Verbatim quote · from the corpus

“People would far rather believe that they want to sleep with their mother and kill their father than admit that their desire imitates the desire of others and that their resentment of these others is the real source of their aggression . By keeping these passions in the family, the Freudian system softens their impact. I hate X because he reminds me of my father, not because I have secretly tried and failed to imitate his mastery. It is to Girard that we owe these insights; yet he neglects the quality of human mimesis that separates us from the higher animals: mimesis is not merely imitation, it is representation. I don’t just imitate you, I represent the object we both desire. Human beings imitate each other so well that they have devised in language a means for multiplying through imitation the objects on which their desires converge. Animals use signals, and can even be taught to use human signs, but they cannot understand the originary purpose of the sign as a replacement for an object made sacred by desire. (Or perhaps experimenters can teach religion to chimpanzees.) Mimesis is a minimal function because it has no content in itself; unlike Freud’s Oedipus complex , mimetic desire is defined not by its objects, but by the increasing undefinition of these objects.”

— Eric Gans, Minimal Thinking · Saturday, April 6th, 1996 · Chronicles of Love & Resentment