The first paper explores the relationship between mimetic desire and knowledge, juxtaposing Girard’s theory with insights from the contemplative masterpiece The Cloud of Unknowing. It argues that true knowledge—far from being a mere collection of facts—emerges from the transformation of desire, moving from rivalry to peace. This interdisciplinary approach challenges conventional understandings of cognition, emphasizing the integral roles of affect and embodiment.
The second paper stages a critical conversation between Girard’s views on societal responses to disaster and the observations made by Rebecca Solnit in A Paradise Built in Hell. While Girard perceives social disasters as breeding grounds for mimetic violence and scapegoating, Solnit identifies a contrasting human tendency towards altruism, solidarity, and mutual aid in the face of crises. This paper explores the conditions under which these seemingly opposite reactions occur, proposing that societal responses to disaster may hinge on the prevailing social models and narratives.
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.
Peace-talk is incoherent because we do not have one definition of the word “peace.” Everyone has different understandings of this term, and thus we cannot help but selfishly impose our understandings of peace onto someone else’s understandings of peace. With the help of Augustine of Hippo, we underscore this issue through an analysis of disordered desire; in addition, with the help of French theorist René Girard and his theory of mimesis (which very much has an Augustinian flavor in terms of its low theological anthropology) we emphasize how humanity cannot help but disorder even the noblest of endeavors such as just peacemaking. Therefore, this essay argues that humanity’s peace presents a mimetical trap that needs to be broken from above via a divine disruption that is simultaneously violent and nonviolent. Divine violence can spur up hope and hence can affect the way one does theology today in the *saeculum*.