Application of Rene Girards Theory in Real Life Situation - Term Paper Example

Analysis and Understanding of Rene Gerard According to Rene Girard, the most fulfilling thing in his life has been the real experience of discovery.1Nevertheless, he asserts that there have been three major moments in the process of his writing and thinking. First is when he discovered rivalry and mimetic desire, which accounted for so much in his life. Second is the realization of the scapegoat mechanism which essentially completed the theory of mimetic. He felt that it provided a more credible interpretation of ritual and myth in the ancient culture.2 From that period onwards he was convinced that the archaic way of life was far from being merely lost in fallacy or having no stability or constancy, but demonstrate a great human achievement. The third great period of his discovery is when he began to realize the “uniqueness of the Bible,” mostly the Christian words, from the scapegoat theory point of view. The mimetic demonstration of the scapegoat theory was the answer to the relationship of the ancient culture and Gospels. Gerard believes that the Gospels are the revelations of the processes that unconsciously dominate the culture. As he experienced these moments in his life, he was convinced that everybody would concur with his theory immediately, since it was overpowering and obvious.3 . Girard asserts that violence is produced by this process where two or more parties try to stop each other from appropriating the item that they all desire through mental or physical means. Under the control of the judicial perspective and humans’ psychological impulses, individuals tend to look for well-defined actions of violence that can be distinguished from the nonviolent behavior.4 In the effort of distinguishing the innocent from the culprit, Girard says that people often replace differences and discontinuities with reciprocities and continuities of the mimetic appreciation. According to him, violence is viewed regarding aggression, which is an instinct that is strong in specific individuals or humans as zoological species. Girard feels that a theory of conflict that is essentially based on appropriative mimicry does not have setbacks as one based on aggressiveness or scarcity. Girard states that the inconsistency between rituals and prohibitions is evident and that their main aim is to prevent the society from mimetic agitations.5 Essentially, this goal is well executed by the prohibitions. In the unusual events, when a new problem seems imminent, the prohibitions become useless. The moment the infection of mimetic violence is introduced into the society, it cannot be managed. As such, the society changes its methods of handling the situation.6 Instead of seeking to abate mimetic violence, it strives to abolish it by subjecting it to a climax, which produces the happy outcome of the ritual sacrifice with the aid of an alternative victim. Further, the author cites that there is no distinction of purpose between rituals and prohibitions. The actions demanded by prohibitions and the ones required by the disorganized rituals are in conflict with each other. However, mimicry reading makes this conflict comprehensible. In cases where this mimetic reading is absent, anthropologists often perceive it as an insoluble contradiction or limiting contradiction, thus confirming their assertion of religious being unreasonable. On the other hand, some anthropologists view the unethical element of ritual, about prohibitions, as the means of keeping with the modern ethos and its preference.7 If the theory of conflict is rightly formulated and conceived it reveals much on the human way of life, starting with religious organizations. Things which are prohibited by a religion make sense when interpreted as means of preventing mimetic rivalry from escalating in the entire society. The author also states that taboos and prohibitions are mostly misguided and ineffectual. However, both are not illogical as the majority of anthropologists have indicated. According to Girard, rituals are a confirmation that primitive communities are obsessed with conflicting or undifferentiating reciprocity that emanates from the spread of mimetic rivalry. Also, he believes that the lack of order, chaos, and absence of organization that is evident at the onset of many myths, should be interpreted concerning mimetic rivalry.8 Mostly, many rituals start with a free-for- all mimetic phase, where hierarchies collapse, and prohibitions are infringed upon, and all the parties become one another’s conflicting doubles. The mimetic rivalry is the common aspect of what occurs in seasonal festivals, of the suffering experienced by the initiates in most of the initiation ceremonies, together with the social failure that may follow the demise of a religious king or accompany his rejuvenation and enthronement rituals. The violent riots that happen in a community following the death of one of its members may also be interpreted as a mimetic rivalry.9 The failure to find a suitable remedy to the mystery of rituals has shown the inability of religious anthropology. The author further asserts that this failure is not decreased but is increased by the current tendency to refute it as a failure, by denying the presence of the problem and diminishing the responsibility of religion in all spheres of human culture.10 Scapegoat consequences are not restricted only to mobs, but most noticeably useful in the case of mobs. The devastation of a victim can make a group more enraged, but in some instances, it can be a source of peace in a community. In a mob scenario, tranquility is not regained, as a rule, in the absence of victimization to alleviate the urge for violence.11 This collective belief seems very unreasonable to the detached observer who believes that the mob is not misguided by its identification of the scapegoat as a wrongdoer. The author asserts that the mob is seen as hypocritical and insincere. He continues to point out that if people could understand these qualities of a mob, they could also comprehend that scapegoat is an unconscious occurrence, but not in the view of Freud.12 Girard wonders how the phenomenon of scapegoat entails actual belief and how it can be produced in the absence of an actual mission.13 Consequently, he concludes that scapegoat impacts are mimetic effects that are produced by mimetic rivalry when it reaches to certain threshold intensity. According to him, when an object becomes a center stage of two or more antagonists, the rest of the group is attracted mimetically by the existence of mimetic desire. Also, mimicry is mimetically attractive, and it is often assumed that at a specific phase in the evolution of human beings, mimetic rivalry affects the whole species.14 This notion is explained by the acute disorder level in which majority of rituals commence, and the society degenerates into a mob under the influence of mimetic rivalry. The events that occur when a group of humans turns into a mob are similar to those generated by mimetic rivalry. Besides, they can be defined as lack of differentiation which is elaborated in mythology and effected in rituals.15 Girard’s fundamental theory of violence is controversial in religious and secular societies. His research on modern mythology resulted in a theory of rivalry and acquisitive mimicry, where all violence emanates.16 He argues that these social processes are concealed with myths, novels, and historical texts. The beginning point of Girard’s theory is acquisitive mimesis. Rene Girard points out that most of the human behavior is hinged on mimesis, including all expressions of imitation, but puts more emphasis on appropriation and acquisition as the object of mimesis.17 According to him, this is different from majority the literature on imitative predisposition. Besides, the author has an issue with conflict models that emphasize on scarcity and aggression as the root of conflict in the communities. For him, such models assert that majority of humans’ predicaments are immediate outcome of the concentration of power and wealth in conjunction with colonialism and exploitation.18 Application of Girard’s Theory in Real Life Situation Julius Caesar was a Roman General who won all of his wars for the Roman Empire.19 Due to his excellent military achievements, most people felt that he should be selected as the emperor of the Roman Kingdom. His desire to contest for the position of emperor did not auger well with his friends – Marcus Brutus and Caius Cassius. In their efforts to prevent him from becoming the next emperor, they conspired to kill him so that they could have the opportunity of clinching the coveted emperor’s position. Eventually, they killed him when he was about to be announced the emperor in the Senate.20 Girard’s theory posits that had Julius Caesar not shown his desire to become the emperor of Rome, his friends would not have developed the same desire and his death would not have occurred. Nevertheless, Girard opines that since human beings lives revolve around unnecessary and necessary acquisitions, the conflict remains to be unavoidable since acquisition mimesis is one of their primary traits. When looked at from the perspective of Girard’s mimetic theory, the crowd is hypnotized and gets carried away in the excitement of the moment. Since humans have perfected the art of seeing the world from the perspective of others, a crowd does not usually act rationally. Instead, they act impulsively and do things which they cannot adequately explain later. The aspect of seeing reality in the eyes of the other is multiplied when a crowd is considered. In Julius Caesar, the crowd rules the city, especially when it becomes a mob. Their decisions carry the day, but they are not always the most sensible. However, the crowd is not ruled by its own desires. In other words, clever people may take advantage of a crowd to make them do what none of them is interested in. Brutus, Caesar and Antony have realized this, and they constantly work up the crowds, whom they have realized wield a lot of power, to drive their individual, often selfish agenda as if it is the crowds. These characters simply hypnotize the crowd to drive their own agenda. For example, ion the opening scene, the crowd fills the street to celebrate Caesar’s victory, because they consider him a hero. However, an individual character named Cobbler gives them a tongue lashing, asking them “what is there to celebrate?” The crowd quickly disappears, their earlier celebratory mood suddenly changed by Cobbler. When Caesar is killed, the crowd is unhappy about this. They demand for answers from Brutus, but when Brutus tries to reason with them, emerges that a crowd is not driven by wisdom, but emotion. Brutus puts this to great use to his advantage, making the crowd see Caesar as a villain. In the end, members of the crowd endorse him to take over as emperor. Girard describes a mechanism called ‘scapegoating’, a term he borrows from a traditional ritual in which the sins of a community could be cleansed by ‘heaping’ them on a he-goat. The poor animal would then be abandoned in the desert, and the community would believe that their sins had been cleansed in this manner. Caesar is treated as a scapegoat in the play. The crowd has been lectured about their own shortcomings and the sins of the community in general. They are happy to see someone sacrificed for this, and Caesar is the unfortunate one. After his death, his reputation is bad, he is painted as a villain yet the same crowd nearly worshipped him when he was alive. But Caesar’s death brings the greater good in the society, in the same way a community which believes their sins have been cleansed resides in relative peace. In conclusion, it is evident that mimetic urges can be routed and contained through differences of culture and language if these are well conveyed in cultural and religious traditions. It may result in human salvation if the mimesis is a non-violent and conversion imitation of the spiritual affection. Cultural traditions originate from the potential or actual violence that is seen when mimetic urges are over-stretched, and the primates are in the process of becoming humans. Rituals and sacrifices of the scapegoats signify, in hidden form, the disorder leading to the initial violence of expulsion or immolation of the victim and the order emanating from the newly found relief from violence and conflict. Also, it is evident that sacrifice is not merely violence, but the latter is a constraint for the sake of maintaining and realizing order in the society. Bibliography Blackledge, Barbara. "Theatre Review -- Macbeth / Julius Caesar / Julius Caesar." Theatre Journal 41, no. 2 (05, 1989): 242, http://search.proquest.com/docview/216043417?accountid=776 (accessed November 18, 2016). Williams, James. G. “Mimesis and Violence: Perspectives in cultural criticism.” Berkshire Review 14 (1979): 9-19 Williams, James. G. “The Anthropology of the cross: A conversation with Rene Girard.”The Girard Reader (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2000), 262-294. Read More