Has Girard Finally Arrived?
René Girard
Penguin Classics, 2024; 336 pp., $18 (paperback)
A Review of All Desire is a Desire for Being
In Nietzsche’s famous aphorism on the death of God, his madman responds to the muted reception towards his prophecy by declaring, “I have come too early … The tremendous event is still on its way … it has not yet reached the ears of men.” One might wonder if a more megalomaniacal incarnation of René Girard (1923–2015) would say the same thing. Girard’s peak—from the early 1970s through the 1990s—certainly produced what every academic would dream of: international scholarly recognition, appointments at the most prestigious universities, talented and successful students who expanded and applied his insights in interesting ways. Yet, did Girard arrive too soon? The 1970s produced extreme economic anxieties in the West that made its denizens too worried about basic provisions to produce much mimetic envy. The 1990s, riding on the wave of a Reagan-Thatcher coalition that pushed the Soviet Union to collapse, left many asking whether American hegemony would have any rival, whether the seemingly unbreakable alliance between free market capitalism and liberal democracy would produce a perpetual peace. The possibility of nuclear annihilation may have traumatized Girard as a young man, but by the 1990s such an event seemed unlikely; if it were to occur, it would be more likely to happen accidentally, not as a geopolitical inevitability.
This is one way to compare All Desire is a Desire for Being, edited by Cynthia Haven, to a previous collection of Girard’s thought from 1996, the Girard Reader, edited by James Williams. The Reader was structured around the three steps of Girard’s mimetic theory: mimetic desire, best expressed through literary interpretation (Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, 1961); the scapegoat mechanism as articulated in Girard’s forays into ancient history and anthropology (Violence and the Sacred, 1972); and the biblical revelation, as expounded in Girard’s scriptural exegesis (Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, 1978, and continuing in books like The Scapegoat, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, and Job: The Victim of his People). The Reader concluded with Girard’s interpretation of two of the great masters of suspicion—Nietzsche and Freud—before offering an important and hitherto unpublished (and oft-cited) interview Williams conducted with Girard.
Whether this selection “came too soon” is a matter of opinion, but the editors of the Penguin Classics tipped their hand with their decision to publish the carefully curated All Desire is a Desire for Being. The rise of social media and the slow unraveling of the bonds between liberal democracy and neoliberal capitalism have begun to unveil the fragility of our global world order. To put it another way, in the 1990s, many people thought Francis Fukuyama was right. Today, not even Fukuyama thinks he was right. Although annoyed specialists of the fields in which Girard dabbled with no real training—theology, anthropology, philosophy, literary theory—might have thought he was just a fleeting fad thirty years ago, nobody can reasonably claim that today, however wrongheaded one might find his ideas. If someone tried, one could cheekily respond as the tech bro did in season two of HBO’s The White Lotus: “You have a bad case of something called mimetic desire.”
Girard’s mimetic theory has been used to explain recent phenomena ranging from America’s growing rivalry with China and the deleterious effects of social media to the rise of Silicon Valley illiberalism and the enduring appeal of Christianity. One might have thought Girard would have peaked thirty years ago, when selections of his work were discussed by a dozen dutiful graduate students in fastidious surveys of literary theory, philosophy of religion, or theology. Now, as evidenced by the success of Luke Burgis’s Wanting, Girard’s theories are seen as helpful for thinking about corporate culture, as essential for those trying to understand why politics feels so much like religion, and as vital for explaining why religion feels so unlike the warm, fuzzy version we good liberals had long been taught.
Unlike Williams, Haven does not pull most (or any) of her selections from the “Big Three” works mentioned above. Instead, she draws from a range of interviews, shorter pieces, and obscure contributions unknown even to seasoned Girard scholars. Still, even if readers have a hard time locating the contours of “three-step” Girardianism (unlikely, if they take up Haven’s pitch-perfect introduction, “We Do Not Come in Peace”), they will doubtlessly benefit from Haven’s deft editorial choices.
The selection “Belonging,” for instance, comes from a speech Girard gave in Italy that remained untranslated into English until after his death. After a terse phenomenology and history of belonging, Girard turns to Proust’s Combray to illustrate his point. As Girard maintained for fifty years, truly great literature, including the Bible, tells us more about being human than any of the human sciences, which is why Proust’s recounting of seemingly pointless snobbery can still illuminate. “The interplay between Combray and the salons,” Girard writes, “represents a microcosmic reproduction of the weakening of relationships of belonging in today’s world and the resulting paradoxical strengthening of rivalries. Violence is fueled not by the strength of relationships of belonging but by their weakness.” Here one gains an extremely concentrated dosage of the payout of Girard’s literary interpretation as well as both explanation for and, belatedly, some comfort in, the West’s rising nationalism. Earlier in the same essay Girard, reflecting on the fundamentally de-sacralizing nature of Christianity, declares, “Christianity weakens all relationships of belonging (“Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?”) by revealing that their origin is in no way authentically sacred … Today, it is not Christianity itself that is weakening: it is the sacred violence with which Christianity is confused.” Two sentences from Girard, properly digested, can explain both why the New Atheist opposition to Christianity seems so stridently moral, even Christian, and why several in their camp have recently reconsidered their appraisal of Christianity.
Girard himself would be aghast that he is having a moment. In a way, his recent popularity both confirms his theory and also portends its doom. It is thus fitting that Haven ends her brilliantly curated edition with a set of 172 “Maxims” by Girard. Studying his work is a matter both deathly serious and loads of fun. All Desire is a Desire for Being will help initiate a new generation of readers into this paradox.