Nietzsche contra Girard

Contagion Journal of Violence Mimesis and Culture, vol. 31, pp. 145–176

Abstract

Friedrich Nietzsche's exemplary position in the history of philosophy owes as much to the untimely content of his thought as to the heterogeneous forms he used to express it. It is thus no accident that both his philosophical logic (logos) and the formal affect (pathos) that animate his writings are now a source of inspiration for mimetic studies as well—a transdisciplinary field that goes beyond antiquarian approaches to mimesis in order to develop a new theory of imitation that accounts for the becoming other of homo mimeticus in the present and future.1If I opt for an agonistic title, then, it is not to set up a violent and rivalrous opposition of false polarities between mimetic theory and mimetic studies—for the debts and genealogical continuities between Girard and Nietzsche are numerous, profound, and do not conform to the pathological dynamic of mimetic rivalry. Rather, I opt for this Nietzschean title to alert the reader in advance to the following methodological point: What appears, at first sight, as a straightforward antagonistic opposition might reveal, at a closer genealogic look, mirroring continuities and overturnings of perspectives. The goal is to go beyond rivalrous principles constitutive of violent pathologies to propose a new theory on the logic or logos of mimetic pathos. This also means that the “contra” in my title should be read with a genealogical understanding of what agonistic confrontations actually entail: namely, a complex double movement with and against worthy predecessors that, as I have shown elsewhere, are already constitutive of Nietzsche's mimetic “patho(-)logies,” and that I now group under the rubric of “mimetic agonism.”2 Whether Nietzsche and Girard have the same understanding of agonism, or not quite, is what these further steps for mimetic studies now aim to find out.If the transdisciplinary field of mimetic studies emerges in the twenty-first century, its genealogy looks back to the foundations of philosophy and reaches, via Nietzsche and other modernist writers of mimesis, into the present. As an introductory gesture, let me first step back to the past century to recall why one of mimetic studies’ major precursors, such as Nietzsche, continues to be read and reread today from different perspectives. Considered one of the “masters of suspicion” along with Marx, Freud, and, we should add, Darwin, Nietzsche is mostly known for overturning Western metaphysics, proclaiming the death of God, reevaluating the value of morality, undermining faith in rationality, and affirming an immanent world of becoming in constant tension, conflict, and transformation. Given his perspectival, often conflicted, and seemingly contradictory approach, it is not surprising that the name of Nietzsche has been associated with strikingly different and equally conflicting philosophical traditions: from existentialism to hermeneutics, materialism to psychoanalysis, structuralism to poststructuralism, modernism to postmodernism, critical theory to feminism, deconstruction to queer theory, and new materialism to environmental philosophy to posthumanism, among other emerging perspectives. 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Authors 1

1. Nidesh Lawtoo corresponding Aachen

   Leiden University

   Affiliation as printed

   Leiden University