Fighting fire with fire. Mimetic investigations of the “war on terror” and its discursive strategies
Résumé
ABSTRACTIn a series of books written in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, French anthropologist Ren Girard developed his theory of "mimetic rivalry," which analyzes why human beings respond violently to violence. Vicious circles of revenge are not only a product of the strategic dynamics of escalation. Reciprocal enemies also constitute themselves relationally, while at the same time refusing to recognize the constitutive relationality of their political subjectivities. This chapter argues that this theory can shed light on the "Global War on Terror," and it also offers a sociological reading of Girard's theory. In the case under investigation, mimetic violence arose out of the specific relational structures through which counter-terrorist interventions were framed on all sides, rather than as a result of irreducibly mimetic human desires.
