The Girard Reader (45 page)

The three thinkers with whom Girard has been most engaged are Claude Lévi-Strauss,

Sigmund Freud, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Lévi-Strauss has been important for Girard's

structural reading of texts, and he shares with Lévi-Strauss the view that mythology, and

by inference language and culture, represents the birth and development of differential

thought. Girard criticizes Lévi-Strauss's dismissal of ritual, which preserves in a more

archaic form than myth the traces of collective violence and transformation of violence

into order. Girard holds, moreover, that the structural opposites of the anthropologist's

differential thought, in and of themselves, can account for neither the expulsions

recorded in mythology nor the sequence of negative and then positive connotations -in

other words, the sacred character -- of what or who is expelled. But Girard's engagement

with the work of Freud and Nietzsche has been much more passionate and has made a

much greater creative contribution to his mimetic theory. For Girard's critique of Lévi-

Strauss, the two most convenient sources are "Lévi-Strauss, Structuralism, and Marriage

Laws" in
Violence and the Sacred
, 223-49, and "Differentiation and Reciprocity in Lévi-Strauss and Contemporary Theory," chapter 8, in "To Double Business Bound,"155-77.

See also
Things Hidden
, 105-25.

Freud's speculation in
Totem and Taboo
about a primordial murder of the father-leader

by the horde of brothers competing for the women of the band and greater power is well

known, and it obviously influenced Girard -- although it should be noted that Girard's

ruminations on the execution of Jesus according to the Gospels and on the pharmakon of

Plato as elucidated by Derrida were even more significant than the Freudian murder and

incest prohibition (see under Scapegoat/Scapegoating)* for the further development of

Girard's thinking. On the latter see "Totem and Taboo and the Incest Prohibition,"

chapter 8 of
Violence and the Sacred
,

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193-222. Another important source on Girard's engagement with Freud is,

"Interdividual" Psychology," book 3 of
Things Hidden
, especially pp. 352-92.

But the most important dimension of Girard's encounter with Freud's work is his critique

of the Oedipus complex. Girard's dismantling of the Oedipus complex, including its

ramifications in the concept of the superego, narcissism as distinct from object choice,

and the death instinct, allowed him to account for all the phenomena in human reactions,

relations, and origins in a much clearer, more elegant manner than Freud. As Girard

summarizes in this selection, taken from chapter 7 of
Violence and the Sacred
, 169-85,

Freud tried initially to develop the Oedipus complex from the basis of desire that is

mimetic, yet he is inclined toward the desirability of objects (his
Besetzung
or cathexis);

this attempt accounts for "the strange duality of the identification with the father and the

libidinous attraction for the mother in the first [
Group Psychology and the Analysis of

the Ego
], and even the second [
The Ego and the Id
], version of the complex. The failure of this attempt at compromise compelled Freud to base his complex on a purely

cathectic desire [i.e., an object of desire invested with great emotion] and to reserve the

mimetic effect for another psychic structure, the superego." Freud often started his

analysis and theoretical constructions by taking mimesis very seriously, but he always

abandoned it in favor of his sexual or libidinal theory. For Girard, however, the right

path is the one intimated by Freud at the beginning of chapter 7 of
Group Psychology

where he focuses on identification, which is, practically speaking, mimesis or mimetic desire. The contradiction with which Freud ended, which he tried to resolve with the

concepts of "ambivalence" and the "death instinct," was "a rivalry devoid of preliminary identification (the Oedipus complex) followed by an identification without subsequent

rivalry (the superego)."

As can be seen from the following text, Girard's mimetic hypothesis is completely free

of sexual bias in the sense of attaching mimesis to genetic heritage, anything

biologically preordained, or a universal family structure or situation. The only thing that

is universal and already given in the human condition is the mimetic structure and

capacity of human beings, which require human others as models or mediators and

objects to desire according to the model's desire -but
which
humans and
which
objects

are not predetermined. This in spite of the frequent feminist charge that the mimetic

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theory is thoroughly "androcentric" or "patriarchal"! This conclusion is not based on thorough engagement with Girard's concept of mimesis in order to understand it, but a

politically influenced version of "affirmative action," or, as the British aptly put it,

"positive discrimination": instances of male and female examples are counted from the

texts and other data cited and the totals indicate whether the thinker is "politically

correct." But it misses the depth and implications of the generative mimetic scapegoat

mechanism.

We can observe both similarities and differences between mimetic desire and Freud's

Oedipus complex. Mimetism is a source of continual conflict. By making one man's

desire into a replica of another man's desire, it invariably leads to rivalry; and rivalry in

turn transforms desire into violence. Although Freud may appear on first glance to have

ignored this mechanism, he in fact came very close to apprehending it. A rigorous

examination of this text will make it clear why he ultimately failed to do so.

The mimetic nature of desire plays an important role in Freud's work -- not important

enough, however, to dominate and revolutionize his thinking. His mimetic intuitions are

incompletely formulated; they constitute a dimension of his text that is only half visible

and tends to disappear in transmission. There is nothing surprising about the refusal of

present-day psychoanalysts to turn their attention to this subject. Factions of

psychoanalytic thought, bitterly opposed in other respects, are here at one. The mimetic

aspect of desire has been ignored at once by those whose main concern is the

elimination of inconsistencies in Freud's work in favor of a unified whole and by that

other group who, while orthodox Freudians in name, quietly reject some of the most

lucid and cogent of Freud's analyses on the grounds that they are tainted with

"psychologism."

Although traces of the mimetic conception are scattered through Freud's work, this

conception never assumes a dominant role. It runs counter to the Freudian insistence on

a desire that is fundamentally directed toward an object, that is, sexual desire for the

mother. When the tension between these opposing tendencies becomes too great, both

Freud and his disciples seem to resolve it in favor of the object-desire.

The mimetic intuition of Freud gives rise to a series of concepts ambiguous in

definition, obscure in status, and vague in function. Among the offshoots of this ill-

defined mimetic desire are certain concepts that come under the heading
identification
.

Among the categories of Freudian identification, one that nowadays receives little

attention is the first one

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discussed in the chapter entitled "Identification," in
Group Psychology and the Analysis
of the Ego
. This category has to do with the father:

A little boy will exhibit a special interest in his father; he would like to grow like and be

like him, and take his place everywhere. We may say simply that he takes his father as

his ideal. This behavior has nothing to do with a passive or feminine attitude toward his

father (and toward males in general); it is on the contrary typically masculine. It fits in

very well with the Oedipus complex, for which it helps to prepare the wa
y. 1.

There is a clear resemblance between identification with the father and mimetic desire;

both involve the choice of a model. The choice is not really determined by parentage,

for the child can select as model any man who happens to fill the role that our society

normally assigns to the natural father.

As we have pointed out in the previous chapter, the mimetic model directs the disciple's

desire to a particular object by desiring it himself. That is why we can say that mimetic

desire is rooted neither in the subject nor in the object, but in a third party whose desire

is imitated by the subject. Granted, the passage quoted above is hardly explicit on this

point. But its implications are clear and conform to our definition of mimetic desire.

Freud asserts that the identification has nothing passive or feminine about it; a passive or

feminine identification would mean that the son wanted to become the object of his

father's desire. How, then, will the active and "typically masculine" identification realize itself? Either it is wholly imaginary, or it finds concrete form in the desire for some

particular object. The identification is a desire to be the model that seeks fulfillment,

naturally enough, by means of appropriation, that is, by taking over the things that

belong to his father. As Freud says, the son seeks to take the father's place everywhere;

he thus seeks to assume his desires, to desire what the father desires. The proof that we

are not distorting Freud's intention is supplied by the last sentence of the passage: "[The

identification] fits in very well with the Oedipus complex, for which it helps to prepare

the way."

What can this sentence mean, if not that identification directs desire toward those

objects desired by the father? We have here an undeniable instance of filial desire

undergoing the influence of mimesis. Consequently, there already exists in Freud's

thought, at this stage, a latent conflict between this mimetic process of paternal

identification and the autonomous establishment of a particular object as a basis for

desire -the sexual cathexis toward the mother.

____________________

1. Sigmund Freud, "The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of

Sigmund Freud", ed. and trans. James Strachey, 24 vols. ( London: Hogarth Press,

1953-66), vol. 18,
Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego
, 105.

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This conflict is all the more apparent because identification with the father is presented

as fundamental to the boy's development, anterior to
any choice of object
. Freud

emphasizes this point in the opening sentences of an analysis that will eventually unfold

into an overall description of the Oedipus complex and that is to be found in the chapter

on identification previously referred t
o. 2. A
fter identification with the father comes the sexual cathexis toward the mother, which, according to Freud, first appears and

develops independently. The object-choice of the mother appears to have its origins in

two factors: first, the identification with the father, the mimesis; second, the fixation of

the libido on the mother. These two forces act together and reinforce one another, as

Freud makes clear a few lines further on. After having subsisted "side by side for a time

without any mutual influence or interference," the two "come together at last," and the libidinal drive is thereby strengthened. This is a wholly natural and logical turn of events

if we choose to regard this identification as the mimesis of paternal desire. Indeed, once

we have seen matters in this light all other explanations seem irrelevant. I am not trying

to put words in Freud's mouth. In fact, it is my contention that Freud saw the path of

mimetic desire stretching out before him and deliberately turned aside. One need only

examine his definition of the Oedipus complex, which follows a few lines further on, to

see how he evades the issue:

The little boy notices that his father stands in his way with his mother. His identification

with his father takes on a hostile coloring and becomes identical with the wish to replace

his father in regard to his mother as well. Identification, in fact, is ambivalent from the

very firs
t. 3.

The passage contains at least one point well worth noting. When, as Freud explains, the

son discovers that his father is becoming an obstacle to him, his identification fuses with

his desire "to replace his father in regard to his mother as well." That "as well" rivets the attention. Freud has earlier defined identification as the desire to replace the father, and

he now repeats that formula. Must we therefore conclude that the mother was initially

excluded, implicitly or explicitly, from the program? On examining the definition we

see nothing that suggests such an exclusion; quite the contrary. As Freud has put it: "A

little boy will exhibit a special interest in his father; he would like to grow like and be

like him, and
take his place everywhere
[emphasis added]."

The casual reader may well assume that the "as well" in the phrase "in regard to the

mother as well" is merely a slip of the pen; after all,

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