All Desire is a Desire for Being
By René Girard, Edited and Introduced by Cynthia L. Haven.
Penguin Classics, 2024.
Paperback, 336 pages, $18.
Reviewed by Justin D. Garrison.
In All Desire is a Desire for Being, Cynthia L. Haven has produced the first edited volume of René Girard’s primary source writings in a generation. Her selections from his extensive works are excellent. She includes excerpts from Girard’s books as well as newspaper articles, journal articles, and public remarks. The introduction is concise and thorough, covering Girard’s biography, the major components of mimetic theory, and Girard’s most important works such as Deceit, Desire and the Novel; Violence and the Sacred; and Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World. This book is perfect for people looking for a place to begin with Girard, but Girard scholars will also benefit from seeing what they know formulated in different ways. Most interesting of all, Haven has created a section of maxims taken from many of Girard’s writings. I could not help thinking about the legion of recent stories about Ozempic when I read this one: “Few people want to be saints nowadays, but everybody is trying to lose weight.” Funny, sharp, true, Girard.
Of all the essays Haven selected, “Belonging” offers the best overview of Girard’s understanding of desire, scapegoating, and the biblical alternative to mimetic violence. In it Girard writes, “mimetic theory affirms that people’s desires are not really rooted in either desired objects or the subjects who desire those objects, but rather in a third party: the model or mediator of our desires.” Individuals learn what they want by appropriating the desires of others. When goods are inexhaustible or easily shared, or when there are substantial differences between the desiring subject and the model, conflict is doubtful. When goods are limited or difficult to share, and especially when the subject and the model are more or less equal, conflict is highly likely. Rivalry often begins with two people competing over a good, but mimetic desires are contagious. In their efforts to defeat their rival, each person recruits and discovers allies. Soon, entire families, cities, or nations are drawn into a conflict that has become a full-blown crisis. Girard explains, “mimetic rivalries give rise to conflictual crises of such intensity that they ought to blow everything up.”
Historically speaking, everything did not “blow up” because many archaic societies discovered what Girard calls the scapegoat mechanism. In “Belonging,” he argues the scapegoat mechanism “owes its effectiveness to the unanimous transfer of all the hatred aroused by rivalries onto a victim whose expulsion and/or death necessarily restores peace, since the community believes itself to be rid of all its obsessions, and is thus actually rid of them.” The persecuting crowd is certain it acts with justice by killing or exiling the demon responsible for a given crisis. Witnessing the resulting peace, the crowd transforms the monster into a god who made the miracle possible. Myths, rituals, and taboos are generated to remember how the community was constituted and saved from violence, how to manage conflicts before they escalate, and how to restore harmony by repeating the scapegoating act when crises grow to the point that the community is again on the brink of destruction. For Girard, the founding murder is the origin of religion and culture.
Although scapegoating was an effective way of using violence to prevent violence, the system no longer functions properly. Why? For Girard, this is due to the influence of Judaism and Christianity. In Genesis, the story of Cain and Abel has much in common with ancient myths. Like Romulus, Cain murders his brother and goes on to found a city. Unlike in the ancient myths, God takes the side of Abel, the innocent victim. Similar insights are found in various Psalms and in the Suffering Servant passages in Isaiah. The unveiling of the scapegoat mechanism as a system of collective violence against innocents is even more clear in the New Testament. In “Belonging,” Girard argues, “The Gospels make manifest cultural violence by presenting the death of Jesus as a mob phenomenon caused by a mimetic frenzy. They tell a truth about human culture that all mythical religion conceals.” Knowing the truth about scapegoating does not mean it has been abandoned. Indeed, while people have become increasingly good at seeing the scapegoats of others as just that, scapegoats, they remain convinced their enemies really are evil.
In her introduction, Haven draws attention to the relevance of Girard’s writings for our times. When reading many of the other chapters she chose, I could not help thinking about contemporary American social and political disorders. In “The Totalitarian Trial” and “Retribution,” for example, Girard argues Job’s alleged friends, like Stalin’s interrogators, are really representatives of the community demanding Job’s consent to his own persecution. The unity of the community hinges on Job’s willingness to confess his “crimes.” Only then can he be killed and forgotten, “unpersoned,” as Orwell would say. A similar dynamic is at work in cancel culture. Students and faculty in higher education, executives in industry, celebrities, athletes, and authors have lost careers, friends, reputations, and mental health due to the digital terrorism of social media mobs. Active participation by the scapegoat, via apologies and admissions of guilt, is often demanded, but such repentance emboldens rather than mollifies the persecutors. About such an environment, Girard argues, “legal parodies multiply and prompt behavior patterns like those of the three inquisitors at Job’s bedside.” Observed through the lens of mimetic theory, cancel culture is much more a manifestation of an ancient human habit than a new problem brought on by the development of smartphones and social media.
At the same time, cancel culture occurs in the wake of the Judeo-Christian revelation of the innocence of scapegoats. Once this lesson is learned, it cannot be entirely unlearned. As Girard explains, “our contemporary world revives primitive violence without rediscovering the absence of knowledge that endowed former societies with a relative innocence.” This malfunctioning of the scapegoat mechanism manifests in various ways. In different cancellations, many people see the cancelled for what they really are: victims of a mob. Further, without in any way minimizing the suffering of those who have been cancelled, such events are less violent than Stalin’s show trials or the witch hunts of old. No one has been cancelled and then shot behind a building or burned at a stake. No doubt such progress is cold comfort to those who have lost so much at the hands of self-righteous online tormentors, but it is still true. Although mimetic theory suggests cancel culture is relatively less violent in historical perspective, its enduring practice is a sign of a deteriorating society.
In “Collective Violence and Sacrifice in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar,” Haven offers a journal article in which Girard analyzes Shakeapeare’s dramatic depiction of an increasingly vile and violent politics of the kind that is all too familiar today. Various characters, Caesar and Brutus foremost among them, seek power but “instead of competing within the limits of the law, the rival leaders turn violent and treat each other as enemies.” Brutus and Cassius launch a conspiracy to murder Caesar. The larger the conspiracy gets, the easier it is to recruit people. Things rapidly snowball in the direction of mass violence. As Girard writes, “the contagion is such that the entire community is finally divided into two vast ‘conspiracies’ that can only do one thing: go to war with each other.”
The number of Americans attracted to peace through mass physical violence might be growing. In 2019, The New York Times reported twenty percent of Democrats and sixteen percent of Republicans reported occasionally thinking “the country would be better off if large numbers of the opposition died.” A 2024 study from the Chicago Project on Security and Threats showed more Americans are moving in the direction of translating such thoughts into reality. Responding to a question about how an assassination of Donald Trump might occur, one person wrote, “A large mob that bum rushes the stage at a rally and enacting Caesarean justice.” That the respondent made this connection between Trump and Caesar is not surprising. As Girard argues, “what people call the partisan spirit is nothing but choosing the same scapegoat as everybody else.”
Haven includes an excerpt from one of Girard’s interview books in which he discusses the passage in the Gospel of John where Jesus is confronted by a crowd intent on stoning to death a woman caught in adultery. Jesus tells them the first stone may be thrown by one who is without sin. There is a mimetic lesson here. The first stone is always the hardest to throw. Once the stoning begins, it is almost impossible for others to resist joining in the murder. But the same is true of relinquishing the first stone. The first person to do it becomes a model for others to imitate. Jesus protects the life of the woman, in part, by redirecting negative imitation toward a non-violent alternative. The transition from one form of imitation to the other may seem surprising but it is not impossible. As Haven observes, “the mechanism of scapegoat violence . . . is rooted in the very imitation that teaches us to love and learn.” Girard and Haven see a way out of the cycle of mimetic rivalry and collective violence: positive mimesis.
Haven’s book is an engaging introduction to Girard. Reading through its presentation of the components and explanatory power of mimetic theory, it becomes clear Americans have arrived at a time for a very different kind of choosing. One option is to take seriously Girard’s claim, found throughout the book, that scapegoating the innocent is something no one should do that almost all do. Mimetic rivalry and violence ought vigorously to be resisted through the practice of positive imitation. Haven argues the truth of mimetic theory is most deeply discovered “in the loneliness of the human heart.” In the heart is also the best place for each person to begin cultivating habits of positive mimesis. The other option is to continue with business as usual and participate in acts of scapegoating like cancel culture, political violence, and perhaps worse things to come, all the while convinced such deeds are justified because the really guilty deserve what they get. From the dawn of humanity to the present, most people have been option two people. More than ever before, now is the time to take seriously this Girardian maxim: “choose your enemies carefully because you will become like them.”
Justin D. Garrison is an independent scholar living in Southwestern Virginia. He was an associate professor of political science at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia. He earned his Ph.D. in Politics from The Catholic University of America, where he has also taught.
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