René Girard's Mimetic Theory (Studies in Violence, Mimesis & Culture)
René Girard wrote: "All desire is a desire for being." It's a phrase I use often because this imitated desire is powered by the wish to be the person who models our desire for us. We think that this person possesses metaphysical qualities we do not. We imagine the idolized individual has the power, charisma, cool, wisdom, equanimity. So we want tha... See more
French literary theorist and anthropologist Rene Girard called mimetic desire, meaning, we want what someone else wants, because we want to be that someone else.
Jonathan Sacks • Lessons in Leadership: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible (Covenant & Conversation Book 8)
We began with the idea that underpins all of Girard’s theories––imitation. Conflict between people, he believes, is rooted in our propensity for imitation or in what he calls “mimetic desire”—an idea that began to take shape for him through his study of the great European novelists.
David Cayley • The Ideas of Rene Girard: An Anthropology of Religion and Violence
The single victim mechanism only functions by means of the ignorance of those who keep it working.