René Girard's Mimetic Theory

7. Mimetic Theory and Gender

297 CHAPTER 7 Mimetic Theory and Gender How can I forget that last look she cast toward me as the two guards who were holding her by the arms expelled her from my city of Corinth through the southern gate, after she had been led, as is customary with scapegoats, through the city streets, which were lined by a hate-frothing, screaming, spitting, fist-shaking mob? —Christa Wolf, Medea: A Modern Retelling G irard’s analytical search for the victims of primitive social and political persecution shows similarities to feminist stances that take the victim status of women as a starting point for their critique of patriarchal society.1 His method of textual interpretation, like the feminist method, can be characterized by a “hermeneutics of suspicion.”2 Such parallels, however, should not cause one to understand the mimetic theory as any kind of feminist stance. Many feminists themselves accuse Girard of both sexism and patriarchalism.3 Girardians, meanwhile, have criticized such feminist conceptions, emphasizing more the greater breadth of their own stance.4 They argue that Girard’s work stands for all victims and not just women. With that being said, the Girardians also argue that a 298 Chapter 7 more encompassing feminist theory could be built on the approach used by the mimetic theory to uncover the structural violence of patriarchal society directed against women. The question of the relation between the sexes with regard to Girard’s mimetic theory is much more complex than one assumes at first glance. In the following chapter, we will discuss this issue using two questions based on Girard’s main theoretical concepts: How do the genders relate with regard to (1) mimetic desire, and (2) the scapegoat mechanism? Is Mimetic Desire Typically Masculine? A central question in connection with Girard’s works on mimetic desire is whether his concept merely explicates masculine desire, thus leaving out any analysis of the characteristics of feminine desire. This inquiry forms the basis of Toril Moi’s critique of Girard.5 She points out that in Deceit, Desire and the Novel he only addresses the works of male authors; it appears, Moi argues, as if Girard were of the opinion that women do not belong to the great novelistic authors of modern literature. Also, with the exception of Flaubert’s Emma Bovary—whose desire displays the less interesting form of external mediation—only male protagonists are addressed in Girard’s book. The great majority of the examples contained therein tell of men who compete and fight with one another over women—who are thus portrayed as mere objects of male desire. Girard rejects such criticism. He argues that his theory is in no part gender specific, and that his concept of mimetic desire applies to both men and women in essentially the same way. He leaves the question open, however, whether this equality is based on the nature of desire, or whether it is itself already a product of mimetic desire.6 In later writings and recent interviews, Girard has often stressed the wish to include a female author—Virginia Woolf—in this original study of desire, Deceit, Desire and the Novel. He praises The Waves, in particular, as a major “novelistic” work that contains deep insights into the workings of desire.7 The novel is not only the work of a female author; it also focuses on characters (three male and three female) that, irrespective of gender, offer an enlightening study of mimetic desire. In the attempt to defend his claim that desire is not gender specific, Mimetic Theory and Gender 299 Girardreferstimeandagaintoexamplesfromliterature.WithregardtoToril Moi’s aforementioned critique, Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona offers an example in which women function as mere passive objects of masculine rivalry. However, Shakespeare can demonstrate otherwise. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, all four main characters—two men and two women—are driven in identical ways by mimetic desire. Girard emphasizes that gender plays no role whatsoever in this play.8 Sigmund Freud’s Theory of Narcissism Girard’s strongest rejection of gender specificity in desire is found in his critique of Sigmund Freud’s theory of narcissism. In 1914, Freud published what would become a very influential treatise, On Narcissism, in which he differentiates between two principal types of sexual desire. He first names the attachment type, which takes the “mother” as the original object of its desire before developing further into a general “object-love.” He differentiates this from the second, narcissistic...