Things Hidden in Plain Sight: Mimesis and Human Violence

René Girard's theory of mimesis proposes that human culture is fundamentally organized around the management of violence. Our intra-species violence is largely unrestrained by instinct but instead driven by emotions sometimes masquerading as reason. This has always been the case, and it has always threatened every level of social interaction, from courtship to international relations. What makes human violence uniquely problematic is its tendency to escalate and engulf entire communities and nations. Such contagions are not the work of viruses but rather of our brain's mirror neurons, which account for our vastly enlarged capacities for mimesis, or imitation. Just as we imitate others' gestures and speech, we also imitate their desires. When our desires and theirs converge on a single, unsharable object, the resulting behaviors will range from deference to conflict. The hierarchical differences between people are keyed to this opposition. Culture is a hierarchical ordering system. Paradoxically, culture has, from its beginnings, used violence to install, maintain, or adjust hierarchies of difference. Over time it has also developed mitigations or interventions to manage conflict before it turns to violence. The path from ritualized human sacrifice to the Olympics has been a long one, but our species is not yet capable of preventing violent social disorder and the constant threat of annihilation. Things Hidden in Plain Sight takes us from the mimetic brain to the relational psychology of rivalry, and from there to large-scale mimetic phenomena such as war, politics, religion, and the arts. Films and works of literature deemed illustrative are reviewed throughout the book.