Contemplation as Positive Mimesis: Desire and Knowledge in *The Cloud of Unknowing* and Mimetic Theory

This paper brings mimetic theory into dialogue with contemplative theology, using resources from both these disciplines to challenge the view that knowledge is merely the acquisition of facts. Such a conception of knowledge ignores increasing scientific evidence that affect, embodiment, and reason are linked in the process of cognition. A view of knowledge that ignores its affective, embodied component is unable to explain why human knowledge is becoming more polarized as factual scientific understanding grows. In this paper I consider the relation of desire to knowledge in René Girard’s mimetic theory and in the contemplative text The Cloud of Unknowing. Mimetic theory analyzes the roots of illusion and self-deception in rivalrous imitative desire. The paper claims that a reading of The Cloud in relation to mimetic theory will discover a way toward freedom from this self-deception, and so to true knowledge, through the transformation of desire from rivalrous to pacific.