be obvious that “everybody” has the identical items and they will lose their appeal. The way granite and stainless are praised and, more, basically presented as condicio sine qua non, it seems impossible that we’ll ever perceive these objects as anything but inherently satisfying.
And, in related musing of hipsters and the current anorexia fad …
** Again, about the object and transference of hostility:
“The paradox of mimetic desire is that it seems solidly fixed on its object, stubbornly determined to have that object and no other object, whereas in reality it very quickly shows itself to be completely opportunistic.”
** He speaks more of the concept of méconnaissance, which means to misrecognise or misconstrue and which is key to understanding the scapegoating mechanism. This has always seemed very clear to me but apparently some been confused by it, so he clarifies:
“[I]f you believe the scapegoat is guilty, you are not going to name it as being ‘my scapegoat.’ … This is the key role of méconnaissance in the process — it allows one to have the illusion that one is justly accusing someone who is really guilty and, therefore, deserves to be punished. In order to have a scapegoat, one must fail to perceive the truth, and therefore one cannot represent the victim as a scapegoat, but rather as a righteous victim [a righteously chosen victim, I believe he means], which is what mythology does. … To scapegoat someone is to be unaware of what you are doing.”
** I was gladdened to come upon this next bit, in which Girard speaks of hyper-mimetic people. He is asked, “Do you think that the more mimetic one is, the stronger the méconnaissance [unknowing] will be?” He responds:
“I will answer with a paradox. The more you are mimetic, the stronger is your méconnaissance and also the possibilities of understanding it. Suddenly you realize that the nature of your own desire is strictly imitative. I believe all great writers of mimetic desire are hyper-mimetic. … We could say that if one is hyper-mimetic, one is in a better position to understand oneself as a puppet of mimetic desire, simply because the caricature one has become makes it easier to understand the systematically self-defeating nature of one’s own behaviour.”
This “special sensitivity” (as it’s phrased a bit later in the book) occurred to me a while ago, both in the context of mimetic theory and of practicing Buddhism. I wrote in June 2007: “My conclusion is that we choose these ideologies because we really need them, perhaps more than other people do. Buddhists really need meditation to help them let go of the tyranny of emotion and opinion, mindspeak, looping storylines, that burdens them; MT adherents really need to see rivalry and violence for what it is, and are perhaps particularly rivalrous and imitative, and rightly seek a pacific model. What’s disturbing to me is that I am drawn to both Buddhism and MT.” Now I feel less disturbed and more excited about what’s possible. It feels like a sort of dawning.
I’ll blog about Chapter 3, The Symbolic Species, in another posting. I’m way over my head in that chapter and have to re-read.
BEYOND RIVALRY 