René Girard
Biographic Data
| ID | 3680602 |
|---|---|
| NAME | René Girard |
| GIVEN NAMES | René |
| FAMILY NAME | Girard |
| SIGNATURE | GIRARD R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Stanford University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 70 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 389 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 70 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1953 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Le jugement de Salomon
Dans cet échange croisé entre Jacques T. Godbout et René Girard, le jugement de Salomon met en question l'importance respective de la rivalité mimétique et de l'esprit du don. L'une des deux mères prétendues rejette la violence jusqu'à risquer de perdre son enfant pour le sauver, ce qui est contraire au désir mimétique girardien, explique Godbout ; l'autre, au contraire, s'y conforme, et Girard ne retient que cette dernière, à laquelle sa théorie…
Des affinités méconnues
L’auteur de ces lignes a éprouvé deux coups de foudre intellectuels dans les années 1980 à la lecture de Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque et de La Distinction. Girard et Bourdieu sont deux grands artistes, créateurs chacun de deux univers pleins de sombre séduction, bâtis avec un appareillage conceptuel à l’intérieur duquel on se sent habiter. Ces deux univers communiquent tout en se combattant. Imitation et distinction sont aussi complém…
Belonging
This essay, originally delivered as a speech in Italy, was first published in Politiques de Caïn: En Dialogue avec René Girard (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 2004), 19–34. © Desclée de Brouwer 2004. I am indebted to Michael Hardin for bringing it to my attention.The French title is “Les appartenances.” If you look up “appartenance” in a French-English dictionary, you will likely find something like “membership” or “adherence.” However, Girard essent…
Rupture and Literary Creation in Jean-Paul Sartre [1968]
The One by Whom Scandal Comes
Why is there so much violence in our midst? Rene Girard asks. No question is more debated today. And none produces more disappointing answers. In Girard's mimetic theory it is the imitation of someone else's desire that gives rise to conflict whenever the desired object cannot be shared. This mimetic rivalry, Girard argues, is responsible for the frequency and escalating intensity of human conflict. For Girard, human conflict comes not from the l…
The Future of the Novel [1957]
Research Article| May 01 2012 The Future of the Novel [1957] René Girard; René Girard Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Robert Doran Robert Doran Translator Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Contagion: Journal of Violence Mimesis and Culture (2012) 19: 1–8. https://doi.org/10.2307/41925330 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation René Girard…
A Conversation with René Girard (August 2006/May 2007)
Research Article| May 01 2011 A Conversation with René Girard (August 2006/May 2007) Phil Rose; Phil Rose Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google René Girard René Girard Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Contagion: Journal of Violence Mimesis and Culture (2011) 18: 23–38. https://doi.org/10.2307/41925419 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Ph…
Mimesis and Theory: Essays on Literature and Criticism, 1953-2005
Mimesis and Theory brings together twenty of René Girard's uncollected essays on literature and literary theory, which, along with his classic, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, have left an indelible mark on the field of literary and cultural studies. Spanning over fifty years of critical production, this anthology offers unique insights into the origin, development, and expansion of Girard's "mimetic theory"—a groundbreaking account of human inter…
Apocalyptic Thinking after 9/11: An Interview with René Girard
Apocalyptic Thinking after 9/11:An Interview with René Girard1 Robert Doran (bio) and René Girard (bio) Robert Doran: Shortly after the attacks of September 11, 2001 you participated in an interview with the French news daily Le Monde, in which you stated that "what is occurring today is a mimetic rivalry on a planetary scale."2 This observation now appears truer than ever. All evidence points to a continuation and intensification of mimetic conf…
Wissenschaft und christlicher Glaube: Lucas-Preis 2006
Mit dem Leopold-Lucas-Preis wurde in diesem Jahr René Girard ausgezeichnet. René Girard faßt in diesem Vortrag seine Theorie über den Beitrag der Religionen des Christentums zur Bewältigung von Gewalt zusammen. Seine Vorstellung authentischer, illusionsfreier und darum auch gewaltfreier Religion, die er am Beispiel der biblischen Religion beschreibt und einer Religion, die illusionsverhaftet bleibt und deshalb auch Gewalt nicht überwindet, sonder…
La pierre rejetée par les bâtisseurs
Après avoir précisé le sens premier de l’expression polysémique « bouc émissaire », l’auteur démontre l’universalité du phénomène ainsi désigné, depuis les sociétés archaïques jusqu’aux contemporaines, universalité qui trouve son fondement dans l’existence d’une hiérarchie sacrificielle commune à l’humanité entière. Sur ce fond, l’auteur compare le judéo-christianisme aux religions archaïques, d’une part explicitant l’élément essentiel qu’ils par…
Oedipus Unbound: Selected Writings on Rivalry and Desire
Did Oedipus really kill his father and marry his mother? Or is he nothing but a scapegoat, set up to take the blame for a crisis afflicting Thebes? For René Girard, the mythic accusations of patricide and incest are symptomatic of a plague-stricken community's hunt for a culprit to punish, and Girard succeeds in making us see an age-old myth in a wholly new light. The hard-to-find writings assembled here include three major early essays, never be…
La France doit passer par la vérité: Propos recueillis par Sébastien Fumaroli
What Is Happening Today Is Mimetic Rivalry on a Global Scale
H.T.: Can your theory of mimetic rivalry be applied to the present international crisis? Girard: The error is always in reasoning from categories of difference. The root of all conflicts lies rather in competition, in mimetic rivalry between persons, countries, and cultures. Competition is the desire to imitate the other in order to obtain the same thing he or she has, by violence if necessary. Terrorism is undoubtedly connected to a world differ…
Celui par qui le scandale arrive
From Ritual To Science
Configurations - Volume 8, Number 2, Spring 2000
Signification du fondamentalisme
L'A. analyse l'origine du developpement du fondamentalisme religieux. Il estime que ce phenomene est a mettre en parallele avec la crise qui frappe l'ensemble des religions dans la periode actuelle et considere que les fondamentalistes s'efforcent de restaurer le potentiel d'exclusion, de separation offert par la religion aux depens de son potentiel de rapprochement et d'unite
Interview with René Girard: Comments on Christianity, Scapegoating, and Sacrifice
Eating Disorders and Mimetic Desire
Eating Disorders and Mimetic Desire René Girard Stanford University Among younger women, eating disorders are reaching epidemic proportions. The most widespread and spectacular at this moment is the most recently identified, the so-called bulimia nervosa, characterized by binge eating followed by "purging," sometimes through laxatives or diuretics, more often through self-induced vomiting. Some researchers claim that, in American colleges, at lea…
The Girard reader
The humanities, in memoriam
Robert Conquest: Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution in Stanford, California A century ago, Matthew Arnold in t roduced into c o m m o n English usage the word Philistine. He characterized the Philistine as ~a strong, dogged opponen t o f the chosen people, of the children of light. But we should r e m e m b e r that Israel's early troubles weren ' t always f rom this straightforward foe. O n the o ther flank lay a more insidious ene…
From Girard to Shakespeare, Kierkegaard, and Others
Origins: A View from the Literature
A response: Reflections from the perspective of mimetic theory
Shakespeare, les feux de l'envie: Les Feux De l'Envie
Violence and the Sacred: A Reader
Ren Girard (1923-) was Professor of French Language, Literature and Civilization at Stanford Unviersity from 1981 until his retirement in 1995. Violence and the Sacred is Girard's brilliant study of human evil. Girard explores violence as it is represented and occurs throughout history, literature and myth. Girard's forceful and thought-provoking analyses of Biblical narrative, Greek tragedy and the lynchings and pogroms propagated by contemporar…
Violence and the Sacred
Deceit, Desire, and the Novel
Mimesis and Theory: Essays on Literature and Criticism, 1953-2005
Mimesis and Theory brings together twenty of René Girard's uncollected essays on literature and literary theory, which, along with his classic, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, have left an indelible mark on the field of literary and cultural studies. Spanning over fifty years of critical production, this anthology offers unique insights into the origin, development, and expansion of Girard's "mimetic theory"—a groundbreaking account of human inter…
Mensonge romantique et verite romanesque
Innovation and Repetition
INNOVATION, FROM THE LATIN innovare, innovatio, should signify renewal, rejuvenation from inside, rather than novelty, which is its modern meaning in both English and French. Judging from the examples in the Oxford English Dictionary and the Littrd, the word came into widespread use only in the 16th century and, until the 18th century, its connotations are almost uniformly unfavorable. In the vulgar tongues, as well as in medieval Latin, the word…
To Double Business Bound: Essays on Literature, Mimesis, and Anthropology
An individual desires an object, not for itself, but because another individual also desires it. This mimetic desire, Rene Girard contends, lies at the source of all human disorder and order. In brilliant readings of Dante, Camus, Nietzsche, Dostoevski, Levi-Strauss, Freud, and others, Girard draws out the thesis of mimetic desire -- and ponders its suppression in the West since Plato: The historical mutilation of mimesis ...was no mere oversight…
Oedipus Unbound: Selected Writings on Rivalry and Desire
Did Oedipus really kill his father and marry his mother? Or is he nothing but a scapegoat, set up to take the blame for a crisis afflicting Thebes? For René Girard, the mythic accusations of patricide and incest are symptomatic of a plague-stricken community's hunt for a culprit to punish, and Girard succeeds in making us see an age-old myth in a wholly new light. The hard-to-find writings assembled here include three major early essays, never be…
Interview: Rene Girard
Violence and Representation in the Mythical Text
Differentiation and Undifferentiation in Levi-Strauss and Current Critical Theory
The conclusion of Claude Levi-Strauss' L'Homme nu, entitled Finale, asserts that myth embodies a principle of differentiation identical with language and thought.1 Ritual, on the other hand, tries to retrieve an immediacy. Ritual tries to undo the work of language. Fortunately, Levi-Strauss adds, this perverse undertaking will never succeed. The undifferentiated of ritual can only be made up of objects already differentiated by language and artif…
Apocalyptic Thinking after 9/11: An Interview with René Girard
Apocalyptic Thinking after 9/11:An Interview with René Girard1 Robert Doran (bio) and René Girard (bio) Robert Doran: Shortly after the attacks of September 11, 2001 you participated in an interview with the French news daily Le Monde, in which you stated that "what is occurring today is a mimetic rivalry on a planetary scale."2 This observation now appears truer than ever. All evidence points to a continuation and intensification of mimetic conf…
Eating Disorders and Mimetic Desire
Eating Disorders and Mimetic Desire René Girard Stanford University Among younger women, eating disorders are reaching epidemic proportions. The most widespread and spectacular at this moment is the most recently identified, the so-called bulimia nervosa, characterized by binge eating followed by "purging," sometimes through laxatives or diuretics, more often through self-induced vomiting. Some researchers claim that, in American colleges, at lea…
La Route antique des hommes pervers
La Route antique des hommes pervers
Scandal and the Dance: Salome in the Gospel of Mark
O F ALL the arts, only dance is mentioned in the gospels, and then in only two of them, Mark and Matthew, which relate the story of the beheading of John the Baptist. Mark's is the richer text. He tells us that, in the course of a banquet given by Herod, the daughter of the tetrarch's wife, came in, and danced, and pleased Herod and his There is nothing further on the dance itself. It is not described in our two gospels, nor is the dancer's name …
Belonging
This essay, originally delivered as a speech in Italy, was first published in Politiques de Caïn: En Dialogue avec René Girard (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 2004), 19–34. © Desclée de Brouwer 2004. I am indebted to Michael Hardin for bringing it to my attention.The French title is “Les appartenances.” If you look up “appartenance” in a French-English dictionary, you will likely find something like “membership” or “adherence.” However, Girard essent…
La violence et le sacre
Interview with René Girard: Comments on Christianity, Scapegoating, and Sacrifice
Dionysus versus the Crucified
For a while, after the war, a great debate raged about Nietzsche's own responsibility in the Nazi exploitation of his writing for antiSemitic purposes. There was mostly silence, however, regarding his anti-Christian stance; it is too explicit and consistent to be denied. To those who felt that Nietzsche's work should not fall into neglect, the point was irrelevant anyway. Why should Nietzsche be exonerated from an attitude that a majority of inte…
The Role of Eroticism in Malraux's Fiction
Marriage in Avignon in the Second Half of the Fifteenth Century
Existentialism and Criticism
Man, Myth and Malraux
Pride and Passion in the Contemporary Novel
Memoirs of a Dutiful Existentialist
OEuvres: Sommaire biographique, introduction, notices, releve de variantes et notes par Suzanne Bernard
Mensonge romantique et verite romanesque
Romain Rolland
Des Formes aux structures, en litterature et ailleurs
Les 6tudes litteraires ont requ de leur marraine, la fee positiviste, deux dons de valeurs inegales. Le premier, veritablement sans prix, est la me'thode qui sert encore et servira toujours 'a etablir les textes aussi bien qu'a' critiquer les faits recueillis par l'histoire litteraire. Le deuxieme de ces dcns est l'idee d'une science litteraire parallele aux sciences de la nature, telles que les concevait le XIXe siecle finissant. Une reaction co…
Renard
Marcel Arland, Benjamin Cremieux, Ramon Fernandez: Trois Critiques de la Nouvelle Revue Francaise
Drieu la Rochelle
Deceit, desire, and the novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure.
Reflexions Critiques Sur Les Recherches Litteraires
Deceit, Desire, and the Novel
Work in Progress
Perilous Balance: A Comic Hypothesis
La violence et le sacre
Levi-Strauss, Frye, Derrida and Shakespearean Criticism
Ritual Reality, Tragic Imitation, Mythic Projection
Superman in the Underground: Strategies of Madness-Nietzsche, Wagner, and Dostoevsky
Differentiation and Undifferentiation in Levi-Strauss and Current Critical Theory
The conclusion of Claude Levi-Strauss' L'Homme nu, entitled Finale, asserts that myth embodies a principle of differentiation identical with language and thought.1 Ritual, on the other hand, tries to retrieve an immediacy. Ritual tries to undo the work of language. Fortunately, Levi-Strauss adds, this perverse undertaking will never succeed. The undifferentiated of ritual can only be made up of objects already differentiated by language and artif…
Violence and Representation in the Mythical Text
Dionysus and the Violent Genesis of the Sacred
In an essay on Oedipus Rex I tried to show that the genesis of myth can be read in the filigree of tragedy.2 The ritual expulsion demanded by Oedipus at the end of the play echoes the collective violence which constitutes the true mainspring of mythological creation. This decisive and unanimous violence alone is able to immobilize and to fix meaning. Without it, meaning continues to oscillate to the whim of a violence which remains reciprocal, a …
Art (42 works) · Philosophy (34 works) · Violence, Religion, and Philosophy (22 works) · Psychology (16 works) · Literature (15 works) · Sociology (14 works) · History (13 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Humanities (11 works) · Psychoanalysis (11 works)