Mimetic Desire and the Originary Scene
Mimetic desire is the foundational dynamic through which the human emerges. As Katz writes in An Introduction to Disciplinarity, "the knowledge of mimetic desire provided by Biblical, classical, modern and, more recently Girardian theory and GA is paradoxical: on the one hand, this is knowledge of the constitutive mode of human being; on the other hand, it is knowledge of the transcendence of this being"1. Mimetic desire is not simply imitation of another's actions; it is the imitation of another's desire toward an object, meaning that desire is always triangulated through the other. This mutual orientation toward the same object creates the crisis that the originary scene must resolve.
The crisis mimetic desire generates is precisely a "double bind": as each proto-human imitates the others' desire for a central object, appropriative conflict escalates toward violence. As Katz explains in Event, Origin, Center, "the first to gesture does not exactly know what he is doing—he is merely registering the impasse, the double bind, of mimesis"2. The aborted gesture of appropriation becomes, in this moment of impasse, a sign — the first sign — because it defers the violence that mimetic rivalry would otherwise have produced. This is the originary scene: a moment in which the sign emerges not from intention but from compulsion, and in which representation is, as Bouvard summarizes in Originary Hypothesis as Shared Source and Target, "the deferral of violence here and now"3.
What makes this scene distinctively human is that the sign redirects attention from rival participants to the center. As Katz writes in Event, Origin, Center, "the center is other, and in being the same in relation to it we are other to each other"2. The sacred center absorbs the charge of mimetic desire and transforms it: the object of rivalry becomes the object of collective attention, and the community is founded in this shared deferral. The first sign is thus, in Gans's formulation cited by Katz, "the Name-of-God," and the center is sacred precisely because it resolves the double bind of mimesis by providing a focal point that is neither any one participant nor their mutual violence.
Importantly, mimetic desire does not disappear once the scene is founded — it is permanently inscribed in the community's emotional structure. As Katz notes in Hunger Artistry of the Word, "Resentment is the emotion (?) or attitude (?) one has towards whomever denies you your desire. On the originary scene, this is the sacred center, which “withholds” itself from the desiring community, and becomes even more desirable as a result. This resentment toward the center must alternate with love for the center which has, after all, saved and even created the community"4. The originary scene does not eliminate mimetic desire; it institutes a structure — the sacred center, the sign, the shared scene — within which mimetic desire is perpetually deferred and commemorated. Every subsequent human scene iterates this founding structure.
The crystallizing passage is from Attentionality and Originary Ethics: Upclining: "Intentionality within GA is more strongly conceived, as the object is one of mimetic desire and shared deferral. But intentionality depends upon having one's attention drawn to the object, and having one's attention drawn depends upon attending to another who brings the object into view and, finally, upon becoming an object of attention of others (an attention one can't share)"5. Mimetic desire is thus not a flaw to be overcome but the very engine that produces the scene, the sign, the center, and ultimately the human as such.
Excerpts
"The knowledge of mimetic desire provided by Biblical, classical, modern and, more recently Girardian theory and GA is paradoxical: on the one hand, this is knowledge of the constitutive mode of human being; on the other hand, it is knowledge of the transcendence of this being, and if mimetic desire can never be abolished, it can be deferred; if it can be deferred for a split second, it can later be deferred for a minute, a year, a life time, generations, ages—and, we can learn to detect ever more minute, implicit and potential signs of mimetic desire and devise means of deferring them before they even produce effects."
An Introduction to Disciplinarity · PDF Read →
"It is, rather, the center that calls us, and that we hear and heed. On the originary scene, the first to gesture does not exactly know what he is doing—he is merely registering the impasse, the double bind, of mimesis. His sign is a result of compulsion, and those who imitate him submit to the same compulsion, a compulsion that can only be seen to come from the center. As Gans has put it, the first sign is the Name-of-God, and the center is sacred."
Event, Origin, Center · PDF Read →
"Resentment is the emotion (?) or attitude (?) one has towards whomever denies you your desire. On the originary scene, this is the sacred center, which “withholds” itself from the desiring community, and becomes even more desirable as a result. This resentment toward the center must alternate with love for the center which has, after all, saved and even created the community. It then follows that anyone who denies a desire after the originary scene is taken to be doing so on behalf, or in the name, or under the authority of, the center (how else could another have the power to deny one’s desire?)."
Hunger Artistry of the Word · GABlog Read →
"This central figure must also provide the resolution of the crisis, which is to say the power to found and maintain the community must be conferred upon him after the fact. Thus, the center is a—indeed the first—source of agency within the now human community, and no future agency will be possible without it. This is why center and event are bound inextricably together."
Event, Origin, Center · PDF Read →
"The disciplinary world is post-moral to the extent that it is postmimetic, and it is post-mimetic insofar as its members enable each other to imitate that dimension of reality they are jointly attending to, rather than the appropriative desires of other individuals."
An Introduction to Disciplinarity · PDF Read →
"On the originary scene, and in the ritual orders preceding kingship, it is the Being at the center, different from if intimately connected to the community who poses an obstacle to desire: this being is resented for blocking our desire, but also loved for providing a pathway toward fulfilling it."
The Transdisciplinarity of the Hypothesis · Substack Read →