Imitation and Desire -- Mimetic Theory and Literary Study

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Date Posted: 14:13:33 01/21/08 Mon
Author: j.jackson
Subject: Imitation and Desire

I bring this topic up so that we stay grounded in one of mimetic theory's fundamental principles (and it's easy to lose sight of this principle). So just a quick reminder: don't confuse imitation and desire. Human desire is mimetic; we desire according to the desire of another. We imitate (appropriate) the desire of another. Desire is called into being, as it were, by another's desire (which is also imitative of another individual or group's desire). Imitation IS NOT desire; desire IS NOT imitation (it is imitative). They are intimately related, obviously, but not identical. So if you ask, "Whence imitation?" the answer may simply be "nature;" we are imitative beings. If you ask the question, "Whence desire?" well, then, we must answer "imitation." Again, as Girard makes clear below, desire is something altogether different than simply fulfilling "needs" or "appetites" (though let us not divorce the two phenomena too quickly). Again, start simple and go from there.

From Girard, _Things Hidden_:
"We must not allow human desire to have the rather too absolute degree of specificity with which psychoanalysis still endows it; this is inimical to any form of scientific treatment. It is evident among animals that the effects of mimesis are grafted onto needs and appetites, though these never reach the same pitch as with human beings. Desire is undoubtedly a distinctively human phenomenon that can only develop when a certain threshold of mimesis is transcended" (283).

You can keep reading _Things Hidden_ from here if you like; we get to this part of the book later in the semester. It's funny, I thought about moving this section up in the semester.

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