Sublime

Mimetic desire, he explains in his 1972 book Violence and the Sacred, is deeply antagonistic in nature and operates as the engine of social rivalry and conflict.

To better understand this concept, we must examine Girard’s usage of the term “scapegoat” more closely. The term first appears in the book of Leviticus (16) and describes a rite in which the high priest symbolically laid the sins of the community on the back of a goat, which was then cast into the wilderness to the demon Azazel.

Models are people or things that show us what is worth wanting. It is models—not our “objective” analysis or central nervous system—that shape our desires. With these models, people engage in a secret and sophisticated form of imitation that Girard termed mimesis (mi-mee-sis), from the Greek word mimesthai (meaning “to imitate”).

discharge itself in a crescendo of violence—Girard’s sacrificial event. The extreme reflexivity that renders mimetic dynamics explosively excitable is compressed into the violent volatility of prices.

Lacan se définira comme celui qui, à l’instar du « héros », peut être « impunément trahi ».

Girard expressly praises Sartre’s insistence on man’s “insurmountable” religious nature, in the wake of Nietzsche’s proclamation of the death of God.

Mimetic desire enables us to escape from the animal realm. It is responsible for the best and the worst in us, for what lowers us below the animal level as well as what elevates us above it. Our unending discords are the ransom of our freedom.