Project MUSE®: Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/385
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture.daily12026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVolume 1 (1994) through current issueLatest Articles: Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and CultureTWOProject MUSE®Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture1930-12001075-7201Latest articles in Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture. Feed provided by Project MUSE®From the Editor
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/965125
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René Girard and Cesáreo Bandera“Karamazov,” cried Kolya, “can it be true what’s taught us in religion, that we shall rise again from the dead and shall live and see each other again, all, Ilusha too?”“Certainly we shall all rise again, certainly we shall see each other and shall tell each other with joy and gladness all that has happened!” Alyosha answered, half laughing, half enthusiastic.Della vera città almen le torri.
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/385/image/coversmallFrom the Editor2025-07-11text/htmlen-USFrom the Editor2025-07-112025TWOProject MUSE®19822026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-07-11A Childhood Memory of René Girard
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/965126
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In my homage to René Girard on the centenary of his birth—presented at the Collège des Bernadins where the Association Recherches Mimétiques1 established a chair in his name—I wish to return to the founding principle of his “existential” theory, which is rooted in an anthropology of conversion. Writing his biography2 has taught me, among other things, that the past of this author, even if the latter formed a paradoxical relationship with his own archive, weighs heavily in the balance of what we call “the man and his works.” Girard probably expected that we might write of him as he has written of the novelists and poets in his books; he seems to have prepared the terrain that I am going to explore. In the two
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/385/image/coversmallA Childhood Memory of René Girard2025-07-11text/htmlen-USA Childhood Memory of René Girard2025-07-112025TWOProject MUSE®816262026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-07-11The Reception of René Girard in Mexico
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/965127
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It has not been easy to track the reception of René Girard’s work in Mexico. I should mention that none of the people I spoke with to prepare this text currently live in Mexico. Escamilla resides in Edinburgh, Alison and Barahona in Madrid, JeanPierre Dupuy in United States, and Carlos Mendoza in Boston. It is also worth mentioning that only two of them are Mexican. This gives us a series of clues that I will develop in my presentation:Girard’s reception in Mexico has been very scarce, andthose who have followed the author from Avignon have found greater facilities for their Girardian studies abroad than in Mexico;in Mexico there are no schools, not even a Girardian school, but rather individual, focused and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/385/image/coversmallThe Reception of René Girard in Mexico2025-07-11text/htmlen-USThe Reception of René Girard in Mexico2025-07-112025TWOProject MUSE®820752026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-07-11Moments of Grace in a Field of Ruins: A Reflection on the Movie Babel
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/965128
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From the very beginning, René Girard’s work opened the eyes of many scientists to the fact “that certain literary masterpieces were host to real knowledge, to a more or less systematic understanding of human experience that was largely unavailable in other fields of research,”1 as Andrew McKenna emphasizes. From time to time, one also encounters movies that have a similar quality. In my opinion, the film Babel offers such a stroke of luck, which is why I will try to bring it into conversation with the anthropological approaches of René Girard and Emmanuel Levinas. Since real knowledge and human experience are always the basis of sustainable theology, these can also be profited from in their field. Alejandro
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/385/image/coversmallMoments of Grace in a Field of Ruins: A Reflection on the Movie Babel2025-07-11text/htmlen-USMoments of Grace in a Field of Ruins: A Reflection on the Movie Babel2025-07-112025TWOProject MUSE®601562026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-07-11Mimesis and Imitation
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/965129
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Girard in his works uses the terms “mimesis,” “mimetic desire,” and associated terms in two relatively different ways. On the one hand, the terms are used in a causal way, as if mimesis and mimetic desire were some type of psychological force that brings people to copy each other, including in their behavior of appropriation. Mimesis in this case is understood as a kind of instinct or as a biologically determined propension to copy others, even in their desires. On the other hand, the terms are also used in a descriptive way. On such occasions, mimesis corresponds to, or is deemed to be present, whenever we notice similarities in the behavior of different individuals. This is particularly the case, but not
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/385/image/coversmallMimesis and Imitation2025-07-11text/htmlen-USMimesis and Imitation2025-07-112025TWOProject MUSE®372432026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-07-11The Scapegoat Mechanism in Southeast Asian Ritual, Myth, and Politics: From Mead and Bateson’s Trance and Dance in Bali to Massacres in the Philippines and Indonesia
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/965130
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Trance and Dance in Bali is a 20-minute black-and-white film by anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, released in 1951. The film uses footage from Mead and Bateson’s visual ethnography work in Bali shot in the 1930s, and shows a traditional Balinese ritual performance depicting the mythical creatures Rangda and Barong. Translating Balinese mythology for Western viewers, Mead presents Rangda as a witch and Barong as a dragon. Dancers in the play enter a trance state and stab at themselves with kris knives but remain uninjured. The film concludes with some footage taken after the play, where a fowl is sacrificed as part of the process of exiting the trance state.I watched Trance and Dance in Bali after a
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/385/image/coversmallThe Scapegoat Mechanism in Southeast Asian Ritual, Myth, and Politics: From Mead and Bateson’s Trance and Dance in Bali to Massacres in the Philippines and Indonesia2025-07-11text/htmlen-USThe Scapegoat Mechanism in Southeast Asian Ritual, Myth, and Politics: From Mead and Bateson’s Trance and Dance in Bali to Massacres in the Philippines and Indonesia2025-07-112025TWOProject MUSE®795872026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-07-11A Gift with No Giver: The Narrative of Sacrifice in Maylis de Kerangal’s Mend the Living
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/965131
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In Maylis de Kerangal’s novel Mend the Living (Réparer les vivants, 2014), Claire Méjan awaits transplantation surgery with a mix of hope and despair. On the one hand, this is her chance to survive and begin a new life; on the other, she feels “ensnared forever” (piégée1) by the gift she can never reciprocate. “If this is a gift, it’s certainly a strange gift (“d’un genre spécial”2), she thinks. There’s no giver in this exchange, no one intended to give a gift here, and likewise there is no recipient, because she doesn’t have the choice of refusing the organ, she has to receive it.”3 This essay explores this “strange”—or more precisely, “special” and “unique”—exchange through René Girard’s concept of purifying
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/385/image/coversmallA Gift with No Giver: The Narrative of Sacrifice in Maylis de Kerangal’s Mend the Living2025-07-11text/htmlen-USA Gift with No Giver: The Narrative of Sacrifice in Maylis de Kerangal’s Mend the Living2025-07-112025TWOProject MUSE®752032026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-07-11The Mimetic Brain: The Neural Basis of Desire, Pleasure, Envy, and Addiction
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/965132
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In the book he devoted to the analysis of Shakespeare’s work, Girard offered some of his most profound reflections on desire and pleasure. Desire, he said, is self-destructive, for it dies when it conquers its object, which loses its attractiveness when conquered. But desire is reborn when it sets its interest on a new object. In this way, unconscious of its mimetic character, desire survives the continuous disappointments of the concrete pleasures it achieves. People fall into the trap of desire and remain in it to the point of downplaying the importance of pleasure in order to preserve desire. In Girard’s own words, “the real priority is not pleasure but desire at any price.”1 The separation between a prevailing
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/385/image/coversmallThe Mimetic Brain: The Neural Basis of Desire, Pleasure, Envy, and Addiction2025-07-11text/htmlen-USThe Mimetic Brain: The Neural Basis of Desire, Pleasure, Envy, and Addiction2025-07-112025TWOProject MUSE®1289382026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-07-11Killing the Fathers of Värmland: Sacrificial Violence in Scandinavian Folklore
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/965133
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The village of Ekshärad (pronounced eks-hair-rod) lies in a deep, winding river valley in the heart of the western Swedish province of Värmland. Ages ago, prior to the arrival of Christianity and the formation of the Swedish state, a pagan chieftain named Höök made his home here along with a small community. Höök towered over others—some thought him more than human; some thought him a giant. He had long braided hair and a body covered in tattoos, and he and his people were skilled hunters.Höök was still subject to the law, however, and one day he was summonsed to appear before a court in Norway. When that court delivered him an unfavorable judgment, he lost his temper and started to swing his axe. He killed at
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/385/image/coversmallKilling the Fathers of Värmland: Sacrificial Violence in Scandinavian Folklore2025-07-11text/htmlen-USKilling the Fathers of Värmland: Sacrificial Violence in Scandinavian Folklore2025-07-112025TWOProject MUSE®1156562026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-07-11Envy, Deceit, and Dating Apps: “The End of Love” According to René Girard
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/965134
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God made us in the image of his own eternity, but through the devil’s envy death entered the world,” says the Wisdom of Solomon (2: 23–24). But where does the devil’s envy come from? Who, or what, does the devil envy? According to Aristotle, envy is stirred by “those who have what we ought to have”1—it originates in a perceived injustice. This befits the devil, also known as “Satan,” “the accuser.” What, then, is the injustice Satan perceives? Being immortal like God, he cannot envy Him; being ontologically superior to us, neither can he envy us any attribute or possession he might lack; therefore, the object of his envy can only be this relationship God established with us rather than him. René Girard thus seems
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/385/image/coversmallEnvy, Deceit, and Dating Apps: “The End of Love” According to René Girard2025-07-11text/htmlen-USEnvy, Deceit, and Dating Apps: “The End of Love” According to René Girard2025-07-112025TWOProject MUSE®447902026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-07-11Masks, Morons, and Monsters: Stigma Theory and Intellectual Disability Studies in Conversation with Mimetic Theory
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/965136
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In 1982, as the disability rights movement was beginning to gain academic attention,1 René Girard was already making disability a central feature of his theory of scapegoating. In Le Bouc Émissaire (The Scapegoat), Girard consistently mentions disability when he lists common targets of persecution. He describes it as one of the signs of victims, explaining that victims are often chosen “because they belong to a class that is particularly susceptible to persecution”; this includes cultural, religious, or ethnic minorities, and those who are sick, experiencing mental health issues, or who show any kind of disability.2 In I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, he clarifies this further in his discussion of the features seen
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/385/image/coversmallMasks, Morons, and Monsters: Stigma Theory and Intellectual Disability Studies in Conversation with Mimetic Theory2025-07-11text/htmlen-USMasks, Morons, and Monsters: Stigma Theory and Intellectual Disability Studies in Conversation with Mimetic Theory2025-07-112025TWOProject MUSE®1075272026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-07-11“Where’s My Cookie?”: Incarceral Reflections on Mimetic Violence with René Girard and Maximus the Confessor
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/965137
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I am tempted to begin by apologizing for the apparent puerility of the titular question. I will refrain, however, as I hope to show that “Where’s my cookie?” has something to say about virtually all objects of human desire, regardless of their relative material significance. The sole exception only proves the rule.The question “Where’s my cookie?” originates in the pastoral context of this article: Kent Maximum Security Institution in British Columbia, Canada, where I served as a site-based chaplain for five years, from 2014 to 2019. During my tenure, the population of Kent Institution hovered around 300 inmates divided into three populations that were, as correctional lingo puts it, “non-integrated,” meaning that
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/385/image/coversmall“Where’s My Cookie?”: Incarceral Reflections on Mimetic Violence with René Girard and Maximus the Confessor2025-07-11text/htmlen-US“Where’s My Cookie?”: Incarceral Reflections on Mimetic Violence with René Girard and Maximus the Confessor2025-07-112025TWOProject MUSE®661332026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-07-11“The Sun to me is dark”: Mediatory Typologies of Annihilation
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/965138
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Nietzsche’s famous declaration, that “God is dead! We killed him!” has been the subject of innumerable academic interpretations, yet the phrase was not properly explicated until 2021, and then by Italian philosopher Giuseppe Fornari. This is not the first time that a misleadingly simple version of a manifesto has made a difficulty convenient as it concerns the end of the world. Fornari eviscerates shallow readings of Nietzsche, inaugurating a new school of mythological–philosophical thought, concerned with nothing less than the form and function of texts as a means to comprehend the origins of Being and the ritual functions of violence. Noting that Nietzsche never specifies the Christian God, Fornari opens the door
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/385/image/coversmall“The Sun to me is dark”: Mediatory Typologies of Annihilation2025-07-11text/htmlen-US“The Sun to me is dark”: Mediatory Typologies of Annihilation2025-07-112025TWOProject MUSE®1309842026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-07-11Girard’s Apostasy
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/965139
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In 1995 René Girard makes an ill-starred foray into theology in an essay entitled “Mimetic Theory and Theology.”1 There he concedes to his Jesuit interlocutor Raymund Schwager a key point in his theory, granting that one not only can but should use the term “sacrifice” to characterize Jesus’s death.2 Girard had originally argued in 1978 that it would be an “abominable misconception”3 to use the same word—sacrifice—to describe both ritualized acts of collective murder and Jesus’s nonviolent consent to die, two phenomena separated by an “abyss.”4 By 1995 Girard appears to have fully reversed position. He openly “recognize(s) the positive sense of the term ‘sacrifice’ when it encompasses the two extremes.”5A recent
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/385/image/coversmallGirard’s Apostasy2025-07-11text/htmlen-USGirard’s Apostasy2025-07-112025TWOProject MUSE®812302026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-07-11The Contemporary Barrage of Victimhood: The Posture of Vengeful Lament and Resentment
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/965140
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An associative or group collective victimhood can be defined as a “mindset shared by group’s members that results from a perceived intentional harm with severe and lasting consequences inflicted on a collective by another group or groups.”1 Social psychologist Masi Noor notes that collective victimhood can manifest in an array of forms, including through individuals “who did not experience the harm-doing directly but identify with the targeted group.”2 It can be transmitted through family narratives3 or shared societal beliefs.4 What’s odd is that certain individuals may experience communal emotions of victimhood, even if not present at the incident itself.5 E. G. T. Green cites that “collective emotional reactions
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/385/image/coversmallThe Contemporary Barrage of Victimhood: The Posture of Vengeful Lament and Resentment2025-07-11text/htmlen-USThe Contemporary Barrage of Victimhood: The Posture of Vengeful Lament and Resentment2025-07-112025TWOProject MUSE®574542026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-07-11