Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World

by Girard, Rene

• ISBN13: 9780804722155
• ISBN10: 0804722153
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1987-06-01
• Publisher: Stanford Univ Pr

Summary

An astonishing work of cultural criticism, this book is widely recognized as a brilliant and devastating challenge to conventional views of literature, anthropology, religion, and psychoanalysis. In its scope and itnerest it can be compared with Freud'sTotem and Taboo, the subtext Girard refutes with polemic daring, vast erudition, and a persuasiveness that leaves the reader compelled to respond, one way or another. This is the single fullest summation of Girard's ideas to date, the book by which they will stand or fall. In a dialogue with two psychiatrists (Jean-Michel Oughourlian and Guy Lefort), Girard probes an encyclopedic array of topics, ranging across the entire spectrum of anthropology, psychoanalysis, and cultural production. Girard's point o departure is what he calles "mimesis," the conflict that arises when human rivals compete to differentiate themselves from each other, yet succeed only in becoming more and more alike. At certain points in the life of a society, according to Girard, this mimetic conflict erupts into a crisis in which all difference dissolves in indiscriminate violence. In primitive societies, such crises were resolved by the "scapegoating mechanism," in which the community, en masse, turned on an unpremeditated victim. The repression of this collective murder and its repetition in ritual sacrifice then formed the foundations of both religion and the restored social order. How does Christianity, at once the most "sacrificial" of religions and a faith with a non-violent ideology, fit into this scheme? Girard grants Freud's point, inTotem and Taboo, that Christianity is similar to primitive religion, but only to refute Freudif Christ is sacrificed, Girard argues, it is not becuase God willed it, but becaus ehuman beingswantedit. The book is not merely, or perhaps not mainly, biblical exegesis, for within its scope fall some of the most vexing problems of social historythe paradox that violance has social efficacy, the function of the scapegoat, the mechanism of anti-semitism.

Table of Contents

BOOK I: FUNDAMENTAL ANTHROPOLOGY
The Victimage Mechanism as the Basis of Religion	3	(45)
Acquisitive Mimesis and Mimetic Rivalry	7	(3)
The Function of the Law: Prohibiting Imitation	10	(9)
The Function of Ritual: Imperative Mimesis	19	(4)
Sacrifice and the Victimage Mechanism	23	(7)
The Theory of Religion	30	(18)
The Development of Culture and Institutions	48	(36)
Variants in Ritual	48	(3)
Sacred Kingship and Central Power	51	(7)
The Polyvalence of Ritual and the Specificity of Institutions	58	(10)
The Domestication of Animals and Ritual Hunting	68	(5)
Sexual Prohibitions and the Principle of Exchange	73	(7)
Death and Funeral Rites	80	(4)
The Process of Hominization	84	(21)
Posing the Problem	84	(5)
Ethology and Ethnology	89	(4)
The Victimage Mechanism and Hominization	93	(6)
The Transcendental Signifier	99	(6)
Myth: The Invisibility of the Founding Murder	105	(21)
The 'Radical Elimination'	105	(7)
'Negative Connotation', 'Positive Connotation'	112	(8)
Physical Signs of the Surrogate Victim	120	(6)
Texts of Persecution	126	(15)
Persecution Demystified: The Achievement of the Modern and Western World	126	(4)
The Double Semantic Sense of the Word 'Scapegoat'	130	(4)
The Historical Emergence of the Victimage Mechanism	134	(7)
BOOK II: THE JUDAEO-CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURES
Things hidden since the Foundation of the World	141	(39)
Similarities between the Biblical Myths and World Mythology	141	(3)
The Distinctiveness of the Biblical Myths	144	(14)
The Gospel Revelation of the Founding Murder	158	(22)
A Non-Sacrificial Reading of the Gospel Text	180	(44)
Christ and Sacrifice	180	(2)
The Impossibility of the Sacrificial Reading	182	(3)
Apocalypse and Parable	185	(5)
Powers and Principalities	190	(6)
The Preaching of the Kingdom	196	(6)
Kingdom and Apocalypse	202	(3)
The Non-Sacrificial Death of Christ	205	(10)
The Divinity of Christ	215	(5)
The Virgin Birth	220	(4)
The Sacrificial Reading and Historical Christianity	224	(39)
Implications of the Sacrificial Reading	224	(3)
The Epistle to the Hebrews	227	(4)
The Death of Christ and the End of the Sacred	231	(4)
Sacrifice of the Other and Sacrifice of the Self	235	(2)
The Judgement of Solomon	237	(8)
A New Sacrificial Reading: The Semiotic Analysis	245	(4)
The Sacrificial Reading and History	249	(4)
Science and Apocalypse	253	(10)
The Logos of Heraclitus and the Logos of John	263	(20)
The Logos in Philosophy	263	(1)
The Two Types of Logos in Heidegger	264	(6)
Defining the Johannine Logos in Terms of the Victim	270	(4)
'In the Beginning ...'	274	(2)
Love and Knowledge	276	(7)
BOOK III: INTERDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY
Mimetic Desire	283	(16)
Acquisitive Mimesis and Mimetic Desire	283	(1)
Mimetic Desire and the Modern World	284	(3)
The Mimetic Crisis and the Dynamism of Desire	287	(3)
The Mimesis of Apprenticeship and the Mimesis of Rivalry	290	(1)
Gregory Bateson's 'Double Bind'	291	(3)
From Object Rivalry to Metaphysical Desire	294	(5)
Desire without Object	299	(27)
Doubles and Interdividuality	299	(6)
Symptoms of Alternation	305	(5)
The Disappearance of the Object and Psychotic Structure	310	(6)
Hypnosis and Possession	316	(10)
Mimesis and Sexuality	326	(26)
What is known as 'Masochism'	326	(2)
Theatrical 'Sado-Masochism'	328	(7)
Homosexuality	335	(3)
Mimetic Latency and Rivalry	338	(9)
The End of Platonism in Psychology	347	(5)
Psychoanalytic Mythology	352	(41)
Freud's Platonism and the Use of the Oedipal Archetype	352	(4)
How do you reproduce a Triangle?	356	(3)
Mimesis and Representation	359	(3)
The Double Genesis of Oedipus	362	(2)
Why Bisexuality?	364	(3)
Narcissism: Freud's Desire	367	(15)
The Metaphors of Desire	382	(11)
Beyond Scandal	393	(40)
Proust's Conversion	393	(5)
Sacrifice and Psychotherapy	398	(4)
Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Structural Psychoanalysis	402	(7)
The Death Instinct and Modern Culture	409	(7)
The Skandalon	416	(17)
To Conclude...	433	(16)
Notes	449	(8)
Bibliography	457	(8)
Index	465