Discovering Girard by Michael Kirwan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Reading the Runes

Since as far back as historical records exist, there have been periodic crises and 'big issues' of national government: Are we doing it right? What's gone wrong? Do we need basic reform or a return to basics?

The experts called upon to suggest answers to these questions have varied. The Babylonian emperor consulted his resident astrologer for advice on propitious timing for action. The Roman Consuls preferred the entrails of birds, as interpreted by official priests, particularly the Pontifex Maximus, as the source for good government policy. Medieval European monarchs had their court theologians to suggest any divine inspiration that might have bypassed the royal direct line.

Heads of state during the Age of Enlightenment took more notice of philosophers than theologians in justifying governmental policy. With the triumph of representative democracy as the accepted gold standard for the organisation of political society, it seems that lawyers now dominate in the formulation of any response to questions involving issues like sovereignty and justice and equality.

Rene Girard has something different and original to say about the people who ought to be consulted about the effectiveness of our governmental and political institutions. He thinks that it should be readers, especially readers of great modern literature from Cervantes and Shakespeare to Dostoevsky and Proust, who are consulted about what's wrong and what has to be done about democratic government. Given the recent election results in the United States, it seems justifiable to quote the winner in that election: "What have you got to lose?"

Girard's theory is not as crazy at it might first sound. Among other things most people, or at least more people by far, in modern society can read than are astrologers or priests or theologians or philosophers or (perhaps by a narrower margin) lawyers. So it's a theory compatible with an increasingly democratic ethos. And the writers with whom he is obsessed certainly have a claim to be carriers of the best of the Western cultural intellectual heritage. Their track record is at least as credible as the political scientists, psychologists, and anthropologists that Girard pits them against.

Second, the theory explains rather better than any other why democracy periodically leads to some certifiably dodgy outcomes, including the involvement of religion in politics. Girard's basic principle is that none of us really know what we want...until someone else tells us what it is. We are an empathetic species, or at least a species capable of empathetic imagination. For Girard, this is a miraculous not a natural characteristic. It is also, of course.also the fundamental principle of advertising, and difficult to argue against on purely empirical grounds.

If more proof is necessary, one could simply cite the behaviour of US Republicans in supporting a candidate few of them wanted but almost all of them accepted. Religion is not just a way that we 'vent' the violence inherent in wanting similar things, that is, of conformity; it is a means of dissipating the cognitive dissonance of our membership in a democratic society. No wonder the Evangelicals voted Trump!

But our empathetic streak also gets us into trouble. America, for example, may be one of the most egalitarian places on the planet; but it is also one of the most conformist. On the one hand conformity breeds identity, but on the other hand it creates enormous resentment (with an emphasis on the feeling of being cheated that is part of the French word) which is always ready to erupt into some sort of protest. Conforming means wanting the same things, and therefore competing over a limited supply of those things. This situation creates a sort of background enmity which fundamentally threatens the very social cohesion it spawns.

Girard's ideas point to some important priorities in the improvement in democratic processes, namely the ability of democratic institutions to absorb the level of social as well as political violence which is inherent in democracy. This is in contradiction to the Fukuyama school of history that views democracy as a sort of stable political plateau for an ever-improving civilisation. According to Girard, violence will increase in intensity as democracy becomes...well more democratic. Given that this is exactly what has been happening in democracies from the US to Egypt over the last two decades, Girard has at least a modicum of street cred.

Girard’s theory is that conformist social tension is relieved by the creation of a political safety valve - a scapegoat. The scapegoat is made the focus of an otherwise diffuse violence. This mechanism permits the society to tolerate its inherent competitiveness and mistrust by allowing it to vent its resentful anger on the scapegoat. In Trump’s America, the scapegoat has been identified as immigrants, particularly Mexicans and Muslims. Score another point for Girard’s insight.

Finally, I think Girard provides not a small comfort to those who have been traumatised, not so much by recent political events themselves, as by the apparent lack of rationality in these events. That there might be a hidden but discoverable logic in what is going on in today's political world is no small contribution to the psychic health of millions...particularly if they read. One presumes that requirement means that no one in the Trump administration will therefore ever benefit from Girard.

Nonetheless, the rest of us might. Many of the classics demonstrate the persistence of Girard’s scapegoat mechanism throughout literary history. Familiarity with the tactics and tropes of scapegoating seems an essential political skill to be developed by reading. Who knows, reading may also be beneficial in disrupting the conformity of desires which necessitates the scapegoat in the first place. The fate of democracy may indeed lie in its libraries.

For a complementary literary example of Girard’s theory, see https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

View all my reviews