VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT Blaise Pascal Instituut > Studiekring René Girard > Online teksten

Wiel Eggen, The Netherlands (wmgeggen@hetnet.nl) 

Workshop ‘Analyzing Cases of Mimetic Violence’ April 10-13, 3008 Florence , Italy

Amidst trophies at the former old hunting estate of Lorenzo De Medici and his successors, a follow-up of the 2007 Amsterdam COV&R conference took place, aimed at sharpening the analytic tools for the study of conflicts and for making the mimetic theory more accessible to the next generation of scholars. Lorenzo’s house turned into a Pax Christi ‘casa per la pace’ (peace center) proved most apt to accommodate participants from Italy, France, Belgium, Latvia and the Netherlands for this gatering that the Dutch Girard circle  had scheduled and at which its president Simon Simonse came from Nairobi to describe Pax Christi’s role in the negotiations between the Ugandese government and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), that was about to be finalized. Simon reported how posturing mimicry on both sides still held up the negotiations in this brutal conflict that arose in the aftermath of Amin’s murderous regime and Alice Lakwena’s spiritual movement. He had perceived the mimetic rivalry proper to the African political traditions that he had studied before in Sudan .

Three other case studies joined his report. Peter Zvagulis summarized  his study of the ethnic rivalry in Latvia between the locals and the large Russian community, in which he saw mainly a ritual of scapegoating via the press, making it a virtual and yet effective process of doing mutual harm. Peter analyzed the contagion at work in this process and hinted at some ways of remedying it.. An analogous case was Sri Lanka ’s stand-off with the Tamil Tigers, described by Thérèse Onderdewijngaard, who referred notably to the Human Rights activist who left the Tigers and was (probably) murdered for her treason, but whose courage continued to inspire attempts at non-violent resolution. Wiel Eggen also mentioned the ‘treason’ that went sour in the case of the Dutch refugee parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who left the socialist party for its softish stand on Muslim violence against women, but who came to be scapegoated amidst tensions that were analyzed on three levels. After the party political side, Wiel discerned the tripolar rivalry of Islam – Secularism – Christianity, and finally showed how the West and the Muslim world had taken opposite positions in the gender stand-off that arose from the Fall in Eden (Gn 3), with the West viewing its salvation as an individualistic link to a Redeemer who overruled the gender divide, whereas Islam saw deliverance primarily in the submission to the role patterns installed by the Creator. Mutual rivalry had deepened their respective one-sidedness and made caused both to ignore the original issue.

Three more theoretical papers came to supplement these case studies, but without being less  topical. Hans Weigand investigated how the complex system approach suited  mimetic studies and he used the Rwandan genocide as a case in point. He showed how crises that originate in mimetic settings go through cycles of polarization and sacrificial reconciliation and how they are stored in a collective memory so as to be brought to bear on new cases; but they may also, as in the case of the growing Tutsi – Hutu divide, leave a residue too hefty for any communal mediation. Hans showed how breaking down the conflict in smaller cycles could help master the stakes. Mark Anspach, by contrast, tried to grasp how totally different trends such as the suicide bombing, school shootings and anorexia epidemics might feed on common aspects of ritual violence and victimization divulgated by the media. He saw the notion of martyrdom as an ambivalent value playing  havoc, which called for a perspicacious analysis. Along this line, Philippe de Keukelaere spoke of deviation of the archaic sacred factor, inspiring the modern suicide bombings aimed against a demonized enemy. Although the juridical system of the West makes the archaic sacred inconceivable, Philippe point out that avatars of its working crop up all over by many crooked deviations. Both Mark and Philippe thus pointed and the transformation of ritual violence and evoked its apocalyptic setting, to which Girard has of late given ample attention.

On a methodological note, Michael Elias had ushered in case studies and theoretical analyses by discussing how the English analytical philosophy on speech acts (notably the illocutionary as analyzed by Dell Hymes) could be combined with Girard’s idea of the mimetic as the core of cultural activities. After all, no speech is without intention to achieve something within a setting of rivaling interests. His methodological approach clearly proved quite promising. And Roberto Farneti concluded the mini-conference by pursuing the question of methodology and by stressing that the mimetic theory is to be framed as a new approach to the entire field of human sciences. Applications to all fields should be elaborated from philosophy to the arts (not just literary arts, but musical and plastic arts as well) and to the sciences (from political, economic and religious down to neuroscience). Pulling all these together should hopefully lead to a solid base for mimetic theory to enter the academic curricula.

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