René Girard Via First Things

The journal First Things has recently featured on its website a short essay by Peter J. Leithart entitled ‘Clashing Victimocracies!’  The author explores the privileged and problematic position of the ‘victim’ in current social and political debate. In doing so Mr. Leithart invokes René Girard as well as two of Girard’s interpreters Eric Gans and Jean-Pierre Dupuy. Earlier this year a review of a new René Girard biography appeared in the Wall Street Journal of all places. It is encouraging to see widely read periodicals bringing Girard’s work to a larger audience. Our modest efforts here at the Cornerstone Forum have begun a fruitful conversation with the Catholic intellectual and theological tradition. And the Colloquium on Violence and Religion continues to introduce new generations of academics to mimetic theory as well as explore and critique Girard’s work. However, unless one is tuned into specific sites of Girardian interest it is only infrequently that you will hear his work cited.

In the early 2000’s during one of Professor Girard’s Friday afternoon seminars on the campus of Stanford University I recall someone asking him what he thought would be the effect of his mimetic theory after he passed from the scene. In his typically self-effacing manner Professor Girard suggested that it would similarly pass from the scene, or perhaps ‘go underground’ (a sepulchral image I thought).  It has only been three years since René Girard departed this life. Even as the ravages of age had taken its toll on his mortal frame in his last years, his humility and gracious manner remained unimpaired. Yet it seemed his prediction was largely correct. The mimetic hypothesis and its apocalyptic perspective on human affairs is given little notice even as the world at large provides daily more evidence for its veracity.