Criticism, Critique, and Crisis in Assessing the Work of René Girard

doi:10.1558/bsor.v45i3-4.31428

Bulletin for the Study of Religion, Vol 45, No 3-4 (2016)

Criticism, Critique, and Crisis in Assessing the Work of René Girard

Sandor Goodhart

Issued Date: 27 Oct 2016

Abstract

Perhaps it is time to begin the second stage of René Girard’s passing: the labor of a full critical assessment of his life’s work. In preparation, I thought I might consider some of the misunderstandings to which his work has been subject. After briefly recalling Girard’s three big ideas (mimetic desire, sacrificial violence and the scapegoat mechanism, scriptural revelation of the founding murder), I will suggest the most common misapprehensions: (1) the idea of the innocent victim; (2) the idea that there is a good and a bad mimesis; and (3) the relation between Girardianism and the ethical. Other issues remain to be clarified. Among them are the following ideas: (1) that Girardian thinking is scientific; (2) that it is not an advocacy of any kind but a way of producing knowledge; (3) that the center of gravity remains the process of sacrificial genesis and the scapegoat mechanism, mimetic desire, and their scriptural revelation serve that end; (4) that violence is not a thing or essence but difference gone wrong; and finally (5) that Girardian thinking is not an essentialism; it is not about what is “really” good, true, beautiful, or present but strategies of doing and acting. We best honor the work of our teachers and foremost thinkers by endeavoring to get it right for future generations for whom we, who have known the individual personally, remain a conduit.

Download Media

PDF (Price: £17.50 ) Restricted Access

DOI: 10.1558/bsor.v45i3-4.31428

References

Girard, René. 1961. Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque. Paris: Grasset.

———. 1972. La violence et le sacré. Paris: Grasset.

———. 1975. “Les Maledictions contre les pharisiens et la révélation évangelique” Bulletin du Centre Protestant d’Études (Genève), 5-29.

———. 1977. Violence and the Sacred. Translated by Patrick Gregory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

———. 1978a. Des choses cachées depuis la fondation du monde. Paris: Grasset.

———. 1978b. “To Double Business Bound”: Essays on Literature, Mimesis, and Anthropology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

———. 1982. Le bouc émissaire. Paris: Grasset.

———. 1991. A Theater of Envy: William Shakespeare. New York: Oxford University Press.

———. 1994. Quand ces choses commenceront . . . Entretiens avec Michel Treguer. Paris: Arléa.

———. 1999. Je vois Satan tomber comme l’éclair. Paris: Grasset.

———. 2004. Oedipus Unbound: Selected Writings on Rivalry and Desire. Edited by Mark Anspach. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

———. 2007. Achever Clausewitz. Entretiens avec Benoît Chantre. Paris: Carnets Nord.

———. 2015. “Animal Scapegoating at Çatalhöyük.” In How We Became Human: Mimetic Theory and the Science of Evolutionary Origins. Edited by Antonello Pierpaolo and Paul Gifford, 217-32. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.

Goodhart, Sandor. 2004. “Excluding Judaism,” Shofar 22 (2): 1–8.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/sho.2004.0023.

———. 2014a “From the Sacred to the Holy: René Girard, Emmanuel Levinas, and Substitution.” In The Prophetic Law: Essqys in Judaism, Girardianism, Literary Reading, and the Ethical, 201–28. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.

———. 2014b.The Prophetic Law: Essays in Judaism, Girardianism, Literary Reading, and the Ethical. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.

Goodhart, Sandor, Jørgen Jørgensen, Thomas Ryba, and James G. Williams, eds. 2009. For René Girard: Essays in Friendship and in Truth. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.

Hollier, Denis. 1988. The College of Sociology (1937–39). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1966. “The Science of the Concrete.” In The Savage Mind, 3-33. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Serres, Michel. 2009. “Receiving René Girard into the Académie Française.” In For René Girard: Essays in Friendship and in Truth, edited by Sandor Goodhart, Jørgen Jørgensen, Thomas Ryba, and James G Williams, 1–17. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.

Sophocles. 2004. The Tragedies of Sophocles. Translated
by Sir Richard C. Jebb. Cambridge University Press. http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/1155 .

Ward, Bruce. 2004. “Giving Voice to Isaac: The Sacrificial Victim in Kafka’s Trial.” Shofar 22 (2): 64–84.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/sho.2004.0043,

Refbacks

There are currently no refbacks.

Equinox Publishing Ltd - 415 The Workstation 15 Paternoster Row, Sheffield, S1 2BX United Kingdom
Telephone: +44 (0)114 221-0285 - Email: info@equinoxpub.com