Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

(1923-) French literary theorist. Girard has spent most of his career in the United States. He has taught at various universities including SUNY-Buffalo, Johns Hopkins University, and Stanford University, where he is currently professor of French language, literature, and civilization. Girard is best known for a theory of mimesis, which argues that all human desire is imitative and not innate. Mimetic desire is triangular in structure and encompasses a relation between a Subject, an object, and a mediator. Mediation can be either internal or external. Internal mediation requires a mediator who is historically accessible to the subject like a friend or a rival. External mediation requires a mediator who is not immediately available like, say, Napoleon, Freud, etc. It is mediation and not intrinsic properties that make objects desirable. If desire is mediated, then desire becomes the desire to be the other. Girard introduces the resonant phrase “ontological sickness” to describe this phenomenon. What is sought in the other is the promise of being. Girard's theory of mimetic desire was first worked out in Deceit, Desire, and the Novel (1966).Girard has derived a new theory of psychology from his notion of mimetic desire. His critique of Freudian Psychoanalysis revolves around the two key psychoanalytic myths, namely those of Oedipus and Narcissus. Girard rejects both the importance ... log in or subscribe to read full text