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  • From the Editor
  • William A. Johnsen

"I understand that he has done very little fieldwork."

When René Girard wrote the preface for "To double business bound" (1978) to gather his articles and reviews, he rehearsed the choices he had made as the one most responsible for the mimetic hypothesis. In an interview we include here that Phil Rose conducted in 2006/7, we can still see Girard choosing. When asked about two rumored projects on Virginia Woolf and Clausewitz, Girard chose to talk about and write about Clausewitz. I regret we did not get a book as big as Theatre of Envy on Virginia Woolf, Shakespeare's sister, but who could be more grateful than I am (except perhaps Benoît Chantre, a new member of the Editorial Board) for Achever Clausewitz (Carnets Nord, 2007; Éditions Flammarion, 2011) which became Battling to the End (MSU Press, 2010) in translation?

If Girard has written more on apocalypse than politics, more about negative reciprocity than positive reciprocity, more about violence than aggression, he has given us leadership but also room to take up our responsibility for further development and innovation. The following essays testify to our broad commitment to advance work in politics, anthropology, theology, art criticism, composition theory, and his beloved Proust. At the end of these essays, in the [End Page v] place inaugurated in Volume 12 by the late and lamented Elizabeth Bailie, I have included an early story by the Irish writer William Carleton, who shows that the contest between le souci des victimes and the victimary is already at an advanced stage in the midst (1832) of Ireland's troubles.

I would like to thank COV&R, the Michigan State University English Department, the College of Arts and Letters, and the Offices of the Provost and Vice-President for Research and Graduate Studies for continued support of the editing and publishing of Contagion as well as Imitatio for its support of our series of books. As Editor, I am especially dependent on the Editorial Board and many others who have willingly read submissions contributed from a remarkable variety of disciplines. I am grateful for their service. [End Page vi]

William A. Johnsen
Michigan State University
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