Bulletin 73 – August 2022

It would be impossible to do justice in this short space to the plenary presentations, which linked mimetic theory to history (James Krapful), literary studies (João Cezar de Castro Rocha), theology (James Alison, Carlos Mendoza, Oscar Saldarriaga, Petra Steinmair-Pösel), and philosophy (Tania Checchi). For me, highlights included Saldarriaga’s presentation on Girard’s dialogue with liberation theologians, which took place in Sao Paulo, Brazil in 1990, memorialized in the book René Girard com teólogos da libertação: um diálogo sobre ídolos e sacrifícios. (The abridged Spanish version is titled Sobre ídolos y sacrifícios: Rene Girard con teólogos de la liberación.) In his talk Saldarriaga recounted the ways in which Girard’s thesis confirmed and extended the insights of his theological colleagues. Together, he writes, these scholars announced to Western Christianity that it had reached the edge of its own apocalypse.

[caption id="attachment_3333" align="alignleft" width="300"] Site of the 2022 conference[/caption]

Part of what made this presentation especially rich was the follow-up contribution of Alison, who had been present in 1990. One of the most striking things Alison recounted was the language barrier that nearly derailed the meeting. Because Girard spoke neither Portuguese nor Spanish very well, it was decided to have the conference in French. Yet it soon became clear that the theologians’ French was not quite sufficient. It was then decided that the conference would proceed in Spanish, with Girard (who, after all, had been a professor of Romance languages) listening intently so that he could pick up his interlocutors’ meaning. Despite this enormous mental effort, Alison explained, Girard’s attention never flagged, and the dialogue was then able to proceed. As I listened to this story, I was reminded of the conference we ourselves were having, with scholars trying to reach across some of the same languages. The English-speaking guests owe particular thanks to our Colombian hosts for their generous accommodation.

I was also particularly interested in Petra Steinmair-Pösel’s discussion of Pope Francis’s notions of encounter and dialogue. To casual observers (along with some of Francis’s more vituperative North American detractors), these keywords may seem like nothing more than catchphrases or even rhetorical tics. But Steinmair-Pösel’s presentation made clear the depth at which Francis conceives of these notions, which play a constitutive role in his thought. Steinmair-Pösel also keenly observed the Girardian resonances of Francis’s approach to dialogue, an approach that refuses to rival ideological opponents. That does not mean that dialogue cannot accommodate disagreement or even confrontation, but it does mean that dialogue need not mirror resentment or bad faith.

[caption id="attachment_3334" align="alignright" width="300"] View from the conference dining area[/caption]

Unlike many academic conferences (at least the ones I attend), it was immediately easy to see the real-world impact of the ideas being discussed. The presentations on Colombian peace-making efforts, along with the work of feminist activists within liberation theology, demonstrated once again that mimetic theory’s insights can reach far beyond the academy. Of special note here was the presentation offered by Dr. Vera Grabe, a former senator, congressional representative, and member of the guerilla group M-19. After leaving M-19, Dr. Grabe became a peace activist and served in several roles in government. Dr. Grabe (echoing the American civil rights activist Martin Luther King) argued that peace is a presence rather than an absence, a presence that must be intentionally cultivated. Her talk reminded me of the need for Girardian scholars to continue imagining expressions of positive, loving mimetic desire.

This year’s COV&R came shortly after Colombia’s presidential contest, which saw the election of the first left-leaning candidate in living memory, along with the election of the first Afro-Caribbean vice president ever. Of particular interest to those in the U.S. is that the election also saw the immediate concession by the losing right-wing candidate, followed by a peaceful transfer of power. Reading about this and hearing more about it while in Bogotá, it was impossible not to think of the deteriorating U.S. political climate, in which “owning” (i.e., scandalizing) the opponent often seems more important than any actual political outcome.

Back home, I am slowly making way through all the book recommendations I received at the conference, including Judith Butler’s The Force of Nonviolence, Pakaj Mishra’s Age of Anger, Walter Wink’s Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way, Bernhard Häring’s The Healing Power of Peace and Nonviolence, and Romano Guardini’s End of the Modern World. No doubt other attendees could add more titles. I’m sure we all have our homework assignments as we prepare for next year.

Once again, I wish to express my sincerest thanks to our hosts at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana for their unfailing hospitality and kindness. Thank you for welcoming the Colloquium. I look forward to COV&R 2023.

The centrality of undifferentiation in Girard’s theory, and some of the difficulties in understanding precisely what he means by it, are highlighted in the discussion. Michel Panoff sees this undifferentiation as being more a form of inversion but seems unable to grasp the way the reciprocity (a counterpart to inversion) leads inevitably to sameness. The inversions become so quick that one sees them as a case of undifferentiation. 

The question posed by Girard to his interlocutors is one that can still be posed today: “If humans, from the very beginning, have been capable of getting along with one another rationally, been capable of mutual affection, of enlightened self-interest, how have we arrived at the point where we are today” (44)? Girard’s viewpoint is more objective and more hopeful in that it overcomes the delusion that technology is going to save us through some sort of automatic progress. 

Maurice Mourier tells Girard that his book “seems based on the refusal, or the elimination, of any notion of transcendence” (48). To this Girard agrees and adds that “its primary aim is to provide a radically sociological explanation of religious thought, to show that in our twofold conception of what we call the ‘ambivalence’ of the sacred, we are in fact dealing with a transfiguration of human violence that was for a long time necessary…” (49). It is this thought that leads him to speak of Christianity and its effectiveness. 

Girard lays out the similarity between Christianity and “all other religions” (50). We find the same “mythico-ritual mechanism” in the death of Christ as we find elsewhere. What people have failed to notice is that the very visibility of this mechanism is what makes the Gospels so unique. With this “imperceptible but fundamental reversal … a new logic imposes itself” (51). Christ is not “the mythic reflection of collective transfer,” instead he is the one who has compelled “violence to reveal its game” (52). The desacralized apocalypse that we all live with each day makes Girard’s way of seeing the Gospels even more compelling. Sacrificial protection is collapsing; will we build up a different form of support? Girard does not back off; it is now the Scriptures reading us, not we reading them. We have to learn from them, which presumes a willingness to believe that they could have something to teach us.

This text provides us with more material for reflection on the vexed question of the relationship between Girard’s thought and Christianity. Girard is insistent that there is a scientific moment to his project and that this leads to a consideration of the Judeo-
Christian Scriptures that then turn everything upside down or, as we saw above, “impose a new logic.” No doubt the debate will continue.

In continuing work on a generalized theory, (New) Fascism, then, is not a “Girardian” study in the strict sense of the word. It is not desire Lawtoo is focusing on, but rather the way we are vulnerable to “all kinds of influences, be they positive or negative, therapeutic or pathological, democrat or fascist” (17). One first step is to acknowledge we all share in this “susceptibility to the affective forces at play in fascist mimesis” (201). Crowd behavior is not something to be studied as a phenomenon outside of our own world, but, quoting Serge Moscovici’s The Age of the Crowd (1985): “the crowd is everyone, you, me, all of us.” It is only when we do not exempt ourselves from this predicament, that we become better able to build up resistance.

It is here that Lawtoo’s typical use of the word patho(-)logical—spelled with a hyphen in parentheses in the middle—becomes relevant again. People may be affected by the pathos of an authoritarian leader, to the point that they are dispossessed of their ego’s and become ready to take part in actions they wouldn’t think of being in their own mind. Then we would speak of pathology straight away. But undergoing this pathos can also be used to gain a better understanding of how fascist mimesis works, of, for instance, which registers politicians use for affectively manipulating their audiences.

It is particularly in the chapter on “community” that the rational resistance against the lures of (new) fascist rhetoric becomes problematic. Here Lawtoo takes up the work of Jean-Luc Nancy, who starts his thinking with the writer the final chapter of The Phantom of the Ego is dedicated to, George Bataille. Certainly, Bataille is an outspoken anti-fascist thinker. Rather than privileging “logos” above “pathos”, we find in Bataille a search for counter-communities as an alternative for traditional communities like state and church and their hierarchies. Bataille is one of the founders of Le Collège de sociologie, which was not so much a scientific institution, but something that can be named an “elective community,” presupposed to be tied together with deeper bonds than just a shared interest in knowledge. 

And then there was Acéphale, a secret society in which social bonding was studied in undergoing the pathos that brings the subject in tune with communities. The papers presented in these communities, sometimes under the heading of “sacred sociology,” often come very close to crucial insight in Girard’s mimetic theory. Lawtoo even writes: “Given the figures involved, the topic addressed, and the influence of Hegel and Nietzsche, Mauss and Durkheim, one can only imagine that, had he been born a decade earlier, Girard’s name would have appeared among the participants of the Collège” (77).

Still, I must say I have great difficulty picturing René Girard as a participant of the Collège de sociologie. It is not only that Girard was born too late for such a membership, but he also wanted to steer clear from thinkers who can be said to re-embrace the sacred. Certainly, Girard was ready to acknowledge that important intuitions are to be found in thinkers like Bataille and Nietzsche, but if he starts to discuss them, he always does so in a very critical vein. The world of the Collège, and even more so the world of the secret community Acèphale, is also a very dark world.

Certainly, also Lawtoo is aware of this dark side, yet his attitude towards Nietzsche and Bataille is more open than Girard’s. Also, Bataille acknowledges that community-building is something very ambiguous. At the end, in the discussion with Connolly, Lawtoo says that he also used Bataille for “focus[ing] on its darker affective and historical side” in response to “the positive aura that surrounds positive accounts of linguistic communities” (240). Here I can add a personal note: I have bad experiences with some anti-fascist groups in the ’70s and ’80s. The problem seems to be that these groups are usually small and do not provide institutional protection against charismatic figures who are ready to create new scapegoats within the group.

In the chapter on myth, we see another way in which Lawtoo diverges from René Girard. Whereas for the latter, myth is the representation, or rather the misrepresentation, of an original violent founding event, Lawtoo describes myth as the fictions fascist leaders use to affect their audiences. Visions as expounded in Hitler’s Mein Kampf and Alfred Rosenberg’s The Myth of the 20^th Century are created in the background of a political program, trying to win the favor of the electorate, or at a later stage to keep the support of the people alive.

Myths then are viewed as creations with an emotional appeal. Erasing the difference between truth and lies—Trump, apart from being both the most productive creator of fake news, also proved to be the most intense accuser of others bringing in fake news—then becomes a strategy for shaping room for affects. The less the truth-value of political fictions counts, the more they can be attuned to visceral feelings. (New) fascist myths of national glory are not about convincing audiences, but about affecting them.

And it is also here the scapegoat mechanism gets in. Connolly, in the conversation with Lawtoo at the end of the book, alerts us to the role of negative feelings: “When Trump engages in the Big Lie scenario, which forms a huge part of his speeches and tweets, followers do not always believe the lies. Rather they accept them as pegs upon which to hang their grievances” (188-189). Here we touch the scapegoat mechanism, not in anthropological terms, but as a psychological propensity to redirect grievances and misgivings to vulnerable groups. In Lawtoo’s approach to mimesis, myths and scapegoat-mechanisms are immediately part of present-day political reality and do not have to be ‘applied’ out of a theory of archaic societies back into the modern world.

So finally, the crucial question in mimetic theory—what do we understand by good mimesis?—resurges in Lawtoo’s book. Whereas René Girard’s answer is exclusively religious, linking good mimesis to Jesus Christ and the communion of saints, creating a chain of nonviolent imitation, Lawtoo’s more secular view is both richer and more ambivalent. Since we cannot evade the suggestibility that helps (new) fascist leaders to power, we must reconsider how to employ our awareness of this. Resistance is not just a matter of having “logos” prevailing over “pathos,” as in Plato’s transcendent Ideas. Resistance also involves finding counter-myths and counter-communities.

Distancing yourself from the crowd may always be valuable. Lawtoo mentions Nietzsche’s walks in the Alps, and here we could add putting yourself on a diet regarding the consumption of new media. But merely distancing might be not enough: “But in practice, since many of us are mimetic creatures living in urban centers, it might be more effective to join others who are already engaged in anti-fascist movements, protests, and in the formation of alternative communities or assemblages. A different form of mimesis linked to sympathy, mutual respect, and solidarity can then not only be nurtured in such environments; the social environment retroacts mimetically on the ego and amplifies anti-fascist dispositions” (204-205).

To conclude, I must say I really can appreciate Lawtoo’s branch of mimetic theory. Emphasis is put on different themes and the whole debate about scapegoating gets directly related to the present-day political and social situation. Though Lawtoo at some points disagrees with Girard or likes to put a different emphasis, he is a writer who does not want to “achever” Girard, but rather wants to extend and broaden mimetic theory, covering subjects that have received little attention up till now. In this sense Lawtoo’s work is really a contribution to mimetic theory.

Methodologically, one of the best parts in this book is a case study that applies Girard’s concept of texts of persecution to the scapegoating of Monsignor da Costa Lopes by the former Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam (pp. 116-123). Martinho da Costa Lopes became apostolic administrator of the diocese of Dili in 1977 until his forced resignation in 1983. He publicly criticized the injustice that caused the sufferings of the people in East Timor. Gough Whitlam attacked Monsignor Lopes in a ferocious verbal campaign which lasted for months. Connelly studies Whitlam’s statements and writings as texts of persecution by addressing those elements that Girard also used in his interpretation of medieval texts: crisis, crime, criteria for the selection of the victim, violent scapegoating, and the restoration of peace. Monsignor da Costa Lopes is rightly uncovered as a scapegoat in this case study. Indonesian military personnel finally pressured the Vatican to remove him from his office in 1983.

Most importantly Connelly does not restrict her study to the fact of scapegoating but, by applying “conversion” as her third element derived from mimetic theory, shows that the people of East Timor are a positive model for the overcoming of violent persecution. Influenced by Australian civil society and by the Catholic Church, Australia slowly started to side with the people of East Timor and contributed to its liberation from Indonesian occupation in 1999. In 2002 the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste finally became a sovereign state. In Connolly’s afterword, she describes Australia’s conversion pointedly: “Australia […] contributed to immense human suffering, before turning, for one glorious moment, to recognize the Timorese people as the scapegoat” (p. 171). The non-violent resistance with which the Timorese people fought against the occupation significantly contributed to Australia’s conversion. According to Connelly, the conversion had a Timorese inspiration characterized by “non-violence, lack of revenge and openness to reconciliation” (p. 131). She highlights, for instance, that “during the twenty-four-year occupation not a single Indonesian civilian was murdered by a Timorese” (p. 133). Especially the church supported the endurance and non-violent patience of the people. Using William Cavanaugh’s words, Connolly calls this an “ecclesial counter-politics” (p. 133). For the Timorese it was important to tell the truth of those people who became victims without, however, seeking revenge and aiming primarily at reconciliation. Connelly quotes in this regard Xanana Gusmão, an East Timorese politician who became later the fourth prime minister serving from 2007 until 2015: “We advocate a reconciliation process whereby there is justice but which eschews revenge, resentment or hatred” (p. 140).

This book provides a valuable interpretation of the complex relationship between Australia and Timor-Leste, today’s official name of East Timor. It is clearly structured and convinces through its careful argumentation and its sound methodology. The book is also highly readable. Helpful conclusions summarize its main insights at the end of each chapter. Connelly precisely reconstructs the historical development and engages in a critical reading of official documents. She understands mimetic theory properly and skillfully uses it for her interpretation of the relationship between Australia and East Timor. Besides the three main elements of mimetic theory—scapegoating, texts of persecution, and conversion—Connelly also uses concepts like romantic lie or positive mimesis. Susan Connelly shows a profound understanding of mimetic theory by not only drawing on the work of René Girard but also on other experts like James Alison, Joel Hodge, and Raymund Schwager. She also broadens her ethical and theological understanding by going beyond Girard’s mimetic theory with the help of Robert Schreiter’s works on reconciliation.