René Girard Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Compelling voices charge that the theological notion of “sacrifice” valorizes suffering and fosters a culture of violence by the claim that Christ’s death on the Cross paid for human sins. Beneath the ‘sacred’ violence of sacrifice, René... more

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- Systematic Theology, Asceticism, Rene Girard, The Atonement
- by Pierpaolo Antonello
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- Critical Theory, René Girard

Questo libro raccoglie una serie di interventi che coprono l’arco della produzione teorica di Girard, dagli esordi di Menzogna romantica e verità romanzesca, dove la critica letteraria diventa analisi sociale e antropologica, fino allo... more

- by Pierpaolo Antonello
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- René Girard

Dosent Høgskolen på Vestlandet Hos Girard kommer ikke gudsbegrepet eksplisitt inn i tenkningen før i hovedverket Des choses cachées depuis la fondation du monde, 1978 (eng. overs. Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World). Likevel, selve gudsbegrepet er antydet, både i utviklingen av den mimetiske teorien Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque, 1961 (eng. overs. Deceit, Desire & The Novel)) og i teorien om syndebukkmekanismen La Violence et le sacré, 1972 (eng. overs. Violence and the Sacred). I den litteraturteoretiske refleksjonen, Deceit, Desire & The Novel bruker Girard begrepene vertikal og avvikende transcendens, 1 hvor avvikende transcendens knyttes til en romantisk begjaerslegitimering bygd på rivalisering, mens den vertikale transcendensen knyttes til en tilstand etter å ha avslørt de metafysiske eller illusoriske begjaerene, en form for realisme oppnådd gjennom omvendelse.

- by Per Grande
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- Theology, The Atonement, Mimetic Theory, René Girard

Parmi les thèmes et engagements jalonnant l’œuvre et le parcours de Denis de Rougemont, le rapport à la démocratie, au fascisme et au national-socialisme dans les années 1930 suscite des jugements contrastées chez les historiens. Les exégèses du Journal d’Allemagne, publié par Rougemont après un séjour à Francfort en 1935-1936, en sont une bonne illustration. Quand les unes soulignent les prises de position condamnant le régime hitlérien, les autres pointent au contraire les efforts de Rougemont pour se mettre dans la peau des Allemands de l’époque, le peu d’attention accordée au destin des Juifs, la fascination mêlée de répulsion pour le chef charismatique. Ces éloges ou ces critiques, abordant la relation au national-socialisme en termes de répulsion-attraction ou de résistance-adaptation, font écho à la polarisation du débat historiographique qui s’est opérée suite aux travaux de Zeev Sternhell au début des années 1980. Sans ignorer les résultats de ces recherches, nous souhaitons ici renouveler l’interprétation des écrits de Rougemont en examinant le problème central que s’est posé l’écrivain face au national-socialisme : l’émergence d’une religion de substitution, dans un contexte de déchristianisation accélérée. Nous évoquerons tout d’abord le milieu intellectuel dans lequel Rougemont évolue au début des années 1930, en soulignant les tensions qui agitent ce milieu et qui sont exacerbées du fait de l’émergence du national-socialisme sur la scène politique allemande. Puis nous testerons la validité du concept de « religion de substitution » en montrant les conséquences, à la fois religieuses et politiques, du déclin du protestantisme en Allemagne. Nous évoquerons enfin l’une des limites de l’interprétation de Rougemont, ainsi que la manière dont son protestantisme conditionne non seulement son diagnostic du national-socialisme mais aussi la réponse qu’il lui oppose.

- by Nicolas Stenger
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- History of Religion, Fascism, Protestantism, Electoral Behavior

Föraktad var han och övergiven av människor, en smärtornas man och förtrogen med sjukdom. Han var som en för vilken man döljer sitt ansikte, så föraktad att vi höll honom för intet. Jes. 53:3 414 Se på korset där han hänger hur han... more

- by Jayne Svenungsson
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- Philosophy, Pain, Phenomenology, Christology

How mimetic theory can be used when teaching religion

- by Per Grande
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- Mimesis, Learning and Teaching, Desire, René Girard

The young adult series The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (2008, 20091 has been one of the most successful franchises on page and screen of the last decade. But what motivates the popularity of this admittedly grim tale of teenagers fighting one another to the death? The French literary critic René Girard once pithily wrote that “violence is the heart and secret soul of the sacred” (2013, 34), and it is this insight that I will use to examine the connection between the violence of The Hunger Games and its broader religious and cultural connotations. Building on the work of Girard and other key theorists of religion like Georges Bataille and Jacques Derrida, I shall discuss the sacrificial logic at work in Suzanne Collins’ series. Even as I presume neither belief nor unbelief on the part of author and readership alike, I read Collins’ work as manifesting a deeply religious sensibility in the way that it imagines sacrifice in its dystopic future of the United States. In this paper, d...

- by Emily McAvan
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- Religion, Psychology, Popular Culture, Jacques Derrida

Generative Anthropology as espoused by Eric Gans and the works of religious historian, Mircea Eliade, cross paths many times in the same abstract territory to do with the origins of humanity & symbolic culture, myth & ritual, and the idea of the sacred. Whether we find contrast and disagreement or agreement and synthesis in their views will largely depend on what we are looking for when we begin. In this brief report, I will make an effort to identify both similarities and differences in their perspectives. To further limit the scope of this investigation, I shall focus mainly on the concept of the sacred, especially as it manifests itself in the lived reality of prehistoric humanity, though the above themes (origin of the human mind, myth & ritual) are related enough to be mentioned as well. With my limited time, the presentation itself will be an abstract of what could become and (hopefully) will become a larger study.

Violence: a systemic reading. Towards a relational anthropology Abstract This paper presents the topic of violence considered by a twofold point of view: the epistemological stance of complex thought and the scientific stance of change in dynamic systems. Our basic presupposition is that the definitions of violence and of violent practices are always historical and context-dependent and that each social system acts to fight or to strengthen these definitions and this practices: the social environment, where a lot of human actors does interact, informs always us about the limits within which the violent phenomena may and must be considered. Interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity are necessary conditions to profitably approach this investigation field. Cultural anthropology is situated in a strategic spot within the broader field of complex system sciences, as an open discipline placed in ongoing dialogue with many other branches of knowledge, and as a field able to challenge many presuppositions in our traditional cognitive practices, that were taken for granted until now, and to seek more effective practices and conceptual landscapes for the understanding of our world.

- by Arianna Barazzetti and +1
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- Violence, Gregory Bateson, René Girard, Estudios sobre Violencia y Conflicto

Conference PowerPoint presentation slides for SoCIA 2016, Clemson, SC.

- by Brian Green
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- Ethics, Applied Ethics, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas

Dawson's fine book shows how the logic of sacrifice in Western Christian theories of atonement intersects with the emergence of the modern political meaning of the term" scapegoat" during the Calvinist Reformation. This argument, though, does not so much confirm as give grounds for criticizing Girard's claim that sacrifice is undone by the Cross, and suggests (contrary to intent) more that the "scapegoat" in the modern sense arises with modern democratic politics, than that modern politics arises from the revelation of the sacrificial victim as a scapegoat by Christianity, à la Girard.

- by Stephen L. Gardner
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- John Calvin, René Girard, Sacrifice, Historical Theories of Atonement

The usual criticisms of critical race theory (CRT) have become patent and cliché by now. CRT essentializes race and those within races, figuring all white people as racist and all black people as oppressed. It treats people not as individuals with individual motives and goals but strictly as members of their racial group. It denies individual agency to the very people it aims to liberate. It implies that racial group membership determines the beliefs and behaviors of those within said groups, curtailing an appreciation of their full humanity. It ascribes all outcomes to racial group membership, thereby denying merit to those in the "dominant" category (whites), while denying responsibility to those in the "subordinated" categories (blacks, indigenous, and people of color, or BIPOC). It makes contemporary white people guilty for the sins of long-dead white people who bene!ted from slavery. By incessantly harping on race, it exacerbates if it doesn't create racial strife. CRT is divisive and threatens the social order by provoking perpetual enmity between the races. So, the story goes. The same kinds of criticisms may be leveled at critical whiteness studies (CWS). Such analyses are by now legion. Rather than engaging in this kind of critical commentary, in this article, I aim to understand how CRT and its offshoot, CWS, function in the social field. Just how does the "abolition of whiteness"--arguably the ultimate goal of CRT and CWS--operate? How might we understand CRT's and CWS's treatment of whiteness and the intention to abolish it?

- by Michael Rectenwald
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- Critical Race Theory, Rene Girard, René Girard, Critical Whiteness Studies

Secondary school teachers often complain that their students show a disengaged attitude in class. Students do not prepare for lessons, they show a passive attitude towards classroom activities and they have a limited awareness of their own learning process. Based on a pilot study, four homework assignments were designed, implemented, and evaluated to stimulate students to prepare for history lessons and subsequently show a more engaged attitude and involvement in classroom activities. Two groups of, in total 50, 11th grade students of pre-university education participated in one group pre-post-test design. Data on student engagement in class is gathered by class observation: time on task, their level of activity, and amount and variety of questions students asked. Students' motivation and perceived learning outcomes are measured by means of a self-report: Three of the four homework assignments (jigsaw, preparing analytical skills, and the fragmented assessment) showed increase in student engagement compared to the baseline of the first two classes. Implications for practice are discussed. Keywords Student engagement. Homework assignments. Activating instructions. Active students Studies have characterized high school students, in particular, as bored, staring out classroom windows, counting the seconds for the bell to ring, and pervasively disengaged from the learning process (Goodlad 1984; Larson and Richards 1991). Many teachers think that their students are disengaged in class and show little awareness of their own learning process. The mostly heard complaint is that students do not prepare for class as they make only little use of instructional materials, extracurricular activities and assignments, and

- by Wilfried Admiraal
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- Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering

Les descriptions détaillées de violences collectives modernes, surtout politiques, comme les pogroms, les émeutes raciales, le nettoyage ethnique, l’holocauste ou les génocides donnent de ces phénomènes une image à première vue fort différente de celle que nous offre la théorie girardienne de la crise mimétique. En effet presque toutes les analyses de ces violences s’accordent pour reconnaître l’importance de meneurs du jeu, d’acteurs politiques principaux, de spécialistes et de véritables entrepreneurs de la violence sans lesquels les massacres n’auraient pas eu lieu et les événements auraient pris une tournure toute différente. Loin d’être spontanée, l’effet d’une contagion qui envahit l’ensemble de la société, la violence collective, d’après certains des meilleurs exemples que nous possédions semble être planifiée, organisée, réfléchie, sinon rationnelle, le résultat d’une action concertée et coordonnée. Or comment concilier ces descriptions avec la conception girardienne de la crise, le rôle qu’elle accorde au mimétisme et l’importance qu’elle donne aux phénomènes de contagion?

- by Paul P G Dumouchel
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- Violence, Genocide Studies, Political Violence and Terrorism, Mimetic Theory

The complex problem of sacrifice is treated from different perspectives in Western and Eastern traditions. Girard's late turn towards a more comprehensive view of the term can be understood as a certain opening up to Eastern traditions. It corresponds with Simone Weil's critique of a pacifism turning against violence only out of cowardliness. Weil's analysis of both Western and Eastern religious traditions finally leads to Mahatma Gandhi who similarly knows that non-violence can demand sacrifice.

- by Wolfgang Palaver
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- Simone Weil, René Girard, Mahatma Gandhi, Opfer

Liebe ist ein Schlagwort, das in jüngsten Bildungsdiskursen beinahe zum Tabu avancierte und nur mehr mit äußerster Vorsicht Eingang in die Fachliteratur findet. Zu fließend erscheinen die Grenzen zum sexuellen Missbrauch – zu aufgeblasen... more

- by Nadja Köffler and +2
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- Psychology, Anthropology, Philosophy, Education

This paper examines how blessed Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian peasant executed by the Nazis during World War II, exemplified what Daniel M. Bell refers to as “just war as Christian discipleship.” After brief considerations of both Christian pacifism and realism, it considers just war theory today in connection with recent Catholic teaching as found in the Vatican II document Pacem in Terris, specifically in no. 34 on “An Attitude of Responsibility,” which calls for Christian discipleship and responsibility based on Jesus’ way of the cross, in the context of faith in divine providence and the Resurrection.

- by Jennifer Adkins
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- Just War Theory, René Girard, CHRISTIAN DISCIPLESHIP, Pacem In Terris

It is common to see Myshkin, the principal character of Dostoevsky's The Idiot, as a failed lover and a compassionate saintly figure, who gets entangled in a love triangle but cannot embody it. This paper challenges such a view and argues that Myshkin fully incarnates the violent dynamic of desire that governs the novel. With the help of René Girard's notion of mimetic desire, the paper explores Myshkin's relationship with Rogozhin as erotic rivalry. Instead of seeing the two characters as autonomous entities, it is suggested that they should be viewed as doubles, as two poles of the same consciousness. On this view, Myshkin's compassion and Rogozhin's lust become two different manifestations of the same desire, united by a conflict of interest, which drives the love triangle towards a violent resolution.

- by Denis Zhernokleyev
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- Religion, Russian Literature, Theology, Orthodox Theology

Lo spettro del fascismo si aggira di nuovo per il mondo contemporaneo. In questo libro, Nidesh Lawtoo prende il Caso Trump per illustrare l'(in)attualità della tesi di Nietzsche che un giorno, "gli attori, ogni tipo di attori, saranno i veri sovrani." Iscrivendosi in una genealogia di teorici della mimesi-da Pla-tone a Nietzsche, passando per Tarde, Le Bon, Freud, Bataille, Girard, Lacoue-Labar-the e Nancy-Lawtoo dimostra che il (new) fascism non è del tutto nuovo, e per niente originale. Eppure, attori che giocano il ruolo di apprendisti presidenti ricaricano il vecchio fantasma della mimesi via new media che hanno il potere sconcertante di trasformare la realtà politica in un reality show.
https://www.ibs.it/neo-fascismo-contagio-comunita-mito-libro-nidesh-lawtoo/e/9788857564142
In copertina: Con/dividere, mixed media su carta, © Michaela Lawtoo

- by Nidesh Lawtoo
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- Mimesis, Poststructuralism, Fascism, Friedrich Nietzsche

Although familiar to academic theologians for almost two decades, and a frequent giver of retreats, talks, and workshops, James Alison remains an unknown figure for many Christian intellectuals and leaders. Yet from his writings many have gleaned that Alison's unique gift to make complex theological ideas intelligible makes him peculiarly equipped to appeal to those on the margins and to nourish those eager to be fed. With the aid of the Raven Foundation (dedicated to making mimetic theory accessible), Alison's most recent work, Jesus the Forgiving Victim, constitutes a short summa of his earlier, constructive theology. Derived from his small group course and developed over twelve years, this set of books + videodiscs offers the most comprehensive and accessible introduction to his project: a recasting of the story of Christianity with the help of mimetic theory. Despite lacking the multimedia pizzazz of, say, Robert Barron's Catholicism, it offers a

- by Grant Kaplan
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- Catholic Studies, Theological Anthropology, Catholic Theology, Catechetics

In this article on imitation and violence I wish to interpret violent relations between human beings as founded on imitation of each other desires. (A desire for what other people desire.) Imitation, the desire to have what other people desire, is both the root to success and the root to violence. The article is inspired by the French philosopher, René Girard's (b. 1923) theory on imitative desire. In my view societies are continually threatened by violent imitation, and, at the same time, imitation is the factor which creates dynamic societies and cultures. Human beings are driven by desiring what other people desire, by wanting what others want.

- by Per Grande
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- Religion and Violence/Nonviolence, Mimetic Theory, René Girard, Religion and Violence
- by Vicente de Haro Romo and +4
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- Secularization, Sacred (Religion), René Girard, Rene Girard 'Mimetic Theory'

While theological reflection on the question of secularism has been illuminating, it has not always provided resources for those still seeking to encounter God. By responding to Karl Rahner's paradoxical counsel-"in despair, despair not"-this article engages William Desmond and René Girard to uncover two distinct, yet complementary, "Ways" capable of returning seekers to God. When undertaken as a theological meditation, these "Ways" can awaken us to the graced order, the "order of charity," in which we live.

- by Ryan G Duns, SJ
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- Karl Rahner, William Desmond, Charles Taylor, René Girard

Lévi-Strauss's work appears to exhibit a paradoxical, trademark contrast: on the one hand, a positive and reasonably confident approach to the restricted domain of anthropological research, particularly in his constant defence of the Structuralist method; on the other, a more pessimistic, gloomy, almost nihilistic approach in the existential domain and in his general worldview. By focusing on certain biographical events and recasting some of his writings, this paper aims to shed new light on the renowned French anthropologist's expectations and dejections, trying to show how this lifelong tension can be coherently articulated with Lévi-Strauss thinking and work.

Intertextual relations between Oscar Wilde and Joris-Karl Huysmans yield atrocious insight and inexplicable good times.

This article argues that the notion of ‘victim’ primarily refers to the position of the person who, in the course of a (sacred, religious, legal, etc.) procedure, is ritually sacrificed to avert the wrath of the gods or to preserve peace in the community. In early modernity the Latin victima (sacrificial animal) was also used as a reference to Jesus Christ. Christ was seen as the lamb of God, the innocent sacrificial lamb which, after an unfair trial, was crucified and died for the sins of the world. In the eighteenth century, under influence of the Enlightenment, the victim concept has been secularized and come to refer to every casualty of bad luck, crime, or disaster. Art history, however, offers interesting examples of pictures of mythical figures such as Sisyphus and Prometheus, representing early images of secularized victimhood in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the present day, the concept of victimhood is often used to define the position of the injured party in
criminal proceedings. In this frame, the injured victim, looking for legal recognition, is juxtaposed against the position of the accused who is characterized as the possible culprit. However, reflection on the history of the victim concept reveals that it primarily refers to the position of the wrongly or falsely accused or condemned in the course of legal (or pseudolegal) proceedings. A state governed by the rule of law (‘rechtsstaat’) can be defined as a legal form of society which does its utmost to avoid the justice system producing its own victims. In this
approach, a victim-oriented criminal justice system is fully aware of the need to protect precisely those who are threatened by the power of the state and public opinion because they are in the dock.

- by Wouter Veraart
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- Criminology, Criminal Law, Criminal Justice, Trauma Studies

With a current population of roughly 300,000 – less than one percent of Iran’s overall population – the Baha’i community is the largest non-Muslim religious minority in Iran. Since the inception of the Baha’i faith in 1867, its adherents in Iran have suffered ongoing persecutions by various religious and political authorities and their followers. These persecutions include cultural, structural and direct violence and have been described as an “ideological genocide”, that is, “acts committed with the intent to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”. The persecution of the Baha’is could be viewed as a case of sectarian violence. Building on René Girard’s theory of mimetic violence and scapegoating, I argue that religion does not lie at the root of this conflict. Rather, I argue that the violence aimed at Iran’s Baha’i community is caused primarily by Iran’s protracted period of societal, economic and political instability which, in turn, has led to the scapegoating of Baha’is, setting of a vicious cycle of violence aimed at their Iranian community.

- by Anouck de Wringer
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- Peace and Conflict Studies, Mimetic Theory, René Girard, Genocide

La mia tesi, redatta per il conseguimento della laurea magistrale in Filosofia (Università degli Studi di Trieste, a.a. 2013-2014; docenti relatori: proff. F. Polidori - A. Magris) si propone come un'interpretazione del simbolismo rivoluzionario di uno strumento di morte, fondata sull'applicazione dell'antropologia del sacrificio e della storia della tortura al segno della croce.

- by Costanza De Cillia
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- Torture, Sacred (Religion), Martyrdom, René Girard

The concept of scapegoating has widely used descriptive power with respect to reporting and understanding social violence. It is helpful, though, to review the limits of this concept with respect to explaining and redressing the causes of social violence. The disciplines of psychology, sociology, literary criticism, theology, and rhetoric each have particular versions of what scapegoating is as a social phenomenon. One reason the concept is confusing in scholarly discussions is because multiple versions converge. While the different versions are neither independent nor mutually exclusive, their mixing can result in confusion. It is worthwhile to distinguish these different versions, review their interconnectedness, and critique the flaws in the scholarly discussion of scapegoating, in particular, in René Girard’s work.

- by Keith Doubt
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- Violence, Human Rights Law, Human Rights, Conflict

I wish I would first have checked to see what the Gospel reading was for this Sunday before I volunteered to preside at this service. The Gospel reading is a doosey of a text.
“Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! …” All this talk of fire and division and households deeply divided. All this against stuff in a family. Its as if Jesus some kind of divine family arsonist instead of the Prince of Peace.

- by Stephen G Nuske
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- Peace and Conflict Studies, Theology, Biblical Studies, René Girard

The purpose of this paper is to provide an explanatory account of the role of emotions in the trade dispute between Japan and South Korea which started in July 2019. Building on an integrated approach to the study of emotions in international relations, it argues that the collective experience of emotions in situations of conflict has to be understood in relation to the moralities assumed by the parties involved. It proposes a theoretical framework combining the concepts of mimetic desire and ressentiment coined by René Girard and Friedrich Nietzsche, respectively, in order to problematize the dialectic of power-justice underlying the processes of legitimation and self-justification by the two countries. In this sense, the strong emotional reactivity between both elites and people in South Korea and Japan can be attributed to the contradictions between the desires for superiority and equality channelled by nation-state-centred narratives. It concludes that ending the cycle of emotional reactivity requires both parties to move toward commitments to justice and empathy at the domestic and international levels.

- by Ahlem Faraoun
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- International Relations Theory, Korean Studies, Social Justice, Nationalism

Resumo: Os autores fazem uma análise da Escatologia cristã à luz da teoria mimética e do conceito militar de “escalada para os extremos”, usando como mote a letra da música “Iron Man” da banda inglesa Black Sabbath. A escatologia é um conjunto de doutrinas (entre elas a cristã), que comungam da ideia de que
o mundo chegará a um “fim”, comumente chamado de Apocalipse ou Armageddon. A letra da música que empresta fundo ao texto, narra o fim do mundo sob a perspectiva do “Iron Man”, um personagem que, apesar de ter salvado os homens, foi rejeitado por eles. Então o ele viaja no tempo, para o futuro, momento em que destrói a humanidade. O presente artigo traça um paralelo entre a mensagem do “Homem de Ferro” e os prenúncios do Apocalipse bíblico, numa análise interdisciplinar.

- by Wilson Franck Junior and +1
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- Violence, Mimesis, Rene Girard, René Girard

El futuro de nuestro mundo y el pensamiento crítico, publicado esta semana última de junio de 2019 en la Revista Javeriana.
Muchas gracias por los comentarios mientras estuvo en borrador.

- by Roberto Solarte
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- René Girard, Pensamiento Crítico

This essay offers a reflection on the nature of love— particularly familial love—within the apocalyptic and media-saturated context of World War Z (2013). Moreover, it explains how World War Z offers an alternative to a consumptive and over-mediated view of love. The discussion is undertaken through developing analogies between zombie tropes, René Girard’s mimetic theory and Simone Weil’s mystical philosophy. Particular emphasis is placed on Girard’s conception of undifferentiation and Weil’s explorations of love, attention and hunger. Apart from exploring certain tensions that arise from living amidst media, the argument is intended to provide a reinterpretation of the nature of the zombie both as a cinematic symbol and as critique of the imploded world that is the global village.

- by Duncan Reyburn
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- Simone Weil, René Girard, Zombies, World War Z
- by Stephen L. Gardner
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- Sigmund Freud, René Girard, Philip Rieff, Democratic Culture

Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941) demeure l’un des films les moins appréciés d’Hitchcock : une des raisons de ce désaveu vient du cinéaste lui-même. Pourtant, un examen de cette « comédie de remariage » révèle la manière dont Hitchcock, tout en s’adaptant aux codes d’un genre bien établi, la screwball comedy, reprend une donnée récur-rente dans son œuvre : un couple engagé dans un conflit comique à l’ombre d’une menace externe, ici un tiers entreprenant. Hitchcock assimile les conventions de la comédie screwball en y infusant une dynamique propre à ses habitudes narratives et formelles. Le couple central fait de ce film une œuvre transitoire entre les couples conflictuels transformés en duo comique introduits dans ses thrillers anglais (The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes) et ceux de ses films américains ultérieurs (Rear Window, The Trouble with Harry, North by Northwest…).
A partir d’une théorie du conflit triangulaire inspirée de René Girard, une étude de la scène centrale du film (l’épouse et le tiers entreprenant mettant à l’épreuve le mari jaloux dans l’espace domestique du couple) met en valeur la relation conflictuelle à trois et souligne les contradictions du couple comique, ainsi que les nouvelles condi-tions du mariage moderne dans un genre américain qui en propose aussi bien une parodie qu’une réévaluation éthique. De même, elle confirme la compréhension qu’a eue Hitchcock de l’univers et de la syntaxe de la screwball comedy, genre dont il aura été un contributeur méconnu et dont il héritera certains codes pour la suite de son œuvre.

- by Toufic El-Khoury
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- Comedy, Screwball Comedy, Classical Hollywood, René Girard
- by Chris Fleming
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- Violence, Mimesis, Desire, René Girard

"J'ai dit une fausseté! Ah! Ce n'est pas bien. Si j'étais historien, ça me serait pardonnable, mais pour un romancier non. Un roman est plus vrai que l'histoire." (Déclaration de Balzac à l'écrivain russe Chéviryov).

- by Mariolina Bertini
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- René Girard, Honoré de Balzac

French thinker Rene Girard’s seminal work on mimetic desire and the propensity for archaic societies to practice violent sacrifice proffers a rich hermeneutic for Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games. First, the purpose of the rituals and the mythological narrative surrounding tribute sacrifice are best understood in relation to Girard’s vision of sacral violence and religious practices. Second, control for power in Panem, is essentially a vying for control over mythological narratives. Lastly, Katniss’s final actions can be viewed as the attempt to definitively dismantle systems of ritual sacrifice, thereby establishing grounds for perduring hope.

- by Gerard McLarney
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- Comparative Literature, Mythology, Literature, Rene Girard
- by Nachiket Joshi
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- Mythology, Sacrifice (Anthropology Of Religion), Mythopoetics, René Girard
- by Giuseppe Dibello
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- Mimesis, René Girard, Antropology

Through the analisys of Rene Girard’s works, which develops Arnold Van Gennep’s thesis, it’s possible to provide a specific meaning to one of the most controversial phenomena of antropology, i.e. the violence which features the initiation rituals in the archaic societies. Following this we are led to the interpretation of some contemporary social issues and, with reference to the archaic initiation scheme, to the demonstration of how these are still present and predominant in our current social life.

- by Andrea Grazioli
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- Philosophy, René Girard, Antropologia, Filosofia