The Girard Reader Read Free Page B

University was a good setting for Girard in some respects. Stanford University is
    undoubtedly one of the best research universities in the world, the intelligence and
    background of its undergraduate students ranks high among American universities, and the
    graduate students in French were certainly very good. But Stanford's very position as one of
    the leading universities in the Western world has made it prey to the currents of political
    correctness that have washed over Ameri-
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    can education. The problem from Girard's standpoint is the denigration of traditional
    disciplines and classical learning. Certainly Girard, although well known and highly regarded
    on campus, became "odd man out" because of his stance toward certain academic fashions
    and his avowed Christian identity. But he never felt isolated, and his teaching and research were always interdisciplinary.
    One of the most important events of this period from the standpoint of Girard's lifetime of
    work and his intellectual and religious commitments was the formation of the Colloquium on
    Violence and Religion (COV&R) in 1990. It is characteristic of him that he did not take the
    initiative to start it, nor has he attempted in any way to manipulate its governance or the
    topics of meetings and approaches to various issues. He has exemplified the lack of that
    mimetic obsession with power exhibited by Freud in forming and controlling the inner
    council of the International Psychoanalytic Association, and Girard's followers and
    sympathizers in COV&R are noticeably free of the esotericism and cultic exclusivism that
    have at various times marked disciples of Jung, Heidegger, and Lacan.
    The object of COV&R, as stated on behalf of those present at the founding conference at
    Stanford University, is "to explore, criticize, and develop the mimetic model of the
    relationship between violence and religion in the genesis and maintenance of culture." This
    statement presupposes Girard's work as the center and starting point, but the organization
    includes many people who do not share his religious views or differ with him on certain
    points of the mimetic theory.
    From that first meeting of no more than twenty-five people, there are now more than two
    hundred members, who are located primarily in the United States and Europe. An annual
    symposium is held in middle to late spring, and a shorter meeting takes place each year in
    conjunction with the convention of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of
    Biblical Literature. A biannual bulletin, The Bulletin of the Colloquium on Violence and
    Religion , features a bibliography of literature on the mimetic theory. The bulletin is
    financially underwritten by the University of Innsbruck. An annual journal, Contagion:
    journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture , has been published since 1994.
    The great majority are academics, many of whom are dissatisfied with the conditions and
    attitudes they find in academe. They represent not only the usual complaints of lack of
    interest in humanistic and interdisciplinary studies and the greater support of disciplines
    which are more closely connected to what is popular and demanded in the marketplace. The
    deeper dimension of their reaction is a refusal of that very political correctness which
    pretends to uphold the rights of victims and minorities, but ends by affirming a helter-skelter
    hodge-podge which undercuts a consistent moral vision and tends to give the upper hand to
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    those who exalt individual self-fulfillment at the one extreme and, at the other extreme, to
    those who are able to take advantage of the politics of victimization to gain power over
    others.
    But besides academics holding college or university appointments, COV&R's membership
    includes also some ministers and priests, psychiatrists and psychologists, and others who
    carry on their vocations in overlapping spheres of academy and church, or academy and the
    work of conflict resolution in