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Conversations with René Girard: Prophet of Envy PDF

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CONVERSATIONS WITH RENÉ GIRARD René Girard. Photo by Herlinde Koelbl. Also available from Bloomsbury Evolution and Conversion: Dialogues on the Origins of Culture, by René Girard with Pierpaolo Antonello and João Cezar de Castro Rocha Mimesis, Movies, and Media, edited by Scott Cowdell, Chris Fleming, and Joel Hodge Mimesis and Sacrifice, edited by Marcia Pally René Girard and Raymund Schwager: Correspondence 1974-1991, edited by Scott Cowdell, Chris Fleming, Joel Hodge, and Mathias Moosbrugger CONVERSATIONS WITH RENÉ GIRARD: PROPHET OF ENVY Edited by Cynthia L. Haven BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2020 Copyright © Cynthia L. Haven, 2020 Cynthia L. Haven has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editor of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on p. 209 constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design: Louise Dugdale Cover image © Michael Sugrue All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-3500-7517-7 PB: 978-1-3500-7516-0 ePDF: 978-1-3500-7515-3 eBook: 978-1-3500-7514-6 Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters. CONTENTS Introduction: Socrates in the Digital Age Cynthia L. Haven 1 1 “There Are Real Victims Behind the Text.” 7 2 Opera and Myth Philippe Godefroid 17 3 Technological Power in the Post-Sacrificial World Scott A. Walter 21 4 The Logic of the Undecidable Thomas F. Bertonneau 33 5 Violence, Difference, Sacrifice Rebecca Adams 51 6 “Revelation Is Dangerous. It’s the Spiritual Equivalent of Nuclear Power.” Michel Treguer 73 7 “What Is Happening Today Is Mimetic Rivalry on a Global Scale.” Henri Tincq 85 8 How Should Mimetic Theory Be Applied? Maria Stella Barberi 91 9 Shakespeare: Mimesis and Desire Robert Pogue Harrison 93 10 Why Do We Fight? How Do We Stop? Robert Pogue Harrison 109 11 “War Is Everywhere.” Elisabeth Lévy 125 12 “I Have Always Tried to Think Inside an Evolutionary Framework.” Pierpaolo Antonello and João Cezar de Castro Rocha 129 13 The J’Accuse of René Girard: The Audacious Ideas of a Great Thinker Giulio Meotti 147 Contents 14 A Passion Born of Rivalry Mark R. Anspach and Laurence Tacou 153 15 Apocalyptic Thinking After 9/11 Robert Doran 167 16 “I Am First and Foremost a Social Scientist.” Pedro Sette-Câmara, Alvaro Velloso de Carvalho, and Olavo de Carvalho 181 17 “Christianity Will Be Victorious, But Only in Defeat.” Cynthia L. Haven 187 Postscript: “René Girard Never Played the Great Man,” Says Biographer Artur Sebastian Rosman 195 Chronology 203 Acknowledgments 209 Bibliography 210 Contributors 212 Index 216 vi René Girard grew up in Avignon. In this photograph, taken circa 1930, he sits beside his sister Marie, brother Henri, and his mother, Thérèse Girard. Photograph is used courtesy of the Girard family. Novelist Raymond Federman, René Girard, and Professor Albert Cook at a gathering at the home of Provost John Sullivan at the State University of New York at Buffalo, New York, 1974. Photograph by Bruce Jackson is used with permission. vii Professor Albert Cook and René Girard enjoy a party at Arts and Sciences provost John Sullivan’s home in Buffalo, New York, 1974. Photograph by Bruce Jackson is used with permission. René Girard holds a seminar on the ideas that would eventually become Violence and the Sacred at Buffalo in spring 1971. Photograph by Bruce Jackson is used with permission. viii INTRODUCTION SOCRATES IN THE DIGITAL AGE It’s been said that there is no such thing as talking and listening, only talking and waiting. It was not so for René Girard. The great French thinker, who died in 2015 after an illustrious career spanning continents and disciplines, enjoyed conversations more than most. No wonder, then, that so many of his most prominent works are in the form of an interview. Girard’s capstone, Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World, is in Q&A form. So is Evolution and Conversion: Dialogues on the Origins of Culture and also his last major work, Battling to the End. Some of his minor works are dialogic as well—Maria Stella Barberi’s long interview in The One by Whom Scandal Comes, for example, and his excellent conversation with Michel Treguer, When These Things Begin (short excerpts from both, showing the playfulness as well as the intensity of his thought, are included in this volume). One might even consider that his published letters with the Innsbruck theologian Raymund Schwager1 were conversational—across thousands of miles. Girard’s colleague Sandor Goodhart told me Girard the professor was “doggedly dialogic.” He added, “He likes working with people on things. He always spoke in terms of ‘us,’ ‘our’ project. What ‘we’re’ doing. He had a sense of discovery.” Literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin described why that might be so: “Truth is not born nor is it to be found inside the head of an individual person, it is born between people collectively searching for truth, in the process of their dialogic interaction.”2 And while that interaction can take place between the living and the dead, or in poems exchanged between long- distance lovers, or in cybersphere, it is uniquely effective between people conversing face to face. Socrates knew this: he brought people into conflict, and considered himself the “midwife” of the truth that was born that way. To answer any of the big questions in life, and many of the smaller ones, we need to collaborate and work together. Dialogical format liberates thinking and takes it out of the straitjacket, according to Stanford Professor Robert Pogue Harrison, whose interviews are also included in this volume. We continually complain about the

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