MIMETIC

THEORY
“Mimesis” is
the Greek
word for
 What is Mimetic Theory?
 It originated with Rene
Girard, a French
polymath whose
seminal insights into the
nature of human desire
bridges diverse fields
such as anthropology,
literary criticism,
religious studies,
psychology, ethnology,
sociology, philosophy,
and others.
 It is the coherent
theorization of what
seemed like a small
insight but turned out to
be an objective
discovery about human
relations.
 Girard's insight was not
something he had invented,
rather he had hit it upon
something of which many other
thinkers had become aware,
usually the result of an arduous
process of creative conversion
while writing.
Writers who have reached a grasp of the mimetic
nature of desire:

1.Miguel de Cervantes, Spanish writer

2.William Shakespeare, English writer
3. Stendhal, French writer
4.Marcel Proust, French novelist
5. Feodor Dostoevsky, Russian novelist
 This is along with the
awareness of the
anthropological significance
of this desire as structuring,
and structured, by human
violence.
 In a nutshell...
 Girard has discovered that
human beings desire not
lineally. Rather we desire
according to the desire of the
other.
 All desire is
triangular, and is
suggested by a
mediator or model.
 This imitative
desire leads to
conflicts.
 A group's spontaneous
formation of unanimity over
against some arbitrarily
indicated other who is
expelled or excluded
resolved conflicts, thereby
producing a return to peace.
 In this way, we
humans create and
sustain social order.
Three Moments of
Mimetic Theory
1.
Imitative/Mimetic
Desire
EXAMPLE:
2. The Moment of
Unifying Expulsion
/ Scapegoating
  SCAPEGOATING
 Girard believes that early in
human evolution, we learned
to control internal conflict by
projecting our violence
outside the community onto a
scapegoat.
 It was so effective
that we have continued
to use scapegoating to
control violence ever
since.
 The successful use of a
scapegoat depends on
the community’s belief
that they have found the
cause and cure of their
troubles in this “enemy”.
 Once the enemy is
destroyed or expelled,
a community does
experience a sense of
relief and calm is
restored.
 But the calm is
temporary since the
scapegoat was not really
the cause or the cure of
the conflict that led to his
expulsion.
 When imitation leads once
again to internal conflict
which inevitably escalates
into violence, human
communities will find another
scapegoat and repeat the
process all over again.
3. Revealed
Discovery
 A moment of acquiring
insight as to what has
happened along the way
Discovery of complicity in
scapegoating violence and its
roots in our envious desire
 ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE
 According to Girard, the origin
of language is also related to
scapegoating. After the murder of
the first scapegoat, there were the
first prohibitions and rituals, but
these came into being before
representation and language,
hence before culture.
 And that means that people
will not start fighting again.
If mimetic disruption comes
back, our instinct will tell us
to do again what the sacred
has done to save us, which is
to kill the scapegoat.
 Therefore it would be the
force of substitution of
immolating another victim
instead of the first. But the
relationship of this process
with representation is not one
that can be defined in a clear-
cut way.
 This process would be
one that moves towards
representation of the
sacred, towards definition
of the ritual as ritual and
prohibition as prohibition.
 But this process would
already begin prior to the
representation because it is
directly produced by the
experience of the
misunderstood scapegoat.
 According to Girard, the
substitution of an immolated
victim for the first, is "the
very first symbolic sign
created by the hominids".
 Girard also says this is
the first time that one thing
represents another thing,
standing in the place of this
(absent) one.
 This substitution is
the beginning of
representation and
language, and also the
beginning of sacrifice
and ritual.
Mimesis in
Literature
 BEHAVIORAL MIMESIS

is employed by
creating characters
who mirror actual
human responses to
various scenarios.
 BEHAVIORAL MIMESIS
In the Dickens' classic, A Christmas
Carol, the character Ebenezer Scrooge is
a perfect behavioral representation of a
curmudgeonly old miser. The mimetic
qualities that Dickens employed were so
realistic, in fact, that the name 'Scrooge'
has been applied to many real-life penny-
pinchers. Behavioral mimesis is one of
the author's best tools for creating
believable characters.
 IMPERSONATION
 In the Harry
Potter series, characters
use the Polyjuice Potion
to take on the exact
physical characteristics
of another person.
 For example, in order to
infiltrate the Ministry of Magic
in Harry Potter and the Deathly
Hallows, the protagonist and his
friends use this potion and must
also adopt, as best they can, the
mannerisms of those they've
impersonated in order to avoid
detection.
 VOCAL MIMESIS
 A good example of vocal
mimesis is in the classic
play, Desire under the Elms by
Eugene O'Neill. In this play,
O'Neill wrote the dialogue
using the speech patterns
found in rural New England.
 With phonetic spellings
and abruptly abbreviated
words and phrases, O'Neill
captures the unique vocal
quality of this region and
brings it to the listener's
ear.
 Although extremely useful
in creating fuller mental
images of characters, this sort
of mimesis can become taxing
and confusing to readers if
authors don't employ it well.