Mimetic Desire (Girard's Triangle of Desire)

Concept

Analysing Cervantes, Stendhal, Flaubert, Proust and Dostoevsky, French critic René Girard argued that desire is not a straight line from subject to object but a triangle that passes through a mediator. Don Quixote desires knighthood by imitating Amadis; Emma Bovary imitates heroines of romance. The belief that desire is spontaneous is the "romantic lie"; exposing its imitative structure is the "novelistic truth".

External and internal mediation

• External mediation: the mediator lives in another world, so no rivalry arises.
• Internal mediation: the mediator is close and becomes a rival for the same object, breeding envy and hatred.

Extensions

In Violence and the Sacred (1972) Girard argued that mimetic rivalry produces communal crisis resolved by the scapegoat mechanism. The idea is often used to explain fashion, advertising, luxury consumption and social-media comparison.

References

1. Girard, R. (1961). Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque. Grasset. (Eng. Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965)
2. Girard, R. (1972). La Violence et le sacré. Grasset.
3. Palaver, W. (2013). René Girard's Mimetic Theory. Michigan State University Press.