Menu
This site is a cross-disciplinary hub of research and commentary on all things related to mimetic theory.
Mimetic theory is a concept developed by twentieth-century French anthropologist René Girard who saw that human desire is not individual but collective, or social. This has led to conflict and violence throughout human history.
Mimetic theory moves through a four-stage process:
After basic needs are satisfied (food, sex, safety, shelter), people move into the realm of desire in which there isn’t a biological “radar” or instincts to guide them. Instead, their radar becomes other people. People want what other people want. Desire is social.
Because people want what other people want, there will inevitably be conflict as people compete for the same goods. Mimetic desire leads to mimetic rivalry.
When mimetic contagion has spread throughout a community and led it into chaos, the typical way that human communities have dealt with the chaos has been the scapegoating mechanism, in which groups (through a mimetic process) single-out a single individual or problem as the source of their problems and violently expel or eliminate this member from the community.
After the scapegoating mechanism has been enacted, human culture springs up around it as a way to cover-up the founding murder. Taboos, prohibitions, and other laws are enacted the prevent the spread of violence that led up to the original founding murder, and the founding murder is ritually enacted over and over again as a means of catharsis and a way to prevent the spread of further violence. This amounts to an elaborate, cultural cover-up. This is true of nations, communities, organizations, and even families.
FOR A SHORT
INTRODUCTION TO
MIMETIC THEORY,
CHECK OUT THE VIDEO
BY VSAUCE2’S KEVIN LIEBER.
