“Students of conflict devise many theories about the nature and origin of human discord without ever taking mimetic rivalry into account. If no human being is the culprit, then it must be an idea or perhaps some chemical substance — something fundamentally alien to what the friendship and the friends intrinsically are. They look for some principle of human aggression buried deep in our genes; they consult our hormones; they invoke Mars, Oedipus, and the unconscious; they curse the repressiveness of families and other social institutions; but they never mention mimetic rivalry. This is the scandal of human relations that most of us elude because it offends our optimistic view of those relations” (Girard, Theater of Envy, p. 18).
Have 'Em Delivered
Write to the Editor
Subscribe
0 Comments