Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture

Man is the creature who does not know what to desire, and he turns to others in order to make up his mind. We desire what others desire because we imitate their desires.

—René Girard

I believe in commitment … We must be committed to one position and follow it through.

—René Girard

In many books and essays throughout his long career, the literary critic and cultural theorist René Girard presented, developed, and extended provocative ideas about, and insights into, mimetic desire. Our desires are not our own, Girard emphasizes; they do not come from within. We form our desires on the desires that we perceive in others; they are our models; we imitate them. Always, we seek to be aligned with the words and deeds of an envied model or, more generally, with those of a dominant group or crowd. [End Page 101]

As Girard defines it, desire is extremely potent and controlling. We cannot resist its force, and all too often it propels individuals and societies into rivalry, hatred, and violence. There are descriptions of this formidable power in Sophocles, Shakespeare, and other great writers of the Western tradition, as Girard has demonstrated. But, even more, Girard maintains that we witness the operation, that is, the revelation, of mimetic desire—its origins, its consequences—in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament.

The temptation and sin of Adam and Eve, the story of Joseph and his brothers, the judgment of Solomon, the story of Job, the crucifixion of Jesus—these are some of Girard's recurring examples. However, the Biblical episode that may have mattered the most to him, one that he invoked repeatedly, is the Denial of St. Peter.

The details of this story differ somewhat from one gospel to the next—Girard prefers the version of it in the gospel of Mark—but the core of it is this: At the Last Supper, Jesus predicted that Peter would deny him three times; Peter swore that he would not, but when the time of testing came, he did. When others confronted him, the fearful Peter, desiring to belong, desperate to be safely within the group, denied that he knew who Jesus was: "I do not know the man you speak of" (Mark 14:71).¹

Girard's explications of the Denial bring into focus his theory of mimetic desire. His reiterated point about St. Peter is really a point about us—that we are the same as this disciple: We would have betrayed Jesus too. In New Testament studies, some have claimed that "the story about Peter is simply a concretizing of the general denial of all the disciples."² In our own times of test and trial, we have acted and will act as Peter did.

Consider Girard's treatment of the Denial in Le Sacrifice (2003; English trans. 2011).³ The mob that calls for Jesus's death, Girard explains, "is constituted and nourished by swallowing up everything that passes within its reach. It is the black hole of violent mimeticism; where mimeticism is most dense, the mob emerges."⁴

"The major example," he continues, "is that of Peter's denial":

Peter cannot help but imitate their hostility. If we psychologize this denial, if we attribute it to the suggestible temperament of the apostle, we seek to prove (unconsciously) that in Peter's place, we would not have denied Jesus. It should be recalled that before his denial Peter, too, vows never to deny Jesus. He is too preoccupied with the opinion others have of him not to blindly adopt the politically correct attitude of the milieu at the center of which he has the misfortune of finding himself.⁵ [End Page 102]

"All the actors and witnesses of the crucifixion," Girard concludes, "are already hostile to Jesus or they become so, for mimeticism spares no one."⁶

We cannot resist the influence of the mob: Inevitably we succumb to it. No more than Peter would we have remained steadfast. There is nothing inherent in Peter as an individual that explains why he...